Tag: Tenure

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Politics teachers

Q. Are We Not Teachers? The Devolution of Education

We seem to have come to a critical point in the education deform movement. No, that’s not a typo: I don’t mean reform, I mean deform, because the people who want to use unreliable and faulty data to evaluate teachers and deny educators their negotiated due process rights are not reformers and never have been. They are out to twist education from a public responsibility to a privatized option whose purpose is to serve the needs of their wealthy supporters at the expense of unions and educators who know best how the system works and how it can best serve children.

It’s high time that policy makers, including Governors, Commissioners of Education (including ACTING Commissioners) and government officials respect the fact that educators know what works in the classroom and that they need to be intimately involved in the decision-making process. If you don’t include the stakeholders, any efforts at improving education will ultimately fail. We need to be loud and clear about what’s at stake, and to call for real reform that benefits parents, students and teachers. Please join me in expressing your concern about the direction that education reform is taking. We are headed down the wrong path.

Every word in this sentence is a link to an article that details the folly of using student standardized test scores to evaluate teachers. Yet, that’s exactly what the deformers want to do.

If what happened in New York City isn’t scary enough, consider this: Under the Value Added Model, teachers will be distilled down to a number and that number will stay with them for every year in which they teach. If the number is considered good, they’ll be OK, but if that number decreases, be ready for a storm that will make Katrina seem like a drizzle. Parents will want the teacher with the 86 rating, not you and your paltry 78. And just why were you a 92 last year but an 83 this year? It will be bad. Teachers will be two-students-who-ate-lousy-breakfasts-on-test-day away from being the teacher that nobody wants for their child.

In New Jersey,  there’s a bit of controversy over a  proposed teacher tenure bill because it would grandfather in all teachers who are currently working in schools. Never mind that those teachers have already been vetted during their 3 year probationary period. Governor Christie believes that New Jersey’s teachers as failing (even when they’re not) and that the NJEA lies about everything.

For the record, I have no problem with my dues money going to pay for advertisements and political action that calls out a governor who knows next to zilch about teaching or education or reforming or being diplomatic or appropriate or how to be a role model for anyone other than your average bully. And in a delicious irony, our bully-in-chief  signed an anti-bullying law that he refused to pay for and that was declared unconstitutional. Of course, there’s money for Christie’s tax cut proposal, but so far the response has been lukewarm at best.

Right now the deformers have the high ground. We know that the education and teacher bashing model is working because morale among educators has reached a new low. And that’s exactly what our society needs in a world of hyper-competitiveness, where education and skills will be the coin of the realm. Having a teaching staff that knows it’s unappreciated by the various elements who want to undermine public education is a sure fire way to keep American students undereducated for the future. And it’s a terrific strategy for  attracting and keeping the smart, creative, energetic, technologically savvy people we’ll need in education now and in the future.

The time is growing short for educators to take the lead and turn the deform movement into an actual educational reform movement. Get involved and let your voice be heard.

Are we not Teachers?

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Categories
Politics teachers

We Don’t Need No Stinkin’ Teachers

It’s simply amazing what happens when people get elected to statewide office. They seem to become experts on everything. Today’s Exhibit A is education, specifically in Idaho and New Hampshire, where the legislatures have passed legislation that not only threatens the role of teachers in their classrooms, but also undermines their expertise and reduces them to penitents at the altar of official incompetence.

I’ve been thinking about Idaho for most of the week. Not just because I used their yummy potatoes to make latkes for Chanukah (this should be Idaho’s official dish), but because of a law passed last year that mandates the use of technology in public school classrooms and requires students to take two online classes in order to graduate high school. What’s wrong with that, you say? Plenty, because it was passed with no teacher input and is based on faulty educational premises.

Why would any state pass rigorous teacher certification requirements and observe educators for a number of years to make sure they’re competent, only to ignore them when making key decisions about how to implement a costly program of technological innovation? That’s what happened in Idaho. Teachers had almost no input into the law, and even though the Governor said this was not a first step in reducing the number of teachers in classrooms, that sentiment was contradicted by the online course requirement.

It’s not a leap of imagination to believe that if the online component proves successful, either academically or economically, then the course requirement would be increased. Further, part of the funding for this program would be taken from teacher and administrative salaries, which is usually the first step towards the self-fulfilling prophecy that says since we need computers and they cost money, we need to reduce staff because we’re paying too much in salaries.

The even larger concern is the legislature’s, and governor’s, ignorant attitude towards the classroom teachers. From the article:

Idaho is going beyond what other states have done in decreeing what hardware students and teachers should use and how they should use it. But such requirements are increasingly common at the district level, where most decisions about buying technology for schools are made. 

Teachers are resisting, saying that they prefer to employ technology as it suits their own teaching methods and styles. Some feel they are judged on how much they make use of technology, regardless of whether it improves learning. Some teachers in the Los Angeles public schools, for example, complain that the form that supervisors use to evaluate teachers has a check box on whether they use technology, suggesting that they must use it for its own sake. 

