Here is a crazy idea, properly fund it. -cpg
From the St. petersburg Times Grade Book
by Jeff Solocheck
Efforts continue to give Florida school districts more flexibility in implementing the 2002 class size amendment. And the move is gaining support among former opponents.
Sen. David Simmons, chairman of the Senate Pre-K-12 Appropriations Subcommittee, began work on a bill that would make it easier for schools to deal with daily fluctuations of students shortly after voters narrowly defeated a ballot measure to ease the restrictions. His effort mirrors a proposal he made in 2008 while still a member of the Florida House.
The draft (found at the end of this committee packet) deals with some of the key concerns raised by schools, but also by opponents of the November ballot initiative. Ron Meyer, a key education lawyer in Tallahassee, has discussed the proposal with lawmakers but still has misgivings about its constitutionality.
Perhaps the biggest concern raised over time is the arrival of the "19th student" — a child who enrolls after the school has met its class size limit and has no more space. The bill would allow a school to place that student in a class that is at the limit, with a maximum of three to five over (depending on grade level), but only temporarily while the school board finds a solution that does not disrupt student learning.
For students who already were in the school by the October annual count, the class size rules would not be bent. The school must be in compliance by the next October survey.
This latest iteration began to win converts. Sen. Paula Dockery of Lakeland, one of the Republicans who opposed going against the will of the voters, said she found the draft to meet the spirit of the original class size amendment while still giving schools needed flexibility for daily operations. Sen. Nancy Detert, a Venice Republican who has gone back and forth on the issue, also voiced her backing while calling for changes in the fines for failing to miss class size.
The appropriations subcommittee did not vote on the bill, which remains in draft. So far, there is no similar bill in the House. In past years, though, the House has supported all efforts to ease back on class size rules while the Senate has been the sticking point. So it's likely that this measure could see it through.
If passed, the next question would be its constitutionality, if someone decides to challenge. Stay tuned.
http://www.tampabay.com/blogs/gradebook/content/class-size-measure-gains-support-florida-senate
Showing posts with label class size amendment. Show all posts
Showing posts with label class size amendment. Show all posts
Thursday, February 24, 2011
Friday, February 18, 2011
Legislature shirks responsibilities... again...
From the Florida Tribune
by Kim Macqueen
Senators talking about tweaking the controversial class size amendment lashed out Thursday at an attorney who may sue the state if it pushes ahead with fines against school districts that aren't meeting the strict requirements.
School districts could be hit with hefty fines for failing to meet the caps included in the original 2002 constitutional amendment: 18 children in K-3 classrooms, 22 children in 4th through 8th grade and 25 students in high school classes. School districts, however, have said they plan to sue if the state presses with more than $30 million in proposed fines.
Attorney Ron Meyer -- who will likely help out with the proposed lawsuit -- put the blame on state lawmakers, saying that they pushed ahead last year with a constitutional amendment designed to undo some of the strict caps included in the original class size amendment passed by voters instead of setting aside what was needed for "final implementation."
Meyer told senators that now "32 million in fines are out there right now, ready to be imposed," because school districts "were not given the categorical funding that was requested in order to meet class size goals for the final-stage implementation."
"It didn't come. It was unfunded," Meyer said. "So what we have are districts who didn't have the resources to be able to do it, and are now being fined for not being able to do it, when the court has said it's a funding obligation of the state, not local school districts."
Senators made clear their support for draft legislation being readied by committee chair David Simmons, R-Altamonte Springs, designed to relax class size restrictions. But -- after pointedly noting that the committee room was filled with senators who have worked on the issue over the years -- Sen. Stephen Wise, R-Jacksonville, took issue with the assertion that class size is an unfunded mandate. The state has set aside billions since 2002 to comply with the amendment.
"I will assure you that we provided enough money and we put it into a separate line so that everybody could see it. It's beyond me that we continue to say we didn't fund the class size amendment," Wise said. "Now if the districts decided to give bigger pay raises than they could afford, that's not our problem. I just really get irritated when people say we didn't provide enough money."
Meyer specified that $354 million was requested for the measure and $82 million provided, but said he wasn't there "to quibble about money;" just that "there are some constitutional issues that should be resolved at the table rather than at the courthouse."
Sen. Anitere Flores, R-Miami, echoed Wise, pointing to documents showing 800,000 empty student stations statewide in districts where administrators have chosen to spend class-size funding in other areas. She told Simmons she didn't "think Mr. Meyer is here in good faith."
"I'm afraid you are here to quibble about money," she told Meyer. "What I hear you saying is that unless the legislature puts $354 million in the budget this year there will be a lawsuit ... I hope we can reach consensus and pass legislation this year that helps the students without being threatened with a lawsuit on the back end, because that's what we've lived for the last ten years."
http://fltrib.com/sparks-fly-over-class-size-restrictions?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+thefloridatribune+%28The+Florida+Tribune%29
by Kim Macqueen
Senators talking about tweaking the controversial class size amendment lashed out Thursday at an attorney who may sue the state if it pushes ahead with fines against school districts that aren't meeting the strict requirements.
School districts could be hit with hefty fines for failing to meet the caps included in the original 2002 constitutional amendment: 18 children in K-3 classrooms, 22 children in 4th through 8th grade and 25 students in high school classes. School districts, however, have said they plan to sue if the state presses with more than $30 million in proposed fines.
Attorney Ron Meyer -- who will likely help out with the proposed lawsuit -- put the blame on state lawmakers, saying that they pushed ahead last year with a constitutional amendment designed to undo some of the strict caps included in the original class size amendment passed by voters instead of setting aside what was needed for "final implementation."
Meyer told senators that now "32 million in fines are out there right now, ready to be imposed," because school districts "were not given the categorical funding that was requested in order to meet class size goals for the final-stage implementation."
"It didn't come. It was unfunded," Meyer said. "So what we have are districts who didn't have the resources to be able to do it, and are now being fined for not being able to do it, when the court has said it's a funding obligation of the state, not local school districts."
Senators made clear their support for draft legislation being readied by committee chair David Simmons, R-Altamonte Springs, designed to relax class size restrictions. But -- after pointedly noting that the committee room was filled with senators who have worked on the issue over the years -- Sen. Stephen Wise, R-Jacksonville, took issue with the assertion that class size is an unfunded mandate. The state has set aside billions since 2002 to comply with the amendment.
"I will assure you that we provided enough money and we put it into a separate line so that everybody could see it. It's beyond me that we continue to say we didn't fund the class size amendment," Wise said. "Now if the districts decided to give bigger pay raises than they could afford, that's not our problem. I just really get irritated when people say we didn't provide enough money."
Meyer specified that $354 million was requested for the measure and $82 million provided, but said he wasn't there "to quibble about money;" just that "there are some constitutional issues that should be resolved at the table rather than at the courthouse."
Sen. Anitere Flores, R-Miami, echoed Wise, pointing to documents showing 800,000 empty student stations statewide in districts where administrators have chosen to spend class-size funding in other areas. She told Simmons she didn't "think Mr. Meyer is here in good faith."
"I'm afraid you are here to quibble about money," she told Meyer. "What I hear you saying is that unless the legislature puts $354 million in the budget this year there will be a lawsuit ... I hope we can reach consensus and pass legislation this year that helps the students without being threatened with a lawsuit on the back end, because that's what we've lived for the last ten years."
http://fltrib.com/sparks-fly-over-class-size-restrictions?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+thefloridatribune+%28The+Florida+Tribune%29
Wednesday, February 16, 2011
Bayard Rustin on the importance of class size
Here in Florida we shouldn't be looking to evicerate the class size amendment, we should be looking to improve it. We should be funding it properly as well. -cpg
From NYC Public School Parents, posted there by Leonie Haimson
Bayard Rustin (1912 –1987) was an American civil rights activist, important largely behind the scenes in the civil rights movement of the 1960s and earlier. He is credited as the chief organizer of the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. (from Wikipedia)
Rustin also gave a renowned speech in 1964 in Santa Barbara, entitled "Negro revolution in 1965." The whole speech is worth listening to, but one of the topics he spoke about was class size in NYC public schools. He thus is one of many brilliant individuals who realized the importance of this issue, along with Maimonides, John Dewey, and Kurt Vonnegut. Here is an excerpt:
The school system of this country is a bad school system for many reasons, but one of the reasons in our large cities, take Harlem for an example, teachers teach three sessions within the regular period. They become cops, they become babysitters, they become nursemaids.
And yet we look at the unemployed Negroes and we say they are without skills. Well, I am here to say that some of the most skillful people in the world are unemployed Negroes. Because they have reared their own children, they have reared two or three generations of white children. And they are skilled with love and affection for children.
Let us, therefore, elevate them to assistant teachers, the state gives them $4,000 a year, they go into the school, and they take from the teacher all of this police work and babysitting work. And the teacher is, then, if we can get many more schools built, if we can get smaller classrooms, I mean a smaller number of children in classrooms, these people can play a very vital role.
http://nycpublicschoolparents.blogspot.com/2011/02/bayard-rustin-on-importance-of-class.html
From NYC Public School Parents, posted there by Leonie Haimson
Bayard Rustin (1912 –1987) was an American civil rights activist, important largely behind the scenes in the civil rights movement of the 1960s and earlier. He is credited as the chief organizer of the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. (from Wikipedia)
Rustin also gave a renowned speech in 1964 in Santa Barbara, entitled "Negro revolution in 1965." The whole speech is worth listening to, but one of the topics he spoke about was class size in NYC public schools. He thus is one of many brilliant individuals who realized the importance of this issue, along with Maimonides, John Dewey, and Kurt Vonnegut. Here is an excerpt:
The school system of this country is a bad school system for many reasons, but one of the reasons in our large cities, take Harlem for an example, teachers teach three sessions within the regular period. They become cops, they become babysitters, they become nursemaids.
And yet we look at the unemployed Negroes and we say they are without skills. Well, I am here to say that some of the most skillful people in the world are unemployed Negroes. Because they have reared their own children, they have reared two or three generations of white children. And they are skilled with love and affection for children.
Let us, therefore, elevate them to assistant teachers, the state gives them $4,000 a year, they go into the school, and they take from the teacher all of this police work and babysitting work. And the teacher is, then, if we can get many more schools built, if we can get smaller classrooms, I mean a smaller number of children in classrooms, these people can play a very vital role.
http://nycpublicschoolparents.blogspot.com/2011/02/bayard-rustin-on-importance-of-class.html
So much for the will of the people, the class size amendment.
Here is an idea, properly fund it. -cpg
From the St. Petersburg Times
by Jeff Solocheck
Lawmakers look into new definitions to make Florida's school class size law easier to meet
Florida voters rejected an effort to ease the state's 2002 class size amendment at the polls. But that failure did not dampen demands from school district leaders to make the rules more "flexible" so they can comply on a daily basis.
