From the Hill.com
by Dennis Van Roekel
Many Americans, including President Obama, weren’t even born when the Soviet Union launched the first satellite into outer space in October 1957. Yet everyone knew exactly what the President meant when he said during his State of the Union address, “This is our Sputnik moment.” Today the U.S. faces economic and innovative competition around the world. If we want to win the future in the same way that we won the Space Race, we must do what we did then – invest in education.
The President shined a spotlight on the importance of a long-term investment in education and recognized the critical role that teachers play in student success, calling for more respect for the teaching profession. His strong message of support for education and his call to fix No Child Left Behind is sorely welcome. However, as with many good things, the devil is in the details.
Global competition is a fact of life, but competition in education funding can have negative consequences. That’s why we have expressed concerns with funding models, like the Race to the Top program, that create winners and losers among our students. The federal government has a vital role to play in advancing the quality of education and ensuring equity and opportunity for all students.
The track record with Race to the Top calls into question this program’s ability to meet this critical objective. To date, 39 states were non-participants or losers in the Race to the Top competition. And according to the Schott Foundation for Public Education, after two years of implementation and close to $4 billion dollars, many underserved communities – Black, Hispanic, Asian and American Indian students, ELL students and poor rural states – have been poorly represented in Race to the Top’s distribution of resources.
The Elementary and Secondary Education Act was intended to provide a level playing field and equal opportunity, but the competitive nature of Race to the Top has pitted students against their peers, and educators against their colleagues. The expanded use of competitive grant policies has the potential to dangerously undermine public education, and for this reason we believe this formula must not be a part of ESEA reauthorization.
In the push to renew ESEA, we must change the punitive approach of No Child Left Behind, especially the fanatical focus on standardized tests and the unrealistic AYP requirements that brand thriving schools as failures. We should focus on schools that are in the most desperate need of transformation. That’s exactly what NEA is doing in our Priority Schools Campaign, which is engaging our members in districts across the country and identifying more and new ways to help students succeed.
In short, we need to redefine the federal role in education: moving beyond testing, labeling and punishing, and partnering with states to transform public education for all students.
Dennis Van Roekel is the president of the National Education Association (NEA).
http://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/education/141537-competition-in-education-funding-hurts-students?sms_ss=facebook&at_xt=4d48ae85d44f30e5%2C0
Showing posts with label race to the top grants. Show all posts
Showing posts with label race to the top grants. Show all posts
Wednesday, February 2, 2011
Sunday, January 9, 2011
Only losers
I wrote this a few months back but it seems appropriate now as Race to the Top funds are being delivered. -cpg
See the list of winners, is one of the prompts on the ed.gov site, about the Race to the Top grants. What about the losers can’t we see a list of them too? Am I the only one offended that the government is treating the future of our children like a game? I am personally glad we did not get any part of the Race to the Top grant. In theory, these grants created by politicians are designed to improve education but I think they are going to end up having the opposite effect. They are going to hurt education and do so dramatically.
This didn’t stop Florida from pulling out all stops to get a share of the grant and many education experts thought we were a shoe in and it came as quite a surprise that we didn’t. Maybe we didn’t win because we asked for 1.1 billion dollars or over a quarter of the grant for just us alone. In our fervor to get it, the legislature also put senate bill six and its house counterpart on the fast track to becoming a law. You might know the bills under their other name, the, we hate unions and everything is the teachers fault bill. Then again maybe we didn’t “win” because the nation knows the powers-that-be we don’t value education that much.
Isn’t it ironic that the states leaders, basically the Republican Party rail against practically everything the federal government does but then fall all over themselves in attempts to get money? I guess anything to avoid doing the right thing right? How about they fund education properly and then stay out of the localities way, at least until they get a clue as to what they are doing.
I voted for President Obama and I will even admit I got caught up in his hope and change speeches. I thought the country had gotten a little mean and selfish, I didn’t like the war. I felt it was time we went in a different direction. However after reading the provisions of the Race to the Top grants, this is not the change I had hoped for and even worse it has shaken my hope, my belief that things can change for the better, especially if this is the direction the government wants to head in. Politicians like used car salesmen have a way of making things sound good even bad things, but like my grandfather used to say, you can put perfume on a pig, but it’s still a pig. The Race to the Top grants is a pig of an idea.
