Vitti, give me five to seven years, teachers I will fire you tomorrow if you do not perform

You know a lot of new teachers really aren’t given a fair shake. They often have to go to the toughest schools and the hardest classrooms because that’s where the jobs are and there many flounder. Then they get micromanaged and bombarded with paper work that often has little to do with teaching.  I have no doubt many would succeed if they were put into classrooms without the discipline problems and academic short comings and where parents were involved.

In short we don’t put them in positions where success is likely and then either they get burned out and leave or we don’t give them the time to develop into the great teachers they otherwise would be.

I mention above because in a conversation with the Times Union’s editors he said he may need 5 to 7 years to get Jacksonville to where it should be and I believe hm. In the past I would often write how the successor to Ed Pratt-Dannals would need years to dig us out from the hole he created and where I am also optimistic about Vitti my assesment hasn't changed. 

Vitti has also done some things that make me scratch my head and there seems to be a disconnect from his message that teachers are to be treated as valued colleagues by principals rather than as easily replaceable cogs but the short is he’s been there for less than a year and I am not ready to give up on him because like most young teachers don’t, he probably still doesn’t know what he doesn’t know.  

The thing is he is most likely going to get the time to learn and improve while many teachers won’t. In a recent article in the Times Union he said he was considering firing the principals and half the staffs at schools that don’t turn their schools around. He didn’t make it sound like they had 5 to 7 years either. One and done was the impression that the article gave.

http://jaxkidsmatter.blogspot.com/2013/10/fear-teaching.html

Some of you might be thinking well if I go to work and don’t produce I can be let go at a moment’s notice and I concede that point but what if your job was building a bike while riding it…. In the rain… while blind folded, or what I like to call teaching, wouldn’t you hope for some leeway?

Teachers often working with limited resources and support aren’t always able to overcome the dehibilitating effects of poverty. They aren’t always able to overcome apathetic or absent parents or grumbling stomachs because kids are hungry or shaking legs because kids are scared. They aren’t always able to overcome a system which sets up so many for failure and sucks the joy of learning out of them with such an emphasis on high stakes testing.

The powers-that-be might chide them for this or call them failures and threaten their jobs but I thank them because I shudder when I think about where these kids, as behind as they are, would be without them.  

Then think about this who in their right mind would want to go to work at a school that had just fired half its staff?  Wouldn’t they constantly be thinking am I next? Who needs that? When the economy turns around nobody will.

I get it we want results and we want them now, but since he knows results despite hard work don't always show up over night I hope the super wouldn’t ask of teachers what he wouldn’t be willing to give up himself.

Kathleen Shanahan says Teach for America is better than anything Florida has to offer.

The soon to be departed state board of education member was on the redefined Ed blog today and I asked her the following question: … thoughts about Scott appointing a TFA alumni with a very brief connection to Florida to the board of ed? In short was she the best and most qualified that Florida had to offer. Thank You

To which she replied: On my board replacement, I think a TFA teacher will be a great voice of practicum and understanding on the SBOE. I look forward to assisting any way I can in her transition and am sure she will do a great job on the SBOE.

So there you have it a TFA teacher will be a great voice, not that she was ever even a TFA teacher in Florida. Professional teachers from Florida, not so much after all what would they know anyways right?  By the way what could this woman possibly add to the board? She has been in Florida for about five years, never taught a day  in a Florida classroom and had had even quit her job as a TFA supervisor  to open a consulting company before being put on the board.

It is beyond the pale that these people, Shanahan, Scott, Bush, Chartrand etc . tout Florida as such a success but then have nothing but open distain for our teachers. It really is amazing.

Thomas Friedman, um what did he say about public education again?

Some people like him but I find his writing reminds me of a reasonably bright 14 year old meandering on about a subject far above his head.

Apparently he is in china with Wendy Kopp the founder of Teach for America as she seeks to spread her brand of Mcteaching around the globe.

He wrote: Shanghai’s Qiangwei Primary School, with 754 students — grades one through five — and 59 teachers, I think I found The Secret:

After I read that I thought I had found the secret too, a class size with a ratio of 13-1. Smaller classes are often chided by education reformers but the truth is they are one of the reforms with evidence that says it works. 

He also wrote why he felt teachers there were so successful: These are: a deep commitment to teacher training, peer-to-peer learning and constant professional development, a deep involvement of parents in their children’s learning, an insistence by the school’s leadership on the highest standards and a culture that prizes education and respects teachers.