Republican lawmakers appear willing to oblige.
A draft bill heading to the Senate Pre-K-12 education appropriations subcommittee on Wednesday morning (see pages 115-116 of the meeting packet) would redefine the classes that fall under the standards of 18:1 for kindergarten through third grade, 22:1 for fourth through eighth grades and 25:1 in high schools.
Specifically, core courses would be:
•language arts/reading, math and science in pre-k through third grade
•courses that are measured by state assessment at any grade level in grades 4-12
•courses that are specifically named in statute as required for high school graduation that are not measured by any state assessment, excluding extra curriculars
•ESE and ESOL courses
Falling outside the class size restrictions would be "courses that may result in college credit" -- think Advanced Placement, dual enrollment, AICE and International Baccalaureate. That would answer complaints that schools did not have enough students to warrant two (or more) full periods of a high level course, yet they had too many to meet the mandate. Some superintendents and principals said they would not assign students to virtual instruction for these high-level classes simply to comply with class size rules, deeming that decision instructionally unsound.
But already concerns are circulating that the wording might lead to the removal of AP incentive funding -- money that has come under attack in the past.
The legislation also would give schools wiggle room for students who enroll after the annual October headcount, so schools would not have to disrupt classrooms when the "19th child" arrives unexpectedly. The caveat would be that school boards would have to adopt a plan "to ensure that by the beginning of the following school year the students are assigned to classes that are in compliance."
It's clearly a legislative approach to the concerns that voters chose not to change. Expect questions on whether it's constitutionally valid -- the Senate rejected a similar proposal in 2008 when then-Rep. David Simmons put it forth. Simmons is now chairman of the Senate Pre-K-12 education appropriations subcommittee
http://www.tampabay.com/blogs/gradebook/content/lawmakers-look-new-definitions-make-floridas-school-class-size-law-easier-meet
From the St. Petersburg Times
by Jeff Solocheck
Lawmakers look into new definitions to make Florida's school class size law easier to meet
Florida voters rejected an effort to ease the state's 2002 class size amendment at the polls. But that failure did not dampen demands from school district leaders to make the rules more "flexible" so they can comply on a daily basis.
Republican lawmakers appear willing to oblige.
A draft bill heading to the Senate Pre-K-12 education appropriations subcommittee on Wednesday morning (see pages 115-116 of the meeting packet) would redefine the classes that fall under the standards of 18:1 for kindergarten through third grade, 22:1 for fourth through eighth grades and 25:1 in high schools.
Specifically, core courses would be:
•language arts/reading, math and science in pre-k through third grade
•courses that are measured by state assessment at any grade level in grades 4-12
•courses that are specifically named in statute as required for high school graduation that are not measured by any state assessment, excluding extra curriculars
•ESE and ESOL courses
Falling outside the class size restrictions would be "courses that may result in college credit" -- think Advanced Placement, dual enrollment, AICE and International Baccalaureate. That would answer complaints that schools did not have enough students to warrant two (or more) full periods of a high level course, yet they had too many to meet the mandate. Some superintendents and principals said they would not assign students to virtual instruction for these high-level classes simply to comply with class size rules, deeming that decision instructionally unsound.
But already concerns are circulating that the wording might lead to the removal of AP incentive funding -- money that has come under attack in the past.
The legislation also would give schools wiggle room for students who enroll after the annual October headcount, so schools would not have to disrupt classrooms when the "19th child" arrives unexpectedly. The caveat would be that school boards would have to adopt a plan "to ensure that by the beginning of the following school year the students are assigned to classes that are in compliance."
It's clearly a legislative approach to the concerns that voters chose not to change. Expect questions on whether it's constitutionally valid -- the Senate rejected a similar proposal in 2008 when then-Rep. David Simmons put it forth. Simmons is now chairman of the Senate Pre-K-12 education appropriations subcommittee
http://www.tampabay.com/blogs/gradebook/content/lawmakers-look-new-definitions-make-floridas-school-class-size-law-easier-meet
Saturday, February 5, 2011
The solution to the class size amendment? Get rid of accountability
Another solution might be properly funding the amendment. -cpg
From Tampa Bay.coms gradebook
by Jeff Solochek
Dump Florida's school class size penalties, senator proposes
You knew it was just a matter of time.
With school boards threatening to sue, and many lawmakers still looking for ways to ease the sting, Miami Republican Sen. Miguel Diaz de la Portilla has filed a bill to eliminate the fines imposed on districts that fail to meet constitutional class size standards.
The legislation would not add a word to current statute. Rather, it would strike out the entire section of section 1003.03 that titled "Accountability." That's an interesting thought for a GOP-dominated Legislature that lately has been hellbent on adding more and more accountability measures on teachers and students, isn't it?
.
From Tampa Bay.coms gradebook
by Jeff Solochek
Dump Florida's school class size penalties, senator proposes
You knew it was just a matter of time.
With school boards threatening to sue, and many lawmakers still looking for ways to ease the sting, Miami Republican Sen. Miguel Diaz de la Portilla has filed a bill to eliminate the fines imposed on districts that fail to meet constitutional class size standards.
The legislation would not add a word to current statute. Rather, it would strike out the entire section of section 1003.03 that titled "Accountability." That's an interesting thought for a GOP-dominated Legislature that lately has been hellbent on adding more and more accountability measures on teachers and students, isn't it?
.
Tuesday, January 25, 2011
Virtual schools are not the answer to the class size admendment
There is an option not addressed in the piece and that is having our legislature properly funding our public schools. -cpg
From the Florida Independent
by Brett Ader
An article detailing the use of virtual classroom technology in Florida produced by The New York Times‘ Student Journalism Institute has caused a stir among advocates of Florida Virtual School, who argue that online instruction is one of only a handful of options available to school districts struggling to meet class-size mandates. #
The piece, which appeared in the education section of the Times last week, was a truncated version of an article penned by an 18-year-old student journalist whose initial story had included additional commentary on the merits of using a “blended learning” method to both meet educational goals and operate within the limits imposed by the Florida Constitution. #
“That article was written by a student reporter at The New York Times‘ institute for journalism,” Star Kraschinsky of Florida Virtual School tells The Florida Independent. “It wasn’t an education reporter. The Times omitted the positive comments, and changed the headline from ‘some Miami schools…’ to ‘in Florida…’ It really, clearly, was taken out of context.” #
One of the concerns raised in the Times was the issue of student choice in enrolling in online courses, with students at some schools finding themselves in virtual learning labs against their will. While a spokesperson for Miami-Dade schools admitted that, due to enrollment that exceeded class-cap requirements, a handful of schools had assigned students to labs, Florida Virtual School maintains the program overall has been successful in its first year. #
“Ninety-nine percent of the schools had parent-teacher-student meetings prior, because not everybody can learn in certain environments,” says Kraschinsky. “A few of the schools didn’t do that. As a parent, you want to make sure that it’s a choice, because distance learning, online education, is a choice.” #
“We have 77 virtual learning labs in the state — 55 are in Miami-Dade,” says Julie Durrance, who manages the e-learning lab program for Virtual School. “Of the 55, I would say a good 50 of them are, for being a first-year program, operating beautifully. It’s because the schools did the prerequisites that were necessary: the orientations, the calls, the pep rallies, letting the kids know what a virtual classroom would be like. Some schools, like the one in question from the article, didn’t do the back-up. The kids walked in, they were handed a schedule and they had a virtual class. And we’re working to make sure those type of things don’t happen again next year. Even though it wasn’t our responsibility, our responsibility now is to make sure it doesn’t happen again.” #
As for the fact that the labs are monitored by “facilitators” trained to provide technical support to students instead of traditional teachers, Virtual School says that the districts fill that position, and while some are certified teachers, it’s not a requirement. Their role is to oversee the technical aspects of the labs and ensure students are able to connect with their online instructors, who are available via cell phone, Skype and instant message every day from 8 a.m. till 8 p.m. #
“We have one-to-one instruction for every student taking a class, and what I mean by that is there’s probably more interaction than you’d get in a brick-and-mortar school,” Kraschinsky says. “There are so many varieties of communication going on between the Florida Virtual instructor and the student, I think it’s just the concept of blended learning and online education that there’s not a teacher physically there, but there is a great amount of interaction between the teacher and the student.” #
In 2000, the Florida legislature established Virtual School as an independent educational entity, funded by the Department of Education and overseen by a governor-appointed board of trustees. #
The pilot program with Miami-Dade schools began in August, and will likely expand in the coming school year as districts continue implementing cost-cutting measures. While it is too soon to gauge the impact the new approach has had in South Florida, the Gates Foundation has announced it will be conducting a research study on Virtual School learning labs to gauge their effectiveness in reaching students. #
Kraschinsky says that the Times’ student reporter had once been enrolled in Florida Virtual School. #
“I actually spoke to her,” she says. “She is a very nice girl, and she was actually a Florida Virtual student and took several classes with us and had a great experience, and shared that with me. I think her intent was to put a more fair and balanced story out there. As we know, education is a choice for parents and it always should be. Some people might disagree with that. The whole class-size issue I think was really at the heart of the story as well, and when we look at class sizes, we see ourselves as an option to help districts.”
