I summarized Florida's Education Summit yesterday indicating that the event may have moved us a step forward towards genuine dialogue on education reform. We are certainly better off than if the summit never occurred!
What we haven't looked at -- as a state or nation -- is the big picture on some of these proposed reforms. Let's take a step back and away from the intense debate and ask this question:
Who are these reform initiatives really intended for?
The triumvirate of reforms being aggressively pushed right now are: 1) ending teacher tenure; 2) merit pay based on standardized test scores; and, 3) closing schools/firing staffs.
1) How will ending a teacher's right to due process (consistently mischaracterized as lifetime employment) help to improve the quality of education for children? Short-termers will teach without mentors or seasoned teachers to assist them? Who will you attract to the teaching profession when due process is gone? Corporate America has due process with upper management levels on day one of employment.
2) Merit pay will merely ratchet up the stakes surrounding standardized tests even more. High stakes on tests -- your pay or job riding on one test -- increase the dependency on mind-numbing bubble tests. That doesn't enrich the curriculum. In fact, it narrows it and creates more weeks of test prep, drill and practice.
3) How does closing neighborhood schools help improve the quality of education? Even when the handful of a few good charters acquire rights to open up, many children whose English is a second language or who are dubbed "hard to teach" are left in the dust of the closed school. That's reality versus rhetoric, Real world versus propaganda.
None of the reforms being touted and legislated in some states will truly enhance the quality of education. Isn't that what we set out to accomplish? When, where and why did we take a wrong turn?
Instead, this grand illusion of three reforms impedes improvement to public education. Hidden under the smokescreen of "tough love" reforms, these initiatives are destroying public education in our nation. Celebrities signed on to this front and the media bought it, hook, line and sinker.
Let's call a charade, a charade.
These reforms are specifically intended to acquire power or control over unions. Some may think that's the right fight. Some may think that's the wrong fight. But many will agree it's being played out in the wrong ring -- the classroom. The children of our nation, particularly in impoverished areas, are the ones being sucker punched.
Take your fight outside of the classroom! Settle it across a negotiation table or in a conference room or challenge each other to duels. Take a step back and realize that's what this has been reduced to. Then, for the love of all that's good and holy, please take this feud out of the classroom. These particular initiatives will cause irreparable damage to the future of our children. Don't let this administration be remembered as the one that sacrificed children's futures to seek revenge on unions.
Ending tenure reduces the candidate pool; merit pay further narrows the curriculum; and closing schools and firing staffs leaves many children in impoverished areas without a choice and devoid of hope.
I'm a business woman, a parent, a non union member who hails from corporate America. My only "skin in the game" is seeing my tax dollars disappear. I don't enjoy seeing my money transferred to private entities who think they can run a school, nor do I relish watching area schools open and close like check-cashing stores. If I want to invest in privatized education, I will. I want my tax dollars to go towards public education as I'm told they do.
My only motivation is to be a voice for all children who cannot be heard. Parents of America's only focus is children. We no longer choose to sit in ringside seats and witness endless bouts. Our children. Our schools. Our voices.
Follow Rita M. Solnet on Twitter: www.twitter.com/ritacolleen
Timothy D. Slekar: Rejecting Standardized Testing With The Bartleby Project
I say this because we don't have teachers unions here, and yet bad teachers teach here every year and never get fired where I am. I've worked at the school I'm at night these 12 years now, and I've only seen 1 person actually get fired--a foreign exchange teacher who got caught falsifying his credentials. All other bad teachers with un-falsified credentials got to stay that year.
I agree with this author--when I hear "down with the unions! up with performance pay!" talk, I always think: What does Mr. X *really* want out of this? What is Ms. Y's real agenda here? Because,as a person who does this job every day, I promise you there are so, so, SO many other, bigger fish these people could be frying.
Unions? How teachers get paid? Should we charterize? Seriously? THAT'S what keeps these guys up at night?
As a mom and a teacher, things that keep me up at night are: will my child be able to compete globally in 18 years? Why is it 2011 and we're still educating like it's 1911?
We're in trouble, and they're worried about 1/10 of 1/100th of the problem. Typical.
We want to reform education. We have ideas--every teacher I know is full of ideas. There's a lot to discuss, a lot of things we could do.
Unfortunately, everybody else wants to reform teachers, not education.
It's not the same thing. Not remotely.
South Carolina is one of the poorest states in our nation, and student achievement is commensurate. But, if you are a public school teacher, you are not surprised, for decades of data point to a correlation (of not a causation) between the two.
Oddly enough, South Carolinan teachers are NOT unionized and they do not have tenure; not now and not in the past. Various and sundry reforms have been tried, but student achievement has not soared to (almost) universal proficiency in the state.
Perhaps some of our anti-union readers are not aware that there are many places, most in the south, where teachers have no union and no tenure; never have. I ask the detractors to furnish data that demonstrates that these non-unionized school systems outperform the systems populated with lazy, tenured, unionized teachers, for that would strongly support the contention that teacher unions are THE problem.
I will wait...
Excellent.
F and F.
Perhaps if the public was actually aware of everything that teachers do in the classroom outside of our CONTRACTED duties to instruct and assess, they would better understand that lack of parental involvement or students choosing to play video games or surf YouTube while at home instead of studying has a far greater effect on student success than is given credit for.
What is comical is there are many in the public that cry teachers are failing the students yet not one of these on their soapbox has stepped up and joined the profession to help with the solution. It is easier to complain and blame than to be part of the solution. Perhaps if the public quit complaining every time their property taxes were raised, our schools would be adequately funded where teachers would not have to spend the little money we make to compensate for our student's whose parents are poor and can't afford supplies.