It calls for Adopting standards and assessments that prepare students to succeed in college and the workplace. This actually sounds good until you think about it critically. Florida already has a test, the almost universally reviled F-Cat. It is so high stakes for both children and schools that most schools just teach to the test. I hope some of these kids can get jobs where they just take the F-cat day after day because that’s all we have prepared them for. And where I can’t speak for everywhere in Florida what exactly is Duval doing to prepare them for the work place. We have practically eliminated the teaching of trades and severely curtailed the teaching of arts. I am also not sure if all the social promotions and the ignoring of discipline that we do, does our kids, who will eventually join the work place, any favors. What do you mean I have to do my work and I can’t curse you out, are questions I can see many of our children asking future employers.
Then when it says: Building data systems that measure student growth and success, and inform teachers and principals how to improve instruction, is a huge problem too. If the government was being honest it should have written, lets over work our already over worked and under paid teachers. Let’s give them more tasks than they can possibly do and then have them only play a peripheral relationship to education. For centuries do you know where most teachers got their data? It was from working with the kids and learning about them. They don’t need to spend hours creating bell curves and bar graphs to learn little Johnny needs extra time or little Suzy is more of a visual learner, the good teachers after a few days know it and do it.
The third point is recruiting, developing, rewarding, and retaining effective teachers and principals, especially where they are needed most. Hmmm, where are they needed most? Oh that’s right they are needed most everywhere that children go to school. The race to the Top Grant with its winners and losers prioritize children. Now do some children need extra help and extra resources? Undoubtedly, should they get them, yes.
Finally the race to the top grant calls for turning around the lowest-performing schools. Wow what a great idea, if only the states and localities would have thought about that, then we wouldn’t have been sitting around doing nothing for all these years. The thing that most people don’t want to admit is that most of the worse schools are in the worse neighborhoods and where schools can be part of the plan to turn them all around they can’t be the only piece. Teachers who show up every day, spend their own money and make an honest effort cannot compete with what is going on in children’s homes and neighborhoods, they can’t and to blame teachers is just wrong. The school in Rhode Island that received a lot of publicity when all of their teachers were fired not only was in one of the worse poorest neighborhoods but had actually been making gains in reading and math and for all their hard work received pink slips. In the end they didn’t fail the community, the community failed them.
Schools are not designed to fix society, if a child does not want to learn they can be highly successful doing so. The thing is, if not careful schools can exacerbate already existing problems and there are some things they can be doing to make sure fewer kids fall through the cracks as well. This is what we should be working on fixing and improving.
I have a couple ideas to turn education around, ideas that won’t break the bank and won’t blow up the wheel. If a kid can’t master the material they aren’t passed until they can. If a kid acts up they get consequences. If a kid does either of those we get them some help to catch up or find out why. Then let’s lay off teachers, there is not some epidemic of bad teachers out despite what some right wing talk show hosts would have you believe. The vast majority of teachers are hard working, dedicated and sacrifice so much. If we want to put more procedures in place to check on this, as long as they are not
too intrusive, then they are not going to mind.
My question is, how are the politicians in Washington D.C., Tallahassee and 1701 prudential Drive, supposedly the best of the best we have to offer as a nation not getting that this is what we need to do? Maybe it’s because they are in their ivory towers too far away from the problem or maybe it’s because they really aren’t the best of the best after all. Whatever the reason, this is not the change I hoped for and if it comes true, it will be change I dread.
See the list of winners, is one of the prompts on the ed.gov site, about the Race to the Top grants. What about the losers can’t we see a list of them too? Am I the only one offended that the government is treating the future of our children like a game? I am personally glad we did not get any part of the Race to the Top grant. In theory, these grants created by politicians are designed to improve education but I think they are going to end up having the opposite effect. They are going to hurt education and do so dramatically.
This didn’t stop Florida from pulling out all stops to get a share of the grant and many education experts thought we were a shoe in and it came as quite a surprise that we didn’t. Maybe we didn’t win because we asked for 1.1 billion dollars or over a quarter of the grant for just us alone. In our fervor to get it, the legislature also put senate bill six and its house counterpart on the fast track to becoming a law. You might know the bills under their other name, the, we hate unions and everything is the teachers fault bill. Then again maybe we didn’t “win” because the nation knows the powers-that-be we don’t value education that much.
Isn’t it ironic that the states leaders, basically the Republican Party rail against practically everything the federal government does but then fall all over themselves in attempts to get money? I guess anything to avoid doing the right thing right? How about they fund education properly and then stay out of the localities way, at least until they get a clue as to what they are doing.