http://floridaindependent.com/19998/florida-virtual-school-responds-to-new-york-times-critique
From the Florida Independent
by Brett Ader
An article detailing the use of virtual classroom technology in Florida produced by The New York Times‘ Student Journalism Institute has caused a stir among advocates of Florida Virtual School, who argue that online instruction is one of only a handful of options available to school districts struggling to meet class-size mandates. #
The piece, which appeared in the education section of the Times last week, was a truncated version of an article penned by an 18-year-old student journalist whose initial story had included additional commentary on the merits of using a “blended learning” method to both meet educational goals and operate within the limits imposed by the Florida Constitution. #
“That article was written by a student reporter at The New York Times‘ institute for journalism,” Star Kraschinsky of Florida Virtual School tells The Florida Independent. “It wasn’t an education reporter. The Times omitted the positive comments, and changed the headline from ‘some Miami schools…’ to ‘in Florida…’ It really, clearly, was taken out of context.” #
One of the concerns raised in the Times was the issue of student choice in enrolling in online courses, with students at some schools finding themselves in virtual learning labs against their will. While a spokesperson for Miami-Dade schools admitted that, due to enrollment that exceeded class-cap requirements, a handful of schools had assigned students to labs, Florida Virtual School maintains the program overall has been successful in its first year. #
“Ninety-nine percent of the schools had parent-teacher-student meetings prior, because not everybody can learn in certain environments,” says Kraschinsky. “A few of the schools didn’t do that. As a parent, you want to make sure that it’s a choice, because distance learning, online education, is a choice.” #
“We have 77 virtual learning labs in the state — 55 are in Miami-Dade,” says Julie Durrance, who manages the e-learning lab program for Virtual School. “Of the 55, I would say a good 50 of them are, for being a first-year program, operating beautifully. It’s because the schools did the prerequisites that were necessary: the orientations, the calls, the pep rallies, letting the kids know what a virtual classroom would be like. Some schools, like the one in question from the article, didn’t do the back-up. The kids walked in, they were handed a schedule and they had a virtual class. And we’re working to make sure those type of things don’t happen again next year. Even though it wasn’t our responsibility, our responsibility now is to make sure it doesn’t happen again.” #
As for the fact that the labs are monitored by “facilitators” trained to provide technical support to students instead of traditional teachers, Virtual School says that the districts fill that position, and while some are certified teachers, it’s not a requirement. Their role is to oversee the technical aspects of the labs and ensure students are able to connect with their online instructors, who are available via cell phone, Skype and instant message every day from 8 a.m. till 8 p.m. #
“We have one-to-one instruction for every student taking a class, and what I mean by that is there’s probably more interaction than you’d get in a brick-and-mortar school,” Kraschinsky says. “There are so many varieties of communication going on between the Florida Virtual instructor and the student, I think it’s just the concept of blended learning and online education that there’s not a teacher physically there, but there is a great amount of interaction between the teacher and the student.” #
In 2000, the Florida legislature established Virtual School as an independent educational entity, funded by the Department of Education and overseen by a governor-appointed board of trustees. #
The pilot program with Miami-Dade schools began in August, and will likely expand in the coming school year as districts continue implementing cost-cutting measures. While it is too soon to gauge the impact the new approach has had in South Florida, the Gates Foundation has announced it will be conducting a research study on Virtual School learning labs to gauge their effectiveness in reaching students. #
Kraschinsky says that the Times’ student reporter had once been enrolled in Florida Virtual School. #
“I actually spoke to her,” she says. “She is a very nice girl, and she was actually a Florida Virtual student and took several classes with us and had a great experience, and shared that with me. I think her intent was to put a more fair and balanced story out there. As we know, education is a choice for parents and it always should be. Some people might disagree with that. The whole class-size issue I think was really at the heart of the story as well, and when we look at class sizes, we see ourselves as an option to help districts.”
http://floridaindependent.com/19998/florida-virtual-school-responds-to-new-york-times-critique
Monday, January 10, 2011
6.4 Million Reasons the state of Florida is wrong
I could have written 43 million reasons the state of Florida is wrong, as that’s the amount of money they are tentatively planning to fine school districts throughout the state who have violated the class size amendment, it’s just 6.4 million they plan to take from already cashed starved Duval County.
Ironicaly this means, if the state had given Duval County 6.4 million dollars at the beginng of the year it could have hired a hundred more teachers and then wouldn’t have violated the class size amendment. That friends is what we call a catch 22. We couldn’t hire enough teachers because the state didn’t give the county enough money and now they are fining the county because they didn’t hire enough teachers? Wow, it is dizzying.
I also don't recall seeing a provision in the class size amendment for fining schools either. I can't imagine this miscarriage of basic decency is what the voters intended when they, twice now, approved the class size amendment.
Furthermore why now did the state decide it’s the right time to follow the constitution? For a decade now they have willfully violated the provision which says the State of Florida will provide a world class education for its children. Well in a way I guess they have been, it’s just too bad it has been a third world (class) education. How did the legislature think constantly slashing education budgets, funding children the least amount in the country and propagating the failed experiment that the f–cat has become, going to accomplish that? Exactly how much should we the citizens fine the state because they have abdicated this particular responsibility? I mean if we are handing out ines and all.
In case you are wondering, the state isn’t going to show up at the School Board Building with a baseball bat in hand and demand the money, no it’s just going to withhold future funds. I wonder if Governor Scott is then going to tout the 43 million dollars as a savings. Is he going to say, hey Florida without even trying I have saved the budget 43 million dollars.
Being a school teacher at a public school in Florida is sort of like living in a bad dream you can’t wake up from. You know the one where all your friends have disappeared and now the monster is at the door turning the knob. Every year more of my teacher friends leave because the school system has become a perverted image of itself to be replaced by wide eyed kids who often don't last but a year or two and the monster is definitely at the door and he is demanding 6.4 million dollars that we don’t have.
I really don’t think a bunch of mentally handicapped monkeys randomly hitting buttons could do a worse job than our legislature. At least if the monkeys were in charge, when they did things that didn’t make sense we could say, well they are mentally handicapped monkeys’ randomly hitting buttons, how could we expect them to do a good job? The Florida legislature on the other hand, I think we had higher hopes for.
Ironicaly this means, if the state had given Duval County 6.4 million dollars at the beginng of the year it could have hired a hundred more teachers and then wouldn’t have violated the class size amendment. That friends is what we call a catch 22. We couldn’t hire enough teachers because the state didn’t give the county enough money and now they are fining the county because they didn’t hire enough teachers? Wow, it is dizzying.
I also don't recall seeing a provision in the class size amendment for fining schools either. I can't imagine this miscarriage of basic decency is what the voters intended when they, twice now, approved the class size amendment.
Furthermore why now did the state decide it’s the right time to follow the constitution? For a decade now they have willfully violated the provision which says the State of Florida will provide a world class education for its children. Well in a way I guess they have been, it’s just too bad it has been a third world (class) education. How did the legislature think constantly slashing education budgets, funding children the least amount in the country and propagating the failed experiment that the f–cat has become, going to accomplish that? Exactly how much should we the citizens fine the state because they have abdicated this particular responsibility? I mean if we are handing out ines and all.
In case you are wondering, the state isn’t going to show up at the School Board Building with a baseball bat in hand and demand the money, no it’s just going to withhold future funds. I wonder if Governor Scott is then going to tout the 43 million dollars as a savings. Is he going to say, hey Florida without even trying I have saved the budget 43 million dollars.
Being a school teacher at a public school in Florida is sort of like living in a bad dream you can’t wake up from. You know the one where all your friends have disappeared and now the monster is at the door turning the knob. Every year more of my teacher friends leave because the school system has become a perverted image of itself to be replaced by wide eyed kids who often don't last but a year or two and the monster is definitely at the door and he is demanding 6.4 million dollars that we don’t have.
I really don’t think a bunch of mentally handicapped monkeys randomly hitting buttons could do a worse job than our legislature. At least if the monkeys were in charge, when they did things that didn’t make sense we could say, well they are mentally handicapped monkeys’ randomly hitting buttons, how could we expect them to do a good job? The Florida legislature on the other hand, I think we had higher hopes for.
Thursday, January 6, 2011
Districts ready to sue over class size fines
By Kim MacQueen
A legal fight could be brewing over soon-to-be imposed penalties against school districts that have failed to meet class size restrictions. That's because the Department of Education is initially recommending nearly $41 million in penalties against those districts that did not meet the requirements.
For the first time this fall, school districts were required to comply with limits put in place by voters in 2002, capping individual classes in kindergarten through third grade at 18 students each, fourth through eighth grade classes at 22 students and high school classes at 25 students. Lawmakers proposed a constitutional amendment that would have relaxed the limits but it was rejected by voters.
The department's spreadsheet targets 38 different school districts for a total of nearly $41 million, ranging from small (Washington County Schools will owe only $1,308) to large (Duval County would be assessed almost $6.4 million). The state's charter schools would collectively lose $2.3 million. This would be the largest amount of penalties imposed since the amendment took effect.
According to a Department of Education spokeswoman who stressed that the findings were preliminary, 28 out-of-compliance districts have already filed appeals with Commissioner Eric Smith, and more were expected to appeal in advance of the Jan. 18 State Board of Education meeting in Pensacola. Beffore the penalties can be imposed, however, the action must be approved by the Legislative Budget Commission.
Meanwhile, 20 school districts and the School Boards Association have already prepared a suit to stop the penalties. Tallahassee attorney Ron Meyer said his office will take action if and when any district is asked to pay penalties. He said 20 school districts signed up to sue "some months ago, when it became apparent that some school districts wouldn't make the class size goals because of inadequate funding from the state."
"The state constitution makes funding the school districts a state obligation. They didn't give the funds that were needed to do this. How can they now hold the districts accountable for what they didn't fund?" Meyer said.
Meyer also suggested that the board's process for penalizing school districts has never been worked out in detail, and would require new rules -- which he maintains are subject to Gov. Rick Scott’s executiver order that bars any new rulemaking.
"I'm optimistic that the State Board of Education, the Department of Education and, ultimately, the Florida Legislature will take steps to undo this penalty scheme, which was put in place to create a crisis that would help Amendment 8 pass," Meyer said, referring to the amendment that voters rejected last November. "It didn't pass, and now they're stuck with the mess they created."
Originally published in the Florida Current - exclusively distributed via Lobbytools - Florida's Premiere Legislative and Media Monitoring Service.
http://fltrib.com/districts-ready-sue-over-class-size-policies
A legal fight could be brewing over soon-to-be imposed penalties against school districts that have failed to meet class size restrictions. That's because the Department of Education is initially recommending nearly $41 million in penalties against those districts that did not meet the requirements.
For the first time this fall, school districts were required to comply with limits put in place by voters in 2002, capping individual classes in kindergarten through third grade at 18 students each, fourth through eighth grade classes at 22 students and high school classes at 25 students. Lawmakers proposed a constitutional amendment that would have relaxed the limits but it was rejected by voters.
The department's spreadsheet targets 38 different school districts for a total of nearly $41 million, ranging from small (Washington County Schools will owe only $1,308) to large (Duval County would be assessed almost $6.4 million). The state's charter schools would collectively lose $2.3 million. This would be the largest amount of penalties imposed since the amendment took effect.
According to a Department of Education spokeswoman who stressed that the findings were preliminary, 28 out-of-compliance districts have already filed appeals with Commissioner Eric Smith, and more were expected to appeal in advance of the Jan. 18 State Board of Education meeting in Pensacola. Beffore the penalties can be imposed, however, the action must be approved by the Legislative Budget Commission.
Meanwhile, 20 school districts and the School Boards Association have already prepared a suit to stop the penalties. Tallahassee attorney Ron Meyer said his office will take action if and when any district is asked to pay penalties. He said 20 school districts signed up to sue "some months ago, when it became apparent that some school districts wouldn't make the class size goals because of inadequate funding from the state."
"The state constitution makes funding the school districts a state obligation. They didn't give the funds that were needed to do this. How can they now hold the districts accountable for what they didn't fund?" Meyer said.
Meyer also suggested that the board's process for penalizing school districts has never been worked out in detail, and would require new rules -- which he maintains are subject to Gov. Rick Scott’s executiver order that bars any new rulemaking.