I wonder if Wendy Kopp picked up on anything or if he noticed the irony being there with her. You see her organization does the exact opposite of what is described above.  Instead it takes non-education types and puts them through a five week access course before dumping them in our neediest classrooms. Her organization by the way is insulting to professional teachers as she tries to turn teaching from a profession into a service job that she believes anybody can do.

It turns out however that it’s not the smaller classes that have led to their success it’s the small amount of teaching that their teachers actualy do. Read the following sitting down please:

Teng Jiao, 26, an English teacher here, said school begins at 8:35 a.m. and runs to 4:30 p.m., during which he typically teaches three 35-minute lessons. I sat in on one third-grade English class. The English lesson was meticulously planned, with no time wasted. The rest of his day, he said, is spent on lesson planning, training online or with his team, having other teachers watch his class and tell him how to improve and observing the classrooms of master teachers.

So first classes are just 35 minutes long?!? I have long said our classes (90 minutes in my district) are way too long and lead to down time and discipline problems. If teachers only had to teach in 35 minute spurts they would undoubtedly be going full speed the whole time. More amazingly however is this guy just teaches for 105 minutes or about a third of the time most teachers I know do. He is there for 8 hours a day but spends just an hour-forty-five teaching. He has more planning period a day than most teachers do in a week.   

Friedman has never been a friend of public education and teachers and before he writes his next rant slamming them I hope he remembers the things he saw, that adequate resources and appreciated well trained teachers lead to results and a lack of resources and overworked and marginalized teachers don't.  Then I hope he tells Kopp to get a clue too.

To read the entire article click the link: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/23/opinion/friedman-the-shanghai-secret.html?smid=tw-share&_r=0

Vitti, 5 to 7 years to improve district.

From the Times Union

Superintendent Vitti gets mad props! He draws the ire of Jeb Bush’s blog.

Superintendent Vitti was the subject of a hit piece from the ultra conservative Redefined Education blog earlier today. Funny I thought only I wrote those.  If you didn’t know it redefined Ed is Jeb Bush’s blog (though he never contributes) that he uses to spread his public school privatization agenda.

The author of today’s piece Doug Tuthill complained about a perceived adversarial relationship that Vitti is cultivating between public schools and charter schools, and no, despite what Bush and Tuthill would have you believe charter schools are not public schools. I guess Mr. Tuthill didn’t see the super at the recruit charter school conference and is unaware of the former charter school lobbyist that the district just hired.

From the article: That Duval parents are choosing non-district schools in increasing numbers suggest these schools are adding value to the community’s K-12 education system. Ideally, we’d expect the community’s top public educator to celebrate this success, but Vitti, like most district superintendents, sees these schools as competitors to be defeated and not assets to be nurtured. –

First, kids came back this year and as Vitti works out the kinks more will continue to return and  perhaps Vitti sees them as something that need to be defeated because he knows that private schools that receive vouchers as a group don’t do any better than public schools and he knows that charter schools as a group do worse. These despite the fact charter schools and voucher schools have tremendous advantages, including picking who they take and keep, over public schools. Maybe the super just wants substandard options to go away, something we should all want.

I want to see Mr.Tuthill’s piece about how charter schools often ignore districts strategic plans and open up anywhere and often go above districts to the state board who rubber stamps applications, to get their approval. I also want to see him acknowledge that as they are done in Florida (and in many other parts of the nation) they have degenerated into profit centers first and places where children get educated second. I am not a fan of charter schools but even charter school fans should be alarmed about what they have become.  

I have been a critic of Vitti’s close ties to charter schools because I want a super who is pro public education no matter what and is against the privatization wave that is passing through Florida but if he has drawn the ire of Jeb Bush’s blog, I say bravo sir and keep up the good work.

To read Tuthill’s piece, click the link: http://www.redefinedonline.org/2013/10/school-districts-regulate-school-choice-compete/

Doug Tuthill, Step up for Students bashes public education, says public schools aren’t “well suited” for educating children.

Mt. Tuthill definitely has some brass.  While advocating for private schools that take vouchers and charter schools, the first does no better than and the second worse, over public schools, he wrote: School districts have owned and managed public schools for 150 years, and the results indicate they are not well suited for this task.

WOW!!!!

Um, didn’t we put a man on the moon, build an interstate highway system and don’t we lead the world in innovation and technology? Not bad for a system with results saying it’s not up to the task of educating children.