Compare that to teaching, where the continuing education is often required, but at employee expense.
I can't resist answering your well-written defense of the education establishment. :)
How will ending tenure help children? Because tenure, which is indeed a guarantee of lifetime employment, keeps incompetent teachers in front of thousands of American children every day. If it's not a guarantee, then perhaps instead of each of us using words, we should cite numbers, so readers can decide for themselves. Make sense? Over a four-year period in Newark, the percentage of tenured teachers let go was 0.03%, (generally those accused felonies or physical violence). Another example: Bergen County, NJ, has 75 school districts, hundreds of schools, and many thousands of teachers. Over an entire decade, the grand total of tenured teachers let go was: Zero. (Original sources for these statistics are shown in "The Cartel" movie.) Please present other data, if you have.
How would closing schools help children? Because they could escape chronically failing, dropout factories, they'd be reassigned to better schools, and there would finally be some consequence to failure, where today there's none.
It's a sad and self-serving paradox for the establishment to support the closure of failing charter schools, (which we all believe in), while opposing the closure of failing district schools. Are one set of children more important than the other? Of course not. It's simply that one set of adults are unionized and the other set generally isn't.
That's all the evidence anyone needs about whether these policies are "for the kids."
We keep hearing there needs to be consequences for failing teachers but where is the accountability and consequences for parents who are not involved in the academic process or the accountability for students who refuse to learn/participate in the education that is provided for them through tax dollars? If a student DECIDES not to learn no matter my effort or methods, does that make me a bad teacher?
Its time to stop the union and teacher bashing and stop distracting the public with these straw men propped up to give the illusion that there are cheap and easy fixes to our problems.
The worst part is that it then tries to wrap it in a thin veneer of concern for the welfare of the children. It goes to show just how divorced from reality this article is.
The unions are the problem. Until there is some reform there we will not move forward with education.
Kai
"The unions are the problem" is an often-repeated refrain. No thought required. It just doesn't fit the facts.
The movement to squash all unionization in this country, which has been succeeding, is fueled by the corporatocracy that has its eyes on our $$$. They seek to enlarge their pocketbooks at our expense. Just please look to Enron, Wall Street and their cronies to measure the level of concern they have for ordinary Americans, employees or students.
Here is the best argument I heard: There will be natural variation among schools. Parents who care will know about that, and send their kids to the better ones. It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy - over time the most involved parents, who have the most capable kids, and the best teachers will tend to gather in a couple of high-performing schools; the best will get better and the worst will get worse.
Of course all parents who can do exercise school choice. We pick neighborhoods based on the reputation of the schools and send our kids to private schools if we can. So you get the same result.
People seem to evaluate the idea of choice against a perfect system that does not exist. Would there be 100% equity in a system with choice? No, almost certainly not. Your very brief explanation shows why. Would it be less equitable than the current system? In my opinion the answer is the same--almost certainly not. Again, your very brief explanation shows why.
But I think this question of how they compare should "be the battlefield" so to speak, whereas currently people seem to have redefined the battle as whether a choice system is perfectly equitable. The answer to that question is clear, but the real question is whether it is more equitable.
If your method of providing choice is designed well (for example, (a) prove that your new school is in an area of high need; (b) have open admission to anyone who wants to apply), then I think the answer is yes. If it's not obvious I should point out that I'm talking about a charter system or something similar--not vouchers.
1. We know the huge impact improving the quality of teaching will have. We know that effectiveness of teaching is NOT related to: having an education degree, having a master's degree, being certified, and being a teacher for more than 5 years. How would you achieve the objective of improving the quality of teaching? [Reformers propose ending teacher tenure because it's the single greatest impediment to achieving this goal. Think of an alternative.]
2. We know teachers aren't always performing at the levels they're capable of. We also know that teachers frequently think they're doing a good job when in fact the children they're teaching are doing worse than the previous year. What kinds of incentives will make it clear when a teacher is actually performing, and will encourage him or her to peak performance? Reformers suggest merit pay tied to test scores and other measures of student performance. Recommend something else.
3. Some schools perform poorly year after year, and can be characterized only as drop-out factories. Similar schools don't. Attempts to improve them have failed. And budgets are tight. Reformers say close the schools and start over. You?
As for training, isn't that what you get before you're hired to do the work? If not, then what training do you think will make the difference?
As for #3, there's not much data to support that, at least as a reasonably cost-effective approach. Individual tutoring worked really well for Aristotle and Alexander, but I don't think will scale. Just saying.
http://www.examiner.com/dade-county-education-policy-in-miami/who-profits-from-for-profit-charter-schools-florida
Or comparison of police, city by city, on crime rates or solved crime rates.
Or merit pay for nurses. Or value-added calculations for firefighters.
Or public condemnation of civil engineers as a group. I'm not hearing any of this.
"Corporate America has due process with upper management levels on day one of employment."
We generally operate under employment at will in corporations, except at the very highest levels (the CEO and his or her direct reports, usually). That means you can be fired with no notice for no reason at all. Most states have a public policy exception to that rule; whistle-blowers, for example, cannot be fired in retaliation. And you can't be fired for race, ethnicity, sex, etc. -- the "suspect classes."
For most of us, the reality is that we must continue to prove ourselves year after year on the job. A new kid out of college who has more energy, more enthusiasm, and more current skills will replace us in a second. Perpetuating the myth that other professionals enjoy protections teachers are in danger of losing that teachers are being singled out for hardships others don't endure, does not help -- it encourages teachers to raise the issue again and again, and people who don't and never did enjoy such protections become less and less sympathetic to their cause.