"I'm optimistic that the State Board of Education, the Department of Education and, ultimately, the Florida Legislature will take steps to undo this penalty scheme, which was put in place to create a crisis that would help Amendment 8 pass," Meyer said, referring to the amendment that voters rejected last November. "It didn't pass, and now they're stuck with the mess they created."
Originally published in the Florida Current - exclusively distributed via Lobbytools - Florida's Premiere Legislative and Media Monitoring Service.
http://fltrib.com/districts-ready-sue-over-class-size-policies
Districts fined over class size
Preliminary class size penalties issued to Florida school districts
Of all the schools in our coverage area of Pinellas, Hillsborough, Pasco and Hernando counties, just one -- Plato Academy charter school in Pinellas -- didn't make class size in the October state count. Its possible penalty is just $1,403, indicating the school only barely missed the mark.
Statewide, the landscape was less positive. More than half the school districts failed to comply with the 2002 amendment, generating more than $40 million in accumulated fines. (See the attached lists for details.) That amount is sure to shrink as districts submit plans to meet the rules next fall, and also as they appeal the validity of the rulings.
Florida education commissioner Eric J. Smith is reviewing all submitted appeals and expects to recommend the final penalties to the State Board of Education on Jan. 18. He can suggest reduced fines for districts that made every effort to comply but failed, or for those that faced unforeseen emergencies.
If the penalties remain intact, the Florida School Boards Association and several school districts already have conferred with lawyers about suing the Legislature over them. And keep an eye out as well for legislation aimed once again at easing the class size rules, which many districts have said are too restrictive and expensive to meet daily.
From Tampa Bay.coms Gradebook:http://www.tampabay.com/blogs/gradebook/content/preliminary-class-size-penalties-issued-florida-school-districts
Of all the schools in our coverage area of Pinellas, Hillsborough, Pasco and Hernando counties, just one -- Plato Academy charter school in Pinellas -- didn't make class size in the October state count. Its possible penalty is just $1,403, indicating the school only barely missed the mark.
Statewide, the landscape was less positive. More than half the school districts failed to comply with the 2002 amendment, generating more than $40 million in accumulated fines. (See the attached lists for details.) That amount is sure to shrink as districts submit plans to meet the rules next fall, and also as they appeal the validity of the rulings.
Florida education commissioner Eric J. Smith is reviewing all submitted appeals and expects to recommend the final penalties to the State Board of Education on Jan. 18. He can suggest reduced fines for districts that made every effort to comply but failed, or for those that faced unforeseen emergencies.
If the penalties remain intact, the Florida School Boards Association and several school districts already have conferred with lawyers about suing the Legislature over them. And keep an eye out as well for legislation aimed once again at easing the class size rules, which many districts have said are too restrictive and expensive to meet daily.
From Tampa Bay.coms Gradebook:http://www.tampabay.com/blogs/gradebook/content/preliminary-class-size-penalties-issued-florida-school-districts
Tuesday, January 4, 2011
Why blow up Florida’s public schools
Jeb Bush was recently featured in the, no friend to public education, Wall Street Journal. There they talked about all the successes that have occurred in Florida as a result of Jeb Bush’s policies. A critical eye could debunk many of the claims but if you want check out the story at:
http://online.wsj.com/article_email/SB10001424052748703860104575508141083798802-lMyQjAxMTAxMDAwMjEwNDIyWj.html
My question is, if we have truly made all these tremendous gains (not one mention of how the class size amendment may have played a role by the way) then why is Jeb Bush sycophant Rick Scott getting the lets dismantle public education thumbs up from the former governor? Wouldn't it make sense to stay the course.
The truth is Florida's education systen greatly suffered at the hands of Jeb Bush, f-cat anyone,and it's likely to suffer even more in Rick Scotts
Politicians make claims for even the remotest stat twisted successes. It’s disheartening.
http://online.wsj.com/article_email/SB10001424052748703860104575508141083798802-lMyQjAxMTAxMDAwMjEwNDIyWj.html
My question is, if we have truly made all these tremendous gains (not one mention of how the class size amendment may have played a role by the way) then why is Jeb Bush sycophant Rick Scott getting the lets dismantle public education thumbs up from the former governor? Wouldn't it make sense to stay the course.
The truth is Florida's education systen greatly suffered at the hands of Jeb Bush, f-cat anyone,and it's likely to suffer even more in Rick Scotts
Politicians make claims for even the remotest stat twisted successes. It’s disheartening.
Saturday, January 1, 2011
Battling the "Bad Teacher" Bogeyman
By Anthony Cody
In the narrative being driven by "education reformers," the "bad teacher" has emerged as the greatest threat to our future. This threat is being used to justify a wholesale attack on the teaching profession. With our rights and even the institution of public education in danger, why have teachers been so slow to respond?
Educators are unlikely warriors. In our classrooms we depend on the authority of the school as we exert our own authority to maintain order. Accustomed to our place in the hierarchy, we serve "under" the supervision of our principals, as our students work under our supervision. This deference to authority is perhaps one reason teachers have been so slow to understand the systematic attacks we face as a profession. But make no mistake, our profession, our retirement funds, our schools, even the classrooms in which we teach - all are under a systemic and coordinated attack.
In the next 12 months we are likely to see:
•Class sizes increase dramatically
•More public dollars going to privately managed charter schools
•Teacher retirement funds attacked as being overly generous
•Due process for teachers done away with in order to get rid of "bad teachers."
•Seniority eliminated since expensive experienced teachers do not raise test scores any more than novices proficient at test preparation.
But our foes will never admit they are attacking us. They will smile in our faces, as Oprah did last fall, and sweetly reassure us that they LOVE good and great teachers. It is just the louses responsible for poor test scores that they despise. One of the academic architects of many of these policies is the Hoover Institute's Eric Hanushek. Dr. Hanushek authored a rather discredited study in 1992 that purported to prove that class size was not a critical factor in student achievement. Recently Arne Duncan and Bill Gates have both given speeches suggesting that class sizes be increased to cut costs. More recently Dr. Hanushek has been focusing on teacher quality.
In his essay at Education Matters this month, Dr. Hanushek writes,
This is not a war on teachers en masse. It is recognition of what every parent knows: Some teachers are exceptional, but a small number are dreadful. If that is the case, we should think of ways to change the balance.
Those of us who spent hundreds of hours documenting the effectiveness of our teaching to achieve National Board certification were apparently wasting our time. Hanushek does not need such overkill. Last February, he explained how we could tell good teachers from bad ones:
"Good teachers are ones who get large gains in student achievement for their classes; bad teachers are just the opposite," explained Hanushek, who said he uses a simple definition of teacher quality. Looking at data from a large, urban school district, he found that effective teachers at the top of the quality distribution got "an entire year's worth of additional learning out of their students, compared to those near the bottom."
Here are the problems I see with his approach.
Problem One: He assumes that test scores alone are an appropriate means of determining who the best teacher is. This ignores the fact that students are not randomly assigned to teachers, that some students are much more difficult to teach than others, that small changes in student composition can have a large effect on the average scores a teacher achieves, and that recent analyses of value added models have shown that as many as 20% of the teachers in the top group one year are in the bottom group the next year. Furthermore, attaching these stakes to test scores will result in further intensifying the focus on test preparation that is responsible for the narrowing of our curriculum.
Problem Two: He assumes there is a ready supply of highly effective teachers to replace the bottom rung he suggests we cast aside each year. I have worked in an urban district for the last 24 years, and spent the last four years running a program to try to retain science teachers. Our problem is not how to get rid of people - it is how to retain them. Most of our vacancies are now filled by interns who have received a crash course in the summer. They struggle to learn the ropes the first year, and by the end of their second year are becoming effective. The trouble is, 75% of them leave by the end of their third year. Our mentoring program has made a difference, but we still struggle to retain people, especially those recruited for a two-year commitment. Our pay is low, conditions are challenging, and the emphasis on test scores makes it even harder to keep our teachers.
Problem Three: He proposes that we improve by focusing on the negative. I really wonder what sort of environment Dr. Hanushek grew up in. In my classroom, I encouraged my students by focusing on the positive, by grouping students together so weaker students could learn from leaders. The teaching profession is no different. We can gain so much more by focusing on creating a collaborative culture where teachers are observing one another teach, sharing and reflecting together through processes such as Lesson Study and Collaborative Action Research.
This is not to say that teacher evaluation is perfect, and cannot be improved. Many of us have worked to offer constructive ideas to do just that. But recognizing this willingness to embrace change would clash with the narrative - unions exist to protect the bad teacher, simple as that. And the reason ineffective teachers persist is because unions are protecting them.
Of course, Dr. Hanushek does not see this as a "war on teachers." He is one of the architects of this campaign, and he sees it as a sort of purification process. He is not against ALL teachers, only the "bad" ones with low test scores.
I was on a panel at a forum last fall focused on "grading teachers," and Dr. Hanushek was on the panels before and after mine. I directly confronted his line of reasoning, and accused the LA Times of being part of a war on teachers. I believe this encounter is one reason he wrote this defensive piece.
You can watch Hanushek on the panel that followed mine here:
At about minute 27, he says "As a nation, if we could be Finland, which is at the top of these scores, there's pretty strong evidence that the present value of future gains to the US economy is $100 trillion dollars." At this point I interrupted him from the audience to point out that Finland has a child poverty rate of about 2%.
Hanushek responded by saying:
There is no doubt, no researcher that I know that has ever said, that family background [note that he refuses to use the term "poverty."] is not extremely important. It's not an issue. We understand that. We don't have the means to change families. Or we're not willing to use that as a nation. We DO have the means to adjust what our schools do. That's our public policy instrument. That's why some of us spend all of our time not looking at how to change families, but how to change the schools. There's absolutely NO evidence that if we gave $10,000 a year more income to poor families that the achievement of those kids would increase. There's absolutely none. That's not to say we might not, for societal purposes, and I believe it, that we should worry about the income levels of the poor people. But not because that's the way to solve our school problems, or that we have to wait until we equalize incomes to address some of these achievement problems that are extraordinarily real.
Richard Rothstein was also on this panel, and offered this rebuttal:
I'd like to take up Rick's comment, that the choice is between equalizing income or improving educational achievement. That's not the choice. The choice is between doing SOMEthing about the family circumstances of children who come to school not ready to learn, and not doing anything about it. We'd get a lot more purchase out of doing something about it then we would out of many of the school reforms that are being advocated. If I had the money to reduce the principal/teacher ratio to a reasonable level where you could evaluate teachers, you'd get much more bang for the buck from taking that money and building a health clinic in those schools than you would by putting more principals in the schools.