I voted for President Obama and I will even admit I got caught up in his hope and change speeches. I thought the country had gotten a little mean and selfish, I didn’t like the war. I felt it was time we went in a different direction. However after reading the provisions of the Race to the Top grants, this is not the change I had hoped for and even worse it has shaken my hope, my belief that things can change for the better, especially if this is the direction the government wants to head in. Politicians like used car salesmen have a way of making things sound good even bad things, but like my grandfather used to say, you can put perfume on a pig, but it’s still a pig. The Race to the Top grants is a pig of an idea.
It calls for Adopting standards and assessments that prepare students to succeed in college and the workplace. This actually sounds good until you think about it critically. Florida already has a test, the almost universally reviled F-Cat. It is so high stakes for both children and schools that most schools just teach to the test. I hope some of these kids can get jobs where they just take the F-cat day after day because that’s all we have prepared them for. And where I can’t speak for everywhere in Florida what exactly is Duval doing to prepare them for the work place. We have practically eliminated the teaching of trades and severely curtailed the teaching of arts. I am also not sure if all the social promotions and the ignoring of discipline that we do, does our kids, who will eventually join the work place, any favors. What do you mean I have to do my work and I can’t curse you out, are questions I can see many of our children asking future employers.
Then when it says: Building data systems that measure student growth and success, and inform teachers and principals how to improve instruction, is a huge problem too. If the government was being honest it should have written, lets over work our already over worked and under paid teachers. Let’s give them more tasks than they can possibly do and then have them only play a peripheral relationship to education. For centuries do you know where most teachers got their data? It was from working with the kids and learning about them. They don’t need to spend hours creating bell curves and bar graphs to learn little Johnny needs extra time or little Suzy is more of a visual learner, the good teachers after a few days know it and do it.
The third point is recruiting, developing, rewarding, and retaining effective teachers and principals, especially where they are needed most. Hmmm, where are they needed most? Oh that’s right they are needed most everywhere that children go to school. The race to the Top Grant with its winners and losers prioritize children. Now do some children need extra help and extra resources? Undoubtedly, should they get them, yes.
Finally the race to the top grant calls for turning around the lowest-performing schools. Wow what a great idea, if only the states and localities would have thought about that, then we wouldn’t have been sitting around doing nothing for all these years. The thing that most people don’t want to admit is that most of the worse schools are in the worse neighborhoods and where schools can be part of the plan to turn them all around they can’t be the only piece. Teachers who show up every day, spend their own money and make an honest effort cannot compete with what is going on in children’s homes and neighborhoods, they can’t and to blame teachers is just wrong. The school in Rhode Island that received a lot of publicity when all of their teachers were fired not only was in one of the worse poorest neighborhoods but had actually been making gains in reading and math and for all their hard work received pink slips. In the end they didn’t fail the community, the community failed them.
Schools are not designed to fix society, if a child does not want to learn they can be highly successful doing so. The thing is, if not careful schools can exacerbate already existing problems and there are some things they can be doing to make sure fewer kids fall through the cracks as well. This is what we should be working on fixing and improving.
I have a couple ideas to turn education around, ideas that won’t break the bank and won’t blow up the wheel. If a kid can’t master the material they aren’t passed until they can. If a kid acts up they get consequences. If a kid does either of those we get them some help to catch up or find out why. Then let’s lay off teachers, there is not some epidemic of bad teachers out despite what some right wing talk show hosts would have you believe. The vast majority of teachers are hard working, dedicated and sacrifice so much. If we want to put more procedures in place to check on this, as long as they are not
too intrusive, then they are not going to mind.
My question is, how are the politicians in Washington D.C., Tallahassee and 1701 prudential Drive, supposedly the best of the best we have to offer as a nation not getting that this is what we need to do? Maybe it’s because they are in their ivory towers too far away from the problem or maybe it’s because they really aren’t the best of the best after all. Whatever the reason, this is not the change I hoped for and if it comes true, it will be change I dread.
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
Sunday, November 28, 2010
Schools chief returns Race to the Top money -- for his teachers
I wrote about this about six weeks ago. Jones County superintendent Bill Mathews is my hero and apparently others as well. -cpg
By Valerie Strauss
A number of school districts in states that won money in the Education Department's $4 billion Race to the Top competition have decided they don’t actually want the money because, in most cases, officials think it is more trouble to accept it.