Let me tell you a little about Mr. Tuthill, he took thirty pieces of silver from Jeb Bush and now runs (in between bashing public schools on Jeb’s blog) Step up for Students, the states voucher program, which took home over 7 million dollars, or the cost of 125 art teachers, in profit last year. He then used some of this money to support pro voucher legislators so he could get more money. Basically he used public money to try and get even more public money while siphoning money out of our classrooms oh and he makes over six figures too.

http://jaxkidsmatter.blogspot.com/2013/08/step-up-for-students-takes-floridas.html

If he thinks public schools are doing a poor job how can he advocate for things that do worse? Oh, he’s well paid to do so and that should tell you all you need to know about Mr. Tuthill.

Colbert on common core!

The false promise of advanced placement classes, shame on schools putting grades above what's best for students.

I have heard the story below a hundred times if I have heard it once. 

From a reader:

My daughter is an example of a student being eaten by the education machine. She is a good student, in the top 10% of her class...except for math. In math she has ridden the fat part of the curve for her entire school career with a solid B. In their zeal to meet state mandated standards for AP enrollment, the guidance department has quite an effective propaganda spiel in place. The lure of finishing college early, or having the luxury of taking "fun" classes in college because the tedious stuff is done as a high school AP student is dangled in front of the kids. The idea of spending $89 for an AP exam rather than $300+ per credit for a course in college is the carrot on the stick for the parents.

My daughter enrolled in 3 AP classes for her senior year - English, foreign language and statistics. Within a month she was drowning in stats, so much so that she is losing sleep and using more than half of her study time to deal with this one class when she has two other AP classes on her plate. Even with extra help from the teacher before school she will be lucky to get a passing grade for the semester. Trying to get her out of the class has been like asking the guidance director to cut off an arm. Who's purpose are they trying to serve? Shame on me for buying into the propaganda and allowing her to enroll in a class for which she was not qualified. But shame on them for putting the school's report card with the state ahead the best interest of the students

The biggest problem with eductaion is... Charter Schools.

Please don't think things are much better here in Florida.

From the Diane Ravitch blog:

Charter schools were supposed to be creative sources of innovation. They were supposed to show what could be accomplished when government got out of the way. The newcomers would give lessons to the professionals, who couldn’t be trusted.

But it hasn’t worked out that way. In Ohio, charter schools are some of the worst schools in the state. 83 of the lowest performing 84 schools in the state are charters.

Guido H. Stempel III, a distinguished professor emeritus in the E.W. Scripps School of Journalism at Ohio University, says that the people of Ohio have been cheated.

Stempl says the driving force behind charters is greed.

He writes:

“There are 27 organizations, and 25 of those are for-profit. One of those, with 17 schools, is run by an Islamic minister.

We have a double standard. There are 200 state laws that apply to public schools and not to charter schools Qualifications of teachers are not checked as they are for public school teachers. Auditing of finances does not occur as often.

The names of public school board members are public and listed in a state directory. There is no record of who the members of school boards for charter schools are or how they are chosen. Public school boards must have a regular meeting schedule, and if they schedule additional meetings they must notify local media.
The public does not know when charter school boards meet.

There is, in short, a lack of oversight.”

When the state ordered the state’s largest charter operator, David Brennan, to close two of his low-performing schools, “One reopened in the same place with a new name and the same staff. The other was the same story except that they replaced 30 percent of the staff.

“The charter schools are getting almost a billion dollars from the state. This year charter schools got bigger increases in state funding that the public schools did. Money was taken from appropriations for districts. More that a million dollars was taken from the five districts in Athens County.

Why do the legislature and governor protect charters from accountability?

Simple.

http://dianeravitch.net/2013/10/22/ohio-the-biggest-problem-in-education-today-is-charter-schools/

Blaming teachers and Common Core do not address poverty

Instead they are designed to distract you from poverty and that’s because mitigating poverty sends resources and money into classrooms and schools instead of to testing company and charter school managers’ bank accounts.

Once again poverty is the number one factor affecting education. Kids that live in poverty don’t do as well as those that don’t and two things: over a fifth of our kids live in poverty and another fifth just above it and when we control for poverty America’s international test scores zoom to the top.

Until we address poverty we will continue to spin our wheels in the mud and that’s undoubtedly what the teacher blamers and common core supporters want.