This is precisely the issue. Leaders like Hanushek systematically lead us away from real solutions that they have decided society is unwilling to contemplate. His views are guiding the education "reformers" - you will hear him cited by Bill Gates, Michelle Rhee and Arne Duncan. Reducing class size is too expensive. Likewise quality pre-school, libraries, dental care, health care, nutrition, etc. They actively ignore the many things along these lines that their chosen role model, Finland, has done. Simply offer a bonus for higher test scores, fire the bottom five percent, and you have the perfect combination of carrot and stick. And vilify anyone, especially our teachers' unions, that say this is not the best way to improve our schools, by accusing them of protecting bad teachers.
A year from now, if we do not confront these attacks, our classes will overflow, our retirement funds will be decimated, and our due process rights removed. Our public schools will be de-funded, even as the billionaires funding "school reform" insist they are acting in the interests of the poor. This is a fight for the future of education in America, and don't let anyone tell you otherwise.
What do you think? Is the teaching profession under attack? How should we respond?
http://blogs.edweek.org/teachers/living-in-dialogue/2011/01/battling_the_bad_teacher_bogey.html
In the narrative being driven by "education reformers," the "bad teacher" has emerged as the greatest threat to our future. This threat is being used to justify a wholesale attack on the teaching profession. With our rights and even the institution of public education in danger, why have teachers been so slow to respond?
Educators are unlikely warriors. In our classrooms we depend on the authority of the school as we exert our own authority to maintain order. Accustomed to our place in the hierarchy, we serve "under" the supervision of our principals, as our students work under our supervision. This deference to authority is perhaps one reason teachers have been so slow to understand the systematic attacks we face as a profession. But make no mistake, our profession, our retirement funds, our schools, even the classrooms in which we teach - all are under a systemic and coordinated attack.
In the next 12 months we are likely to see:
•Class sizes increase dramatically
•More public dollars going to privately managed charter schools
•Teacher retirement funds attacked as being overly generous
•Due process for teachers done away with in order to get rid of "bad teachers."
•Seniority eliminated since expensive experienced teachers do not raise test scores any more than novices proficient at test preparation.
But our foes will never admit they are attacking us. They will smile in our faces, as Oprah did last fall, and sweetly reassure us that they LOVE good and great teachers. It is just the louses responsible for poor test scores that they despise. One of the academic architects of many of these policies is the Hoover Institute's Eric Hanushek. Dr. Hanushek authored a rather discredited study in 1992 that purported to prove that class size was not a critical factor in student achievement. Recently Arne Duncan and Bill Gates have both given speeches suggesting that class sizes be increased to cut costs. More recently Dr. Hanushek has been focusing on teacher quality.
In his essay at Education Matters this month, Dr. Hanushek writes,
This is not a war on teachers en masse. It is recognition of what every parent knows: Some teachers are exceptional, but a small number are dreadful. If that is the case, we should think of ways to change the balance.
Those of us who spent hundreds of hours documenting the effectiveness of our teaching to achieve National Board certification were apparently wasting our time. Hanushek does not need such overkill. Last February, he explained how we could tell good teachers from bad ones:
"Good teachers are ones who get large gains in student achievement for their classes; bad teachers are just the opposite," explained Hanushek, who said he uses a simple definition of teacher quality. Looking at data from a large, urban school district, he found that effective teachers at the top of the quality distribution got "an entire year's worth of additional learning out of their students, compared to those near the bottom."
Here are the problems I see with his approach.
Problem One: He assumes that test scores alone are an appropriate means of determining who the best teacher is. This ignores the fact that students are not randomly assigned to teachers, that some students are much more difficult to teach than others, that small changes in student composition can have a large effect on the average scores a teacher achieves, and that recent analyses of value added models have shown that as many as 20% of the teachers in the top group one year are in the bottom group the next year. Furthermore, attaching these stakes to test scores will result in further intensifying the focus on test preparation that is responsible for the narrowing of our curriculum.
Problem Two: He assumes there is a ready supply of highly effective teachers to replace the bottom rung he suggests we cast aside each year. I have worked in an urban district for the last 24 years, and spent the last four years running a program to try to retain science teachers. Our problem is not how to get rid of people - it is how to retain them. Most of our vacancies are now filled by interns who have received a crash course in the summer. They struggle to learn the ropes the first year, and by the end of their second year are becoming effective. The trouble is, 75% of them leave by the end of their third year. Our mentoring program has made a difference, but we still struggle to retain people, especially those recruited for a two-year commitment. Our pay is low, conditions are challenging, and the emphasis on test scores makes it even harder to keep our teachers.
Problem Three: He proposes that we improve by focusing on the negative. I really wonder what sort of environment Dr. Hanushek grew up in. In my classroom, I encouraged my students by focusing on the positive, by grouping students together so weaker students could learn from leaders. The teaching profession is no different. We can gain so much more by focusing on creating a collaborative culture where teachers are observing one another teach, sharing and reflecting together through processes such as Lesson Study and Collaborative Action Research.
This is not to say that teacher evaluation is perfect, and cannot be improved. Many of us have worked to offer constructive ideas to do just that. But recognizing this willingness to embrace change would clash with the narrative - unions exist to protect the bad teacher, simple as that. And the reason ineffective teachers persist is because unions are protecting them.
Of course, Dr. Hanushek does not see this as a "war on teachers." He is one of the architects of this campaign, and he sees it as a sort of purification process. He is not against ALL teachers, only the "bad" ones with low test scores.
I was on a panel at a forum last fall focused on "grading teachers," and Dr. Hanushek was on the panels before and after mine. I directly confronted his line of reasoning, and accused the LA Times of being part of a war on teachers. I believe this encounter is one reason he wrote this defensive piece.
You can watch Hanushek on the panel that followed mine here:
At about minute 27, he says "As a nation, if we could be Finland, which is at the top of these scores, there's pretty strong evidence that the present value of future gains to the US economy is $100 trillion dollars." At this point I interrupted him from the audience to point out that Finland has a child poverty rate of about 2%.
Hanushek responded by saying:
There is no doubt, no researcher that I know that has ever said, that family background [note that he refuses to use the term "poverty."] is not extremely important. It's not an issue. We understand that. We don't have the means to change families. Or we're not willing to use that as a nation. We DO have the means to adjust what our schools do. That's our public policy instrument. That's why some of us spend all of our time not looking at how to change families, but how to change the schools. There's absolutely NO evidence that if we gave $10,000 a year more income to poor families that the achievement of those kids would increase. There's absolutely none. That's not to say we might not, for societal purposes, and I believe it, that we should worry about the income levels of the poor people. But not because that's the way to solve our school problems, or that we have to wait until we equalize incomes to address some of these achievement problems that are extraordinarily real.
Richard Rothstein was also on this panel, and offered this rebuttal:
I'd like to take up Rick's comment, that the choice is between equalizing income or improving educational achievement. That's not the choice. The choice is between doing SOMEthing about the family circumstances of children who come to school not ready to learn, and not doing anything about it. We'd get a lot more purchase out of doing something about it then we would out of many of the school reforms that are being advocated. If I had the money to reduce the principal/teacher ratio to a reasonable level where you could evaluate teachers, you'd get much more bang for the buck from taking that money and building a health clinic in those schools than you would by putting more principals in the schools.
This is precisely the issue. Leaders like Hanushek systematically lead us away from real solutions that they have decided society is unwilling to contemplate. His views are guiding the education "reformers" - you will hear him cited by Bill Gates, Michelle Rhee and Arne Duncan. Reducing class size is too expensive. Likewise quality pre-school, libraries, dental care, health care, nutrition, etc. They actively ignore the many things along these lines that their chosen role model, Finland, has done. Simply offer a bonus for higher test scores, fire the bottom five percent, and you have the perfect combination of carrot and stick. And vilify anyone, especially our teachers' unions, that say this is not the best way to improve our schools, by accusing them of protecting bad teachers.
A year from now, if we do not confront these attacks, our classes will overflow, our retirement funds will be decimated, and our due process rights removed. Our public schools will be de-funded, even as the billionaires funding "school reform" insist they are acting in the interests of the poor. This is a fight for the future of education in America, and don't let anyone tell you otherwise.
What do you think? Is the teaching profession under attack? How should we respond?
http://blogs.edweek.org/teachers/living-in-dialogue/2011/01/battling_the_bad_teacher_bogey.html
Wednesday, December 29, 2010
Texas governor Mark White wants to know, so should you
The class size amendment was suddenly villifyed here in Florida. Texas has similar issues but they have somebody who is willing to stand up for what is right too. -cpg
By Chris Curry
How did class size limits become the symbol of an unnecessary luxury in our schools?
Former Texas governor Mark White wants to know, if class size in public schools isn't important, "then why does every private school in America brag on 'we have a small class size?' "
Former Texas governor Mark White doesn't want to see the state lose the gains it has made in education.
Texas politicians and education administrators (note, not teachers) have upped the drumbeat in recent days, saying Texas can no longer afford its caps on class sizes, and hey, it might be better to educate students in larger classes anyway. The Senate Committee on Education is couching this in terms of "local control," its recommendation: "Modify class size limitations to allow more flexibility to school districts to meet the need of their students."
What they're more than willing to tinker with — some would say destroy — is one of the main parts of White's education legacy, the changes that went through in 1984 when the Legislature, working with the results of the Perot Commission on Education, allowed full-day kindergarten funding (although some members tried to take it back in the next regular session), no-pass, no-play and a 22-1 limit on the number of kids one teacher would have to face in a lower-grades classroom each day.
State Representative Scott Hochberg, the chairman of the House appropriations subcommittee on education and vice chairman of the House Public Education Committee, calls the current crop of proposals "budget reduction masquerading as education reform."
As the neo-reformers would have it, creative teachers and administrators have supposedly been crippled by the 22-1 rule for 26 years now. The problems with this worldview are twofold: No. 1, the 22-1 rule only applies to grades K-4, a compromise hammered out in 1984. It doesn't even make it all the way through elementary.
And second, a school district has always been able to apply for waivers to the class size cap — and a check of Texas Education Agency records shows these are pretty freely handed out.
Starting in the 1993-94 school year to the present day, a total of 3,085 waivers have been granted to school districts, according to TEA records. Since 1992, there have been only five waiver requests denied. Not five each year. That's five total.
"If this was something you needed to free up principals to do, you would already see that happening in the grades where there's no class size limits," Hochberg says. "If they wanted that flexibility, they already have it everywhere from high school down to fifth grade."
Nevertheless, Texas Comptroller Susan Combs, in her recent FAST (Financial Allocation Study for Texas) report assessing each school district in Texas for its fiscal effectiveness, recommends that the state "relax the limit of 22 students in K-4 classes to permit an average of 22 students per class."