In Ohio, which won $400 million in the Race sweepstakes, more than two dozen districts and public charter schools say they think it will cost them more than they will get from the federal government to implement the required reforms, according to Sean Cavanagh at www.edweek.com.
And then there is the Jones County School District near Macon, Ga., headed by Superintendent Bill Mathews.
Mathews has decided not to accept $1.3 million in Race to the Top money -- the district’s share of Georgia’s $400 million pot -- for reasons including his refusal to implement a value-added assessment system for teachers, based on student standardized test scores. (The county had signed up for the money before Mathews became superintendent last year.)
Assessment experts say these systems should not be used to evaluate teachers, pointing to new research that indicates they are not reliable and error rates are unacceptably high, but they are supported anyway by the Obama administration. Many of these systems are seen by teachers as ignoring other factors beside a teacher’s influence that can affect a student's performance on a standardized test.
And that’s why Mathews decided not to accept the money and why the county school board went along with his recommendation.
Mathews was quoted in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution that the research doesn't bear out the effectiveness of these systems, and that implementing one would be too expensive. He said that educating children in the county’s public schools is a team effort by all of the adults in the building, and that singling out the teachers in this way would be wrong.
“My philosophy has always been that from the front door to the back door, from the secretary to the lunchroom worker, [everyone] is responsible for the student achievement of every child,” Mathews was quoted as saying. “We set our goals and if we meet our goals, we all celebrate.”
We’d all be a lot better off if there were more Bill Mathews out there running our public school districts.
Taken from the Washington Post:
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/answer-sheet/schools-chief-returns-race-to.html
By Valerie Strauss
A number of school districts in states that won money in the Education Department's $4 billion Race to the Top competition have decided they don’t actually want the money because, in most cases, officials think it is more trouble to accept it.
In Ohio, which won $400 million in the Race sweepstakes, more than two dozen districts and public charter schools say they think it will cost them more than they will get from the federal government to implement the required reforms, according to Sean Cavanagh at www.edweek.com.
And then there is the Jones County School District near Macon, Ga., headed by Superintendent Bill Mathews.
Mathews has decided not to accept $1.3 million in Race to the Top money -- the district’s share of Georgia’s $400 million pot -- for reasons including his refusal to implement a value-added assessment system for teachers, based on student standardized test scores. (The county had signed up for the money before Mathews became superintendent last year.)
Assessment experts say these systems should not be used to evaluate teachers, pointing to new research that indicates they are not reliable and error rates are unacceptably high, but they are supported anyway by the Obama administration. Many of these systems are seen by teachers as ignoring other factors beside a teacher’s influence that can affect a student's performance on a standardized test.
And that’s why Mathews decided not to accept the money and why the county school board went along with his recommendation.
Mathews was quoted in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution that the research doesn't bear out the effectiveness of these systems, and that implementing one would be too expensive. He said that educating children in the county’s public schools is a team effort by all of the adults in the building, and that singling out the teachers in this way would be wrong.
“My philosophy has always been that from the front door to the back door, from the secretary to the lunchroom worker, [everyone] is responsible for the student achievement of every child,” Mathews was quoted as saying. “We set our goals and if we meet our goals, we all celebrate.”
We’d all be a lot better off if there were more Bill Mathews out there running our public school districts.
Taken from the Washington Post:
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/answer-sheet/schools-chief-returns-race-to.html
Sunday, September 19, 2010
Only losers
I wrote this a couple months back whne Florida lost out on the first round of cuts with the race to the top grants. It still seems relevent.
See the list of winners, is one of the prompts on the ed.gov site, about the Race to the Top grants. What about the losers can’t we see a list of them too? Am I the only one offended that the government is treating the future of our children like a game? I am personally glad we did not get any part of the Race to the Top grant. In theory, these grants created by politicians are designed to improve education but I think they are going to end up having the opposite effect. They are going to hurt education and do so dramatically.
This didn’t stop Florida from pulling out all stops to get a share of the grant and many education experts thought we were a shoe in and it came as quite a surprise that we didn’t. Maybe we didn’t win because we asked for 1.1 billion dollars or over a quarter of the grant for just us alone. In our fervor to get it, the legislature also put senate bill six and its house counterpart on the fast track to becoming a law. You might know the bills under their other name, the, we hate unions and everything is the teachers fault bill. Then again maybe we didn’t “win” because the nation knows the powers-that-be we don’t value education that much.
Isn’t it ironic that the states leaders, basically the Republican Party rail against practically everything the federal government does but then fall all over themselves in attempts to get money? I guess anything to avoid doing the right thing right? How about they fund education properly and then stay out of the localities way, at least until they get a clue as to what they are doing.
I voted for President Obama and I will even admit I got caught up in his hope and change speeches. I thought the country had gotten a little mean and selfish, I didn’t like the war. I felt it was time we went in a different direction. However after reading the provisions of the Race to the Top grants, this is not the change I had hoped for and even worse it has shaken my hope, my belief that things can change for the better, especially if this is the direction the government wants to head in. Politicians like used car salesmen have a way of making things sound good even bad things, but like my grandfather used to say, you can put perfume on a pig, but it’s still a pig. The Race to the Top grants is a pig of an idea.
It calls for Adopting standards and assessments that prepare students to succeed in college and the workplace. This actually sounds good until you think about it critically. Florida already has a test, the almost universally reviled F-Cat. It is so high stakes for both children and schools that most schools just teach to the test. I hope some of these kids can get jobs where they just take the F-cat day after day because that’s all we have prepared them for. And where I can’t speak for everywhere in Florida what exactly is Duval doing to prepare them for the work place. We have practically eliminated the teaching of trades and severely curtailed the teaching of arts. I am also not sure if all the social promotions and the ignoring of discipline that we do, does our kids, who will eventually join the work place, any favors. What do you mean I have to do my work and I can’t curse you out, are questions I can see many of our children asking future employers.
Then when it says: Building data systems that measure student growth and success, and inform teachers and principals how to improve instruction, is a huge problem too. If the government was being honest it should have written, lets over work our already over worked and under paid teachers. Let’s give them more tasks than they can possibly do and then have them only play a peripheral relationship to education. For centuries do you know where most teachers got their data? It was from working with the kids and learning about them. They don’t need to spend hours creating bell curves and bar graphs to learn little Johnny needs extra time or little Suzy is more of a visual learner, the good teachers after a few days know it and do it.
The third point is recruiting, developing, rewarding, and retaining effective teachers and principals, especially where they are needed most. Hmmm, where are they needed most? Oh that’s right they are needed most everywhere that children go to school. The race to the Top Grant with its winners and losers prioritize children. Now do some children need extra help and extra resources? Undoubtedly, should they get them, yes.
Finally the race to the top grant calls for turning around the lowest-performing schools. Wow what a great idea, if only the states and localities would have thought about that, then we wouldn’t have been sitting around doing nothing for all these years. The thing that most people don’t want to admit is that most of the worse schools are in the worse neighborhoods and where schools can be part of the plan to turn them all around they can’t be the only piece. Teachers who show up every day, spend their own money and make an honest effort cannot compete with what is going on in children’s homes and neighborhoods, they can’t and to blame teachers is just wrong. The school in Rhode Island that received a lot of publicity when all of their teachers were fired not only was in one of the worse poorest neighborhoods but had actually been making gains in reading and math and for all their hard work received pink slips. In the end they didn’t fail the community, the community failed them.
Schools are not designed to fix society, if a child does not want to learn they can be highly successful doing so. The thing is, if not careful schools can exacerbate already existing problems and there are some things they can be doing to make sure fewer kids fall through the cracks as well. This is what we should be working on fixing and improving.
I have a couple ideas to turn education around, ideas that won’t break the bank and won’t blow up the wheel. If a kid can’t master the material they aren’t passed until they can. If a kid acts up they get consequences. If a kid does either of those we get them some help to catch up or find out why. Then let’s lay off teachers, there is not some epidemic of bad teachers out despite what some right wing talk show hosts would have you believe. The vast majority of teachers are hard working, dedicated and sacrifice so much. If we want to put more procedures in place to check on this, as long as they are not too intrusive, then they are not going to mind.
My question is, how are the politicians in Washington D.C., Tallahassee and 1701 prudential Drive, supposedly the best of the best we have to offer as a nation not getting that this is what we need to do? Maybe it’s because they are in their ivory towers too far away from the problem or maybe it’s because they really aren’t the best of the best after all. Whatever the reason, this is not the change I hoped for and if it comes true, it will be change I dread.