The word "average" sounds innocuous enough unless you figure out that if you match a small class (say special ed) with a larger one, that second one can get pretty big and still meet the "average" requirement.
Mark White grew up knowing all about these kind of averages.
"The reason for 22-1, and it doesn't use the word 'average,' is because of what my mother told me every day when she came home from teaching in a first-grade classroom in which the state law called for a 28-1 average.
White has a photo of his mother's first-grade class at Briargrove Elementary school during the late '60s, early '70s, when the law was 28-1. "I go around and count the little shining faces in her first-grade class. Somehow or another, she has 34 kids in her class. Where'd those extra six kids come from?
"The next year she had the same number. So when all the administrators came in and said, 'Make it an average,' they averaged in the custodians and the cooks. That's the game we played."
However accurate White and Hochberg are, they are swimming against a majority tide of Republican state legislators who got into office promising to hold the line on taxes. If that means sticking a few extra kids in a classroom, so be it.
A famous education study done in Tennessee in the 1980s shows class size matters. In the four-year Project STAR (Student-Teacher Achievement Ratio) study, kindergarten-through-third-grade classes with 13-17 students in them were compared to those with 22-26 students, and the researchers found out, in fact, that smaller meant better in terms of academic milestones. A followup study showed the effect continues for several years.
But what many administrators now like to say is that class size doesn't matter till you get down to 15, Hochberg says. So if you can't do that, you might as well throw up your hands. Which is not what the study says. The study just compared two groups and said that of these two groups, those with an average of 15 did better.
"It didn't say until you get to 15 there's no difference," Hochberg says. "How you twist that into 'There's no difference till you get down to 15' is pure propaganda."
And, as it turns out, according to the Tennessee study, smaller class sizes are especially beneficial for kids from low socioeconomic backgrounds — which describes a majority of students in HISD and, in fact, a significant portion of the student population across the Houston area.
"You don't see successful charter schools operating with 50 kids in a class," Hochberg says.
The call to discard 22-1 is nothing especially new. "Ever since the 22-1 requirement was put in under the Perot Commission back in the early '80s, superintendents have lobbied to remove it," Hochberg says. "It's always the thing that gets tossed out as something that needs to be done, which is interesting, given that K-4 is where we seem to do pretty well in terms of national comparisons, international comparisons."
Former Texas governor Mark White doesn't want to see the state lose the gains it has made in education.
Texas Senator Dan Patrick introduced Senate Bill 300, which would have moved K-4 to the 22 average.
Patrick is caught in an interesting situation in that the school district in his area, Cy-Fair ISD, has undergone some pretty dramatic change and now has about 40 percent of its students on free or reduced-price lunches — and would seem to be a district whose students would benefit from smaller classes. At the same time, Patrick, who is tied to the Texas Tea Party, has dedicated himself to keeping taxes down for his constituency. Patrick declined our request for an interview.
Comptroller Combs, who is still working on her budget projections for the next biennium starting in September, has reportedly thrown out a figure of $557 million in savings that could be achieved by replacing the word "limit" with "average" — an important figure in a state that may be facing a $15 billion to $30 billion shortfall.
Not surprisingly, her proposal hasn't been embraced by teachers — larger classes mean fewer teachers.
Parent and former Bellaire High School English teacher Nancy Lomax fought hard for the education changes in 1984. She is against the call to eliminate the limits; in fact, she thinks they should be extended to other grades. "I'm not about to go quietly down this road."
She argues that the 22-1 limit is even more important now than ever, given the modern-day demographics of classrooms not just in urban districts like the Houston Independent School District, but suburban ones as well.
Her daughter is a fourth-grade teacher in the Lewisville School District near Dallas, where almost every child in the class has limited English proficiency; some are gifted while others are emotionally disturbed and special ed; and three are Burmese refugees. That's tough enough, she says. How does a teacher control an even larger class like that and really see to the needs of all the students?
_____________________
In 2006, Governor Rick Perry ordered school districts to cut local property tax, saying the state would make up the difference.
"The state's new taxes to make up the difference didn't made up the difference," Hochberg says. "And so since that bill was passed in '06, we haven't had an internally balanced budget at the state level. We've been short every time. We covered it the first time because we had a surplus coming in. We covered it the second time with stimulus money — that nasty, awful stimulus money from Washington that we don't want to touch.
"We were 4 billion short on the budget last time without the stimulus money, and that's on a zero-growth budget. State revenues haven't balanced the budget for the last two cycles since those cuts were made."
HISD and other districts are already working on budgets for the next year —they have to submit them in June whether the Legislature has given them their numbers or not. All anyone knows for sure is that since education accounts for about 40 percent of the state budget, there's no way to avoid a hit. After two hours of budget talk at a recent HISD workshop, board president Greg Meyers said he wasn't sure too much clarity had been achieved.
But that's all right, says Hochberg. Just starting the discussion, and opening up to community groups for input as HISD is doing in January, is a good idea, he says, because they can't afford to wait. "They should really figure what their priorities are. I'm not sure we're going to do that at the state level."
"HISD is a billion-plus-dollar operation. If you're the school district in Canadian, Texas, and you've got 900 kids, then maybe you can wait till the last minute to figure out what you have to do. But if you're an operation the size of HISD, you would be foolhardy in terms of your own policies and unfair to your employees not to at least lay out a variety of scenarios that could occur and figure out what you're going to do about them. Because by the time you know it, it will be very difficult to turn the train."
Legislatures tend to make broad, general cuts, leaving the details (and the heat) to local school boards. School trustees need to make very clear to legislators what the exact losses will be, Hochberg says. "The legislators and the leadership in Austin should not be able to walk away from this session saying, 'Gee, I didn't know it would have this impact.'"
Hochberg knows schools waste money, and says he's ready to offer alternative savings proposals for schools — in fact, he's done so over his 18 years as a state legislator with little success.
Some of his proposals: Cut back state standardized testing to every other year for the kids who pass, stop buying textbooks that sit in a teacher's closet and instead go to more electronic textbooks, have a serious look at the cost of University Interscholastic League rules that require every school to offer every significant sport, he says.
Also, why not use long-distance, virtual learning for teachers' continuing education and cut out the need for regional service centers?
Former Texas governor Mark White doesn't want to see the state lose the gains it has made in education. "It may be easier to increase class sizes rather than to cut a hundred other things that add up to the same amount of savings," Hochberg says. "We do a lot of pennywise, pound foolish sorts of things."
_____________________
White says the rule was and is simple: Keep it to 22 to 1, and when you get to 23, you build another classroom. "You can't afford to build another classroom, ask for a waiver."
"We let them off if they didn't have the money. They've always had the option to come in and ask for a waiver; many of them do. But we've never had anybody to come in and say, 'We just don't have the money to build that football stadium.' Somehow or another, they always found that money. So let's put our priorities right."
The former governor takes a long view of the state's present financial difficulties.
"We've been in tough times before. I almost laugh out loud when I think about how tough things must be in Austin when oil is priced at $80 a barrel and I've sat there and lived through $9-a-barrel oil — and I didn't ask for any bailouts nor did we ever receive any bailout from the federal government," he says.
"If it's right for Texas and its future to say, 'Oh, we don't have any money,' or 'We don't have enough money to pay for a quality education for the young people of our state,' then you have made the classic mistake of not just eating your seed corn but you've poured salt on the seed corn you didn't eat," White says.
Financing schools should be the first priority of the Legislature, according to White. "Let's do our cutting somewhere else. You could quit building highways in Texas for five years and it would not hurt the future of Texas quite as much as if you change the funding on classes and quality of education in our schools today."
It makes perfect sense to argue that just one more student won't destroy a classroom. The problem is, as White's mother knew, one becomes four becomes six. And at a certain point, all the great teaching in the world won't be able to overcome the numbers-up disparity.
"It's a little difficult to put a young person's education on pause till times get better," White says. "22 to 1 should not be the whipping boy for being short of cash."
Taken from the Houston Press: http://www.houstonpress.com/2010-12-30/news/the-whipping-boy/3/
By Chris Curry
How did class size limits become the symbol of an unnecessary luxury in our schools?
Former Texas governor Mark White wants to know, if class size in public schools isn't important, "then why does every private school in America brag on 'we have a small class size?' "
Former Texas governor Mark White doesn't want to see the state lose the gains it has made in education.
Texas politicians and education administrators (note, not teachers) have upped the drumbeat in recent days, saying Texas can no longer afford its caps on class sizes, and hey, it might be better to educate students in larger classes anyway. The Senate Committee on Education is couching this in terms of "local control," its recommendation: "Modify class size limitations to allow more flexibility to school districts to meet the need of their students."
What they're more than willing to tinker with — some would say destroy — is one of the main parts of White's education legacy, the changes that went through in 1984 when the Legislature, working with the results of the Perot Commission on Education, allowed full-day kindergarten funding (although some members tried to take it back in the next regular session), no-pass, no-play and a 22-1 limit on the number of kids one teacher would have to face in a lower-grades classroom each day.
State Representative Scott Hochberg, the chairman of the House appropriations subcommittee on education and vice chairman of the House Public Education Committee, calls the current crop of proposals "budget reduction masquerading as education reform."
As the neo-reformers would have it, creative teachers and administrators have supposedly been crippled by the 22-1 rule for 26 years now. The problems with this worldview are twofold: No. 1, the 22-1 rule only applies to grades K-4, a compromise hammered out in 1984. It doesn't even make it all the way through elementary.
And second, a school district has always been able to apply for waivers to the class size cap — and a check of Texas Education Agency records shows these are pretty freely handed out.
Starting in the 1993-94 school year to the present day, a total of 3,085 waivers have been granted to school districts, according to TEA records. Since 1992, there have been only five waiver requests denied. Not five each year. That's five total.
"If this was something you needed to free up principals to do, you would already see that happening in the grades where there's no class size limits," Hochberg says. "If they wanted that flexibility, they already have it everywhere from high school down to fifth grade."
Nevertheless, Texas Comptroller Susan Combs, in her recent FAST (Financial Allocation Study for Texas) report assessing each school district in Texas for its fiscal effectiveness, recommends that the state "relax the limit of 22 students in K-4 classes to permit an average of 22 students per class."
The word "average" sounds innocuous enough unless you figure out that if you match a small class (say special ed) with a larger one, that second one can get pretty big and still meet the "average" requirement.
Mark White grew up knowing all about these kind of averages.
"The reason for 22-1, and it doesn't use the word 'average,' is because of what my mother told me every day when she came home from teaching in a first-grade classroom in which the state law called for a 28-1 average.
White has a photo of his mother's first-grade class at Briargrove Elementary school during the late '60s, early '70s, when the law was 28-1. "I go around and count the little shining faces in her first-grade class. Somehow or another, she has 34 kids in her class. Where'd those extra six kids come from?