See the list of winners, is one of the prompts on the ed.gov site, about the Race to the Top grants. What about the losers can’t we see a list of them too? Am I the only one offended that the government is treating the future of our children like a game? I am personally glad we did not get any part of the Race to the Top grant. In theory, these grants created by politicians are designed to improve education but I think they are going to end up having the opposite effect. They are going to hurt education and do so dramatically.
This didn’t stop Florida from pulling out all stops to get a share of the grant and many education experts thought we were a shoe in and it came as quite a surprise that we didn’t. Maybe we didn’t win because we asked for 1.1 billion dollars or over a quarter of the grant for just us alone. In our fervor to get it, the legislature also put senate bill six and its house counterpart on the fast track to becoming a law. You might know the bills under their other name, the, we hate unions and everything is the teachers fault bill. Then again maybe we didn’t “win” because the nation knows the powers-that-be we don’t value education that much.
Isn’t it ironic that the states leaders, basically the Republican Party rail against practically everything the federal government does but then fall all over themselves in attempts to get money? I guess anything to avoid doing the right thing right? How about they fund education properly and then stay out of the localities way, at least until they get a clue as to what they are doing.
I voted for President Obama and I will even admit I got caught up in his hope and change speeches. I thought the country had gotten a little mean and selfish, I didn’t like the war. I felt it was time we went in a different direction. However after reading the provisions of the Race to the Top grants, this is not the change I had hoped for and even worse it has shaken my hope, my belief that things can change for the better, especially if this is the direction the government wants to head in. Politicians like used car salesmen have a way of making things sound good even bad things, but like my grandfather used to say, you can put perfume on a pig, but it’s still a pig. The Race to the Top grants is a pig of an idea.
It calls for Adopting standards and assessments that prepare students to succeed in college and the workplace. This actually sounds good until you think about it critically. Florida already has a test, the almost universally reviled F-Cat. It is so high stakes for both children and schools that most schools just teach to the test. I hope some of these kids can get jobs where they just take the F-cat day after day because that’s all we have prepared them for. And where I can’t speak for everywhere in Florida what exactly is Duval doing to prepare them for the work place. We have practically eliminated the teaching of trades and severely curtailed the teaching of arts. I am also not sure if all the social promotions and the ignoring of discipline that we do, does our kids, who will eventually join the work place, any favors. What do you mean I have to do my work and I can’t curse you out, are questions I can see many of our children asking future employers.
Then when it says: Building data systems that measure student growth and success, and inform teachers and principals how to improve instruction, is a huge problem too. If the government was being honest it should have written, lets over work our already over worked and under paid teachers. Let’s give them more tasks than they can possibly do and then have them only play a peripheral relationship to education. For centuries do you know where most teachers got their data? It was from working with the kids and learning about them. They don’t need to spend hours creating bell curves and bar graphs to learn little Johnny needs extra time or little Suzy is more of a visual learner, the good teachers after a few days know it and do it.
The third point is recruiting, developing, rewarding, and retaining effective teachers and principals, especially where they are needed most. Hmmm, where are they needed most? Oh that’s right they are needed most everywhere that children go to school. The race to the Top Grant with its winners and losers prioritize children. Now do some children need extra help and extra resources? Undoubtedly, should they get them, yes.
Finally the race to the top grant calls for turning around the lowest-performing schools. Wow what a great idea, if only the states and localities would have thought about that, then we wouldn’t have been sitting around doing nothing for all these years. The thing that most people don’t want to admit is that most of the worse schools are in the worse neighborhoods and where schools can be part of the plan to turn them all around they can’t be the only piece. Teachers who show up every day, spend their own money and make an honest effort cannot compete with what is going on in children’s homes and neighborhoods, they can’t and to blame teachers is just wrong. The school in Rhode Island that received a lot of publicity when all of their teachers were fired not only was in one of the worse poorest neighborhoods but had actually been making gains in reading and math and for all their hard work received pink slips. In the end they didn’t fail the community, the community failed them.
Schools are not designed to fix society, if a child does not want to learn they can be highly successful doing so. The thing is, if not careful schools can exacerbate already existing problems and there are some things they can be doing to make sure fewer kids fall through the cracks as well. This is what we should be working on fixing and improving.
I have a couple ideas to turn education around, ideas that won’t break the bank and won’t blow up the wheel. If a kid can’t master the material they aren’t passed until they can. If a kid acts up they get consequences. If a kid does either of those we get them some help to catch up or find out why. Then let’s lay off teachers, there is not some epidemic of bad teachers out despite what some right wing talk show hosts would have you believe. The vast majority of teachers are hard working, dedicated and sacrifice so much. If we want to put more procedures in place to check on this, as long as they are not too intrusive, then they are not going to mind.
My question is, how are the politicians in Washington D.C., Tallahassee and 1701 prudential Drive, supposedly the best of the best we have to offer as a nation not getting that this is what we need to do? Maybe it’s because they are in their ivory towers too far away from the problem or maybe it’s because they really aren’t the best of the best after all. Whatever the reason, this is not the change I hoped for and if it comes true, it will be change I dread.
Wednesday, September 8, 2010
What 28 million gets you
That collective sigh of relief you just heard was made because education in North East Florida was just saved by the Race to the Top Grants. In case you missed it we are scheduled to receive about 28 million dollars over the next four years. Now it’s true that ends up being less than one percent of the budget over that time period but don’t let that distract you from the fact that education is saved.
Now there are a few strings attached to the money. We have to spend it on teacher raises based on student performance, data systems and to bribe, err pay teachers to work at low performing schools. Ironically or maybe fortunately, that’s the three things we desperately needed to spend money on to save education. How great is that!
Now some people think we could better spend the money in other ways, but they either obviously don’t care about saving education or know any better. I’ll mention some of their suggestions but they are all pretty silly.
After all why would we want to spend the money on social workers to provide are most desperate and needy students wrap around services and why would we want to hire psychologists to get to the root of the same children’s problems. What difference does it make that most of the reasons children act up or don’t try at school has nothing to do with what is actually happening at schools. We’re going to have improved data systems PEOPLE!!!
Some people think the biggest thing the school district needs is busses, yep they think after school busses would have more of an impact on learning than teacher performance pay. They think if we had more busses kids could stay after school and get extra help and other kids can stay after school and get consequences for bad behavior but that’s obviously not important. If behavior and extra help were important then the race to the top grants would have allowed for money to be spent on busses. As if well behaved kids and extra help plays any role in the learning process.
I know a lot of people think we should bring back the teaching of trades and skills and dedicate shools to the arts as well. The problme with that is the race to the top grants aren't about engaging kids or providing alternative curriculums that might better suit them, thus better engage them, so lets move on.
Finally some people think paying for summer school would be beneficial too and I am not talking about the districts version, which is to throw kids in front of a computer and have a teacher or two walk around, and ask blank faces, how they are doing but legitimate classes were learning goes on. You know classes were kids could learn what they missed or maintain what they have, plus having the added benefit of keeping them off the streets doing structured activities. But DATA PEOPLE!!! That’s where it is.
Yep, education was indeed saved… sigh…
Now there are a few strings attached to the money. We have to spend it on teacher raises based on student performance, data systems and to bribe, err pay teachers to work at low performing schools. Ironically or maybe fortunately, that’s the three things we desperately needed to spend money on to save education. How great is that!
Now some people think we could better spend the money in other ways, but they either obviously don’t care about saving education or know any better. I’ll mention some of their suggestions but they are all pretty silly.
After all why would we want to spend the money on social workers to provide are most desperate and needy students wrap around services and why would we want to hire psychologists to get to the root of the same children’s problems. What difference does it make that most of the reasons children act up or don’t try at school has nothing to do with what is actually happening at schools. We’re going to have improved data systems PEOPLE!!!
Some people think the biggest thing the school district needs is busses, yep they think after school busses would have more of an impact on learning than teacher performance pay. They think if we had more busses kids could stay after school and get extra help and other kids can stay after school and get consequences for bad behavior but that’s obviously not important. If behavior and extra help were important then the race to the top grants would have allowed for money to be spent on busses. As if well behaved kids and extra help plays any role in the learning process.
I know a lot of people think we should bring back the teaching of trades and skills and dedicate shools to the arts as well. The problme with that is the race to the top grants aren't about engaging kids or providing alternative curriculums that might better suit them, thus better engage them, so lets move on.
Finally some people think paying for summer school would be beneficial too and I am not talking about the districts version, which is to throw kids in front of a computer and have a teacher or two walk around, and ask blank faces, how they are doing but legitimate classes were learning goes on. You know classes were kids could learn what they missed or maintain what they have, plus having the added benefit of keeping them off the streets doing structured activities. But DATA PEOPLE!!! That’s where it is.
Yep, education was indeed saved… sigh…
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