"The next year she had the same number. So when all the administrators came in and said, 'Make it an average,' they averaged in the custodians and the cooks. That's the game we played."
However accurate White and Hochberg are, they are swimming against a majority tide of Republican state legislators who got into office promising to hold the line on taxes. If that means sticking a few extra kids in a classroom, so be it.
A famous education study done in Tennessee in the 1980s shows class size matters. In the four-year Project STAR (Student-Teacher Achievement Ratio) study, kindergarten-through-third-grade classes with 13-17 students in them were compared to those with 22-26 students, and the researchers found out, in fact, that smaller meant better in terms of academic milestones. A followup study showed the effect continues for several years.
But what many administrators now like to say is that class size doesn't matter till you get down to 15, Hochberg says. So if you can't do that, you might as well throw up your hands. Which is not what the study says. The study just compared two groups and said that of these two groups, those with an average of 15 did better.
"It didn't say until you get to 15 there's no difference," Hochberg says. "How you twist that into 'There's no difference till you get down to 15' is pure propaganda."
And, as it turns out, according to the Tennessee study, smaller class sizes are especially beneficial for kids from low socioeconomic backgrounds — which describes a majority of students in HISD and, in fact, a significant portion of the student population across the Houston area.
"You don't see successful charter schools operating with 50 kids in a class," Hochberg says.
The call to discard 22-1 is nothing especially new. "Ever since the 22-1 requirement was put in under the Perot Commission back in the early '80s, superintendents have lobbied to remove it," Hochberg says. "It's always the thing that gets tossed out as something that needs to be done, which is interesting, given that K-4 is where we seem to do pretty well in terms of national comparisons, international comparisons."
Former Texas governor Mark White doesn't want to see the state lose the gains it has made in education.
Texas Senator Dan Patrick introduced Senate Bill 300, which would have moved K-4 to the 22 average.
Patrick is caught in an interesting situation in that the school district in his area, Cy-Fair ISD, has undergone some pretty dramatic change and now has about 40 percent of its students on free or reduced-price lunches — and would seem to be a district whose students would benefit from smaller classes. At the same time, Patrick, who is tied to the Texas Tea Party, has dedicated himself to keeping taxes down for his constituency. Patrick declined our request for an interview.
Comptroller Combs, who is still working on her budget projections for the next biennium starting in September, has reportedly thrown out a figure of $557 million in savings that could be achieved by replacing the word "limit" with "average" — an important figure in a state that may be facing a $15 billion to $30 billion shortfall.
Not surprisingly, her proposal hasn't been embraced by teachers — larger classes mean fewer teachers.
Parent and former Bellaire High School English teacher Nancy Lomax fought hard for the education changes in 1984. She is against the call to eliminate the limits; in fact, she thinks they should be extended to other grades. "I'm not about to go quietly down this road."
She argues that the 22-1 limit is even more important now than ever, given the modern-day demographics of classrooms not just in urban districts like the Houston Independent School District, but suburban ones as well.
Her daughter is a fourth-grade teacher in the Lewisville School District near Dallas, where almost every child in the class has limited English proficiency; some are gifted while others are emotionally disturbed and special ed; and three are Burmese refugees. That's tough enough, she says. How does a teacher control an even larger class like that and really see to the needs of all the students?
_____________________
In 2006, Governor Rick Perry ordered school districts to cut local property tax, saying the state would make up the difference.
"The state's new taxes to make up the difference didn't made up the difference," Hochberg says. "And so since that bill was passed in '06, we haven't had an internally balanced budget at the state level. We've been short every time. We covered it the first time because we had a surplus coming in. We covered it the second time with stimulus money — that nasty, awful stimulus money from Washington that we don't want to touch.
"We were 4 billion short on the budget last time without the stimulus money, and that's on a zero-growth budget. State revenues haven't balanced the budget for the last two cycles since those cuts were made."
HISD and other districts are already working on budgets for the next year —they have to submit them in June whether the Legislature has given them their numbers or not. All anyone knows for sure is that since education accounts for about 40 percent of the state budget, there's no way to avoid a hit. After two hours of budget talk at a recent HISD workshop, board president Greg Meyers said he wasn't sure too much clarity had been achieved.
But that's all right, says Hochberg. Just starting the discussion, and opening up to community groups for input as HISD is doing in January, is a good idea, he says, because they can't afford to wait. "They should really figure what their priorities are. I'm not sure we're going to do that at the state level."
"HISD is a billion-plus-dollar operation. If you're the school district in Canadian, Texas, and you've got 900 kids, then maybe you can wait till the last minute to figure out what you have to do. But if you're an operation the size of HISD, you would be foolhardy in terms of your own policies and unfair to your employees not to at least lay out a variety of scenarios that could occur and figure out what you're going to do about them. Because by the time you know it, it will be very difficult to turn the train."
Legislatures tend to make broad, general cuts, leaving the details (and the heat) to local school boards. School trustees need to make very clear to legislators what the exact losses will be, Hochberg says. "The legislators and the leadership in Austin should not be able to walk away from this session saying, 'Gee, I didn't know it would have this impact.'"
Hochberg knows schools waste money, and says he's ready to offer alternative savings proposals for schools — in fact, he's done so over his 18 years as a state legislator with little success.
Some of his proposals: Cut back state standardized testing to every other year for the kids who pass, stop buying textbooks that sit in a teacher's closet and instead go to more electronic textbooks, have a serious look at the cost of University Interscholastic League rules that require every school to offer every significant sport, he says.
Also, why not use long-distance, virtual learning for teachers' continuing education and cut out the need for regional service centers?
Former Texas governor Mark White doesn't want to see the state lose the gains it has made in education. "It may be easier to increase class sizes rather than to cut a hundred other things that add up to the same amount of savings," Hochberg says. "We do a lot of pennywise, pound foolish sorts of things."
_____________________
White says the rule was and is simple: Keep it to 22 to 1, and when you get to 23, you build another classroom. "You can't afford to build another classroom, ask for a waiver."
"We let them off if they didn't have the money. They've always had the option to come in and ask for a waiver; many of them do. But we've never had anybody to come in and say, 'We just don't have the money to build that football stadium.' Somehow or another, they always found that money. So let's put our priorities right."
The former governor takes a long view of the state's present financial difficulties.
"We've been in tough times before. I almost laugh out loud when I think about how tough things must be in Austin when oil is priced at $80 a barrel and I've sat there and lived through $9-a-barrel oil — and I didn't ask for any bailouts nor did we ever receive any bailout from the federal government," he says.
"If it's right for Texas and its future to say, 'Oh, we don't have any money,' or 'We don't have enough money to pay for a quality education for the young people of our state,' then you have made the classic mistake of not just eating your seed corn but you've poured salt on the seed corn you didn't eat," White says.
Financing schools should be the first priority of the Legislature, according to White. "Let's do our cutting somewhere else. You could quit building highways in Texas for five years and it would not hurt the future of Texas quite as much as if you change the funding on classes and quality of education in our schools today."
It makes perfect sense to argue that just one more student won't destroy a classroom. The problem is, as White's mother knew, one becomes four becomes six. And at a certain point, all the great teaching in the world won't be able to overcome the numbers-up disparity.
"It's a little difficult to put a young person's education on pause till times get better," White says. "22 to 1 should not be the whipping boy for being short of cash."
Taken from the Houston Press: http://www.houstonpress.com/2010-12-30/news/the-whipping-boy/3/
Tuesday, December 21, 2010
The class size amendment works… for the police department.
While driving this morning I heard sheriff John Rutherford on the radio program first coast connect. He was talking about how crime had gone down dramatically and when asked by the host Melissa Ross why, he emphatically said, the most important reason why crime is down is the hiring of 138 new police officers. Well friends that’s the class size amendment in law enforcement terms. Have you noticed how the powers-that-be haven’t called for fewer police as a way to decrease the crime rate? It’s because they know that is absurd. Yet at the same time they expect you to believe class size doesn’t matter.
The reason the class size amendment/smaller classes have suddenly become the enemy of certain education reformers is because they don’t want to pay for it. They say they want a first class education system but that’s just lip service, as they want to pay for education with the change they find in their couches. Don’t worry though, those in charge of education have a few scapegoats lined up when their education policies continue to fail and that’s the teachers and the unions that make sure they are given due process.
The real question isn’t whether the class size amendment works or not, it is when will the citizens of Florida wake up and realize that unless they are in a certain income bracket, many of their elected leaders, including the new governor, don’t care about them, their children or the schools they attend. Instead they just want to appear to do so, so they can maintain power and provide for their friends.
Sadly big classes, welfare for the well off (vouchers for all) and demonizing teachers are the only solutions they are offering.
The reason the class size amendment/smaller classes have suddenly become the enemy of certain education reformers is because they don’t want to pay for it. They say they want a first class education system but that’s just lip service, as they want to pay for education with the change they find in their couches. Don’t worry though, those in charge of education have a few scapegoats lined up when their education policies continue to fail and that’s the teachers and the unions that make sure they are given due process.
The real question isn’t whether the class size amendment works or not, it is when will the citizens of Florida wake up and realize that unless they are in a certain income bracket, many of their elected leaders, including the new governor, don’t care about them, their children or the schools they attend. Instead they just want to appear to do so, so they can maintain power and provide for their friends.
Sadly big classes, welfare for the well off (vouchers for all) and demonizing teachers are the only solutions they are offering.
Thursday, December 9, 2010
Florida Education Reform: Follow the money
Make no mistake; education in Florida has become big business. Whether it’s Pearson, College Board or one of the other companies involved with data collection and test making and scoring or charter and private schools that don’t play by the same rules as their public school counterparts, somebody is getting rich. Sadly this more than what is best or the states students and teachers is what's driving our leaders’ policies.
I would have more faith in the education reforms the powers-that-be are proposing if most did not involve short changing students and teachers. Florida has long underfunded education and many of these new or considered reforms are designed to continue to do so.
Take the class size amendment for example. For all of time smaller classes were thought to be better then suddenly when it came time to pay for smaller classes the legislature balked. The same legislature by the way which has doubled the homestead exemption, allowed owners of multiple houses to have exemptions on each property and given huge tax breaks to bottled water companies and luxury yacht makers among others. The legislature has many friends, sadly however, public education is not among them.
Then there are the changes that they are attempting to make to how teachers are paid. Teachers with advanced degrees get paid more; suddenly advanced degrees are no longer important. Teachers who have been teaching longer get paid more, now all of a sudden experience doesn’t matter either. Now I don’t think having a masters or Doctorate degree makes you automatically a better teacher. Teaching is a profession where you have it or you don’t, but it certainly doesn’t hurt, to work on and/or improve your craft through further education. The lack of experience argument however is very disingenuous. Yes sometimes you will have a wunderkind teacher hit the ground running but more often than not the first few years of teaching is less about teaching and more about surviving. These two reforms will enable districts to get teachers on the cheap.
Even the reform that the anti-teacher movement hails will be a boon to teachers, performance pay is unreliable. There are so many factors that can determine success or not, who is deserving or not, but among them are very few quantifiable numbers that can point to who is high performing or not. Yet certain people, most of who were never teachers, seem to think this is the panacea that will save teaching.
After that there are vouchers. I think a parent has to look out for their child and I wouldn’t fault one for wanting to send their child to a school they thought was better but at the same time this does take money away from cash starved public schools. Shouldn’t the answer be first to make public schools better, before we tried other things out. I also see vouchers becoming welfare for the well off. With the way things are going, how long will it be before any kid from any neighborhood, regardless of how much their family makes, be able to get a voucher?
Furthermore a lot of these vouchers go to for profit private schools, private schools by the way, that like their charter counter parts have not proven to be any more effective than public schools. An article in the Times Union about a local charter schools a few years back reported the principal was making over 150 thousand dollars and that several of her immediate family members were making considerably high salaries too. Private and Charter schools don’t have the same oversight as public schools and where I am all for everybody making as much as they can, I just don’t think they should make it on the backs of our children.
Next there is the data collection and high stakes testing which has become the tent poles of the blame the teacher education reformers, tent poles that are making some parties very rich. Friends, Pearson just signed a contract to collect data for 320 million dollars, which has me wondering, why I am still spending my planning time entering data and how much of that money is going to be a profit for them? Think about this, if the state of Florida said, you know what, we’re done with data and spent that money on teachers instead; they could have hired almost 5000 more. What do you think is more important, a company that basically gives teachers the same information most get anyway from working with their kids for a few days, or 5000 more boots on the ground providing instruction and services.
Finally let’s talk about the unions which are bearing the brunt of the ire caused by the blame the teacher crowd. Despite the fact we have unions, teachers here in Florida are some of the lowest paid, most over worked professionals in the country. Can you imagine how many teachers would flee the profession if they lost the little cover provided by the unions? Also I have never heard of our local union protecting bad teachers, just making sure all teachers get due process and they work with the district so much and so closely that many of us rank and file teachers think the line between them sometimes gets blurred.
Many of these reforms seemed designed to save money and why? Is it so the legislature can reward their friends and remember make no mistake the legislature is not a friend of education, or to make their friends at the education companies rich. Sadly all of this is done on the backs of our children and those dedicated men and woman who teach them.
Where are the realistic reforms that add to public schools not take away? The last one before it was vilified (the class size amendment) seems to have had some success. I imagine if we followed the money we would have a better idea.
Those seeking to steer the course of education reform in Florida, which includes many of Governor elect Rick Scott’s education team, would have the public believe several falsehoods.
Poverty is just an excuse. The truth is poverty is a huge issue. Kids that come from homes with absentee parents, where a lack of food and violence are constant factors often perform poorly in school. Quite frankly they have more serious issues to deal with than learning the capital of Alaska and dividing two digit numbers.
Class size doesn’t matter: Class size is extremely important. It allows students to gain more valuable face time with their teachers and fewer kids get lost in the crowd. The Heritage Foundation (Jeb Bush’s education think tank) recently touted all of the great progress that Florida’s schools have experienced over the last decade but completely ignored the fact that most of the progress has occurred since 2003 when the class size amendment began to be phased in.
Test scores are the way to measure student learning. Test scores should be a component of education not the end all be all that they have become. Some kids don’t test well, some kids have bad days, and no kid should be tested all at once time over a whole year, or several years worth of material.
Reform MUST be driven by external measures such as comprehensive tests. Assessments are most useful and reliable when they are closely connected to classroom instruction. Furthermore just who is going to get rich creating and scoring these tests? The Bush family profited greatly from the F-Cat and No Child Left Behind.
Classroom experience doesn’t matter. Most teachers don’t hit their stride, where they are most effective, till they are several years in. Unfortunately about half of all teachers do not last five years.
Tenure provides teachers with lifetime jobs. Teachers do not have "jobs for life"; they have due process and what’s wrong with allowing professionals who sacrifice so much having at least that.
Charter schools are deserving of public funds and support. Actually, charters have not been shown to have better test scores, on average, than regular public schools, their teachers aren't certified and they pick and choose who they allow in and retain.
Data must drive our children’s education. How about having a child’s ability, aptitude and desire drive their education; that might prove more effective.
Vouchers give parents choice. Vouchers also provide welfare for the well off and take much needed resources from cash starved public schools. The answer at least in the short term should be to improve public schools, not further erode them.
Performance Pay for the most deserving teachers. This sounds great in a vacuum, unfortunately when put in practice it is arbitrary and hard to quantify. Somebody way smarter than me would have to come up with a way for this to be done fairly if it is to be both effective and meaningful.
I would have more faith in the education reforms the powers-that-be are proposing if most did not involve short changing students and teachers. Florida has long underfunded education and many of these new or considered reforms are designed to continue to do so.
Take the class size amendment for example. For all of time smaller classes were thought to be better then suddenly when it came time to pay for smaller classes the legislature balked. The same legislature by the way which has doubled the homestead exemption, allowed owners of multiple houses to have exemptions on each property and given huge tax breaks to bottled water companies and luxury yacht makers among others. The legislature has many friends, sadly however, public education is not among them.
Then there are the changes that they are attempting to make to how teachers are paid. Teachers with advanced degrees get paid more; suddenly advanced degrees are no longer important. Teachers who have been teaching longer get paid more, now all of a sudden experience doesn’t matter either. Now I don’t think having a masters or Doctorate degree makes you automatically a better teacher. Teaching is a profession where you have it or you don’t, but it certainly doesn’t hurt, to work on and/or improve your craft through further education. The lack of experience argument however is very disingenuous. Yes sometimes you will have a wunderkind teacher hit the ground running but more often than not the first few years of teaching is less about teaching and more about surviving. These two reforms will enable districts to get teachers on the cheap.
Even the reform that the anti-teacher movement hails will be a boon to teachers, performance pay is unreliable. There are so many factors that can determine success or not, who is deserving or not, but among them are very few quantifiable numbers that can point to who is high performing or not. Yet certain people, most of who were never teachers, seem to think this is the panacea that will save teaching.
After that there are vouchers. I think a parent has to look out for their child and I wouldn’t fault one for wanting to send their child to a school they thought was better but at the same time this does take money away from cash starved public schools. Shouldn’t the answer be first to make public schools better, before we tried other things out. I also see vouchers becoming welfare for the well off. With the way things are going, how long will it be before any kid from any neighborhood, regardless of how much their family makes, be able to get a voucher?
Furthermore a lot of these vouchers go to for profit private schools, private schools by the way, that like their charter counter parts have not proven to be any more effective than public schools. An article in the Times Union about a local charter schools a few years back reported the principal was making over 150 thousand dollars and that several of her immediate family members were making considerably high salaries too. Private and Charter schools don’t have the same oversight as public schools and where I am all for everybody making as much as they can, I just don’t think they should make it on the backs of our children.
Next there is the data collection and high stakes testing which has become the tent poles of the blame the teacher education reformers, tent poles that are making some parties very rich. Friends, Pearson just signed a contract to collect data for 320 million dollars, which has me wondering, why I am still spending my planning time entering data and how much of that money is going to be a profit for them? Think about this, if the state of Florida said, you know what, we’re done with data and spent that money on teachers instead; they could have hired almost 5000 more. What do you think is more important, a company that basically gives teachers the same information most get anyway from working with their kids for a few days, or 5000 more boots on the ground providing instruction and services.
Finally let’s talk about the unions which are bearing the brunt of the ire caused by the blame the teacher crowd. Despite the fact we have unions, teachers here in Florida are some of the lowest paid, most over worked professionals in the country. Can you imagine how many teachers would flee the profession if they lost the little cover provided by the unions? Also I have never heard of our local union protecting bad teachers, just making sure all teachers get due process and they work with the district so much and so closely that many of us rank and file teachers think the line between them sometimes gets blurred.
Many of these reforms seemed designed to save money and why? Is it so the legislature can reward their friends and remember make no mistake the legislature is not a friend of education, or to make their friends at the education companies rich. Sadly all of this is done on the backs of our children and those dedicated men and woman who teach them.
Where are the realistic reforms that add to public schools not take away? The last one before it was vilified (the class size amendment) seems to have had some success. I imagine if we followed the money we would have a better idea.
Those seeking to steer the course of education reform in Florida, which includes many of Governor elect Rick Scott’s education team, would have the public believe several falsehoods.
Poverty is just an excuse. The truth is poverty is a huge issue. Kids that come from homes with absentee parents, where a lack of food and violence are constant factors often perform poorly in school. Quite frankly they have more serious issues to deal with than learning the capital of Alaska and dividing two digit numbers.
Class size doesn’t matter: Class size is extremely important. It allows students to gain more valuable face time with their teachers and fewer kids get lost in the crowd. The Heritage Foundation (Jeb Bush’s education think tank) recently touted all of the great progress that Florida’s schools have experienced over the last decade but completely ignored the fact that most of the progress has occurred since 2003 when the class size amendment began to be phased in.
Test scores are the way to measure student learning. Test scores should be a component of education not the end all be all that they have become. Some kids don’t test well, some kids have bad days, and no kid should be tested all at once time over a whole year, or several years worth of material.
Reform MUST be driven by external measures such as comprehensive tests. Assessments are most useful and reliable when they are closely connected to classroom instruction. Furthermore just who is going to get rich creating and scoring these tests? The Bush family profited greatly from the F-Cat and No Child Left Behind.
Classroom experience doesn’t matter. Most teachers don’t hit their stride, where they are most effective, till they are several years in. Unfortunately about half of all teachers do not last five years.
Tenure provides teachers with lifetime jobs. Teachers do not have "jobs for life"; they have due process and what’s wrong with allowing professionals who sacrifice so much having at least that.
Charter schools are deserving of public funds and support. Actually, charters have not been shown to have better test scores, on average, than regular public schools, their teachers aren't certified and they pick and choose who they allow in and retain.
Data must drive our children’s education. How about having a child’s ability, aptitude and desire drive their education; that might prove more effective.
Vouchers give parents choice. Vouchers also provide welfare for the well off and take much needed resources from cash starved public schools. The answer at least in the short term should be to improve public schools, not further erode them.
Performance Pay for the most deserving teachers. This sounds great in a vacuum, unfortunately when put in practice it is arbitrary and hard to quantify. Somebody way smarter than me would have to come up with a way for this to be done fairly if it is to be both effective and meaningful.
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