The most effective scenario for any change in the curriculum is to have teachers at the table engaged in the process they will be asked to implement. Educators are the experts in child development, learning theories and styles, and how best to guide their particular classes (which change every year) so that every child has the opportunity to learn at their optimal level. When politicians get involved, you get attitudes like this:

For his part, Governor Otter said that putting technology into students’ hands was the only way to prepare them for the work force. Giving them easy access to a wealth of facts and resources online allows them to develop critical thinking skills, he said, which is what employers want the most. 

When asked about the quantity of unreliable information on the Internet, he said this also worked in favor of better learning. “There may be a lot of misinformation,” he said, “but that information, whether right or wrong, will generate critical thinking for them as they find the truth.” 

First, technology is not “the only way” to prepare students for the work force. Teachers know that technology can be a valuable tool in the classroom, but there are many other skills that students need to learn. Tell me how a computer teaches a student interpersonal skills. Tell me how technology actually teaches a student correct spelling, grammar and usage (and no, a red or green underline doesn’t count). Tell me how a computer teaches someone how to negotiate for their salary. Tell me how technology alone teaches critical thinking skills. Tell me how technology teaches organizational skills. Tell me how technology teaches a student which websites contain legitimate information and which do not.

The truth is that teachers teach these skills. They can use technology as their activity or resource to support and facilitate the lesson’s educational objective, but the technology is not the end itself. So when the governor says that technology is the only way and that computers themselves can teach critical thinking, he’s wrong. And that’s exactly the problem with the Idaho initiative. I applaud its goals. Classrooms should have technology available to all students because not all homes are equipped, but education decisions must include teachers. Even the students in Idaho’s schools get what the state’s leaders miss:

Last year at Post Falls High School, 600 students — about half of the school — staged a lunchtime walkout to protest the new rules. Some carried signs that read: “We need teachers, not computers.” 

Having a new laptop “is not my favorite idea,” said Sam Hunts, a sophomore in Ms. Rosenbaum’s English class who has a blond mohawk. “I’d rather learn from a teacher.” 

New Hampshire’s new law has nothing to do with technology. I wish it did, because it’s even more frightening and potentially damaging to teachers and public schools. This Nashua Telegraph article tells the story, and here is a summary:

Public schools can now be forced to come up with an alternative to any lesson or assignment that a parent finds objectionable.

On Wednesday, the Legislature overturned a veto from Gov. John Lynch on a bill, HB 542, that will require school districts create a policy “allowing an exception to specific course material based on a parent’s or legal guardian’s determination that the material is objectionable.” 

The legislation does not attempt to define “objectionable,” giving parents complete discretion.

So essentially, any parent can’t walk into any public school and demand an alternative curriculum by objecting to any lesson plan they want. As opposed to Idaho, Governor John Lynch vetoed this bill but was overridden by the Republican majority. The effect is the same, though. Teachers will now have to look over their shoulders at every turn and will need to craft alternate lessons, indeed an alternate course, if one parent objects. This not only undermines educational professionals in New Hampshire, but also subjects the schools to even more political mischief in the form of pandering to particular groups and stirring up dissent over familiar targets like sexual references, defense of non-western religions and vocabulary that others find objectionable. All you need to do is read the comments under the article to see what kind of damage awaits New Hampshire’s educational community (Pete Perkins, you are my hero). Yes, parents will need to pay if there’s a cost involved, but replacing a book or video for one child would have minor economic repercussions.

But there’s also the matter of the new national test score craze.What happens when a parent opts their child out of enough lessons and the child doesn’t perform well on the tests? Who’s responsible? Is it the teacher’s job to develop an alternative state test to measure what that students has learned in their curriculum? Will the parent be responsible for the parts of the test that the student never learned (already know the answer here). How can a teacher prepare all students when there are so many potential changes due to parent objections? Who’s thought this one through (already know the answer)?

As a resident of New Jersey, I am used to having politicians with no teaching backgrounds expound on their damaging ideas. Governor Christie is a fan of using test scores to evaluate teachers, but he ignores the research that says how difficult it is to design an accurate evaluation model or the economic and curricular impact of testing every student in every subject every year. He’s also excluded public school teachers from a panel that studied reform ideas that, surprise, concluded that Christie’s ideas were more beneficial.

A recent New York Times article used the Value Added Model to reinforce the idea that good teachers have an impact on their students that reaches far beyond the classroom. What makes a good teacher according to the research? Why, one that raises student test scores. I call this Reinforced Illogical Garbage, or RIG. And right now, the system is RIGged against informed, rational, collaborative educational policies that tap into the enormous knowledge base of teachers, who actually know best how to educate children.

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Politics Teacher

Lies, Damn Lies, and the Truth About Teacher Tenure

Have you heard the latest story about teachers and tenure? No? It goes like this. A teacher was given stellar evaluations for two and a half years. In the spring of the third year, the principal wrote a savagely negative review of one of the teacher’s lessons because the teacher made comments about how cold their classroom was during the winter, and that  the children were complaining that it was difficult to concentrate. Parents called the principal to complain. The principal was embarrassed and wrote a negative evaluation. The teacher never received tenure.

Never heard that one?

How about this one? A student accused a tenured teacher of using inappropriate language in the classroom. The principal didn’t get along well with this teacher, an officer in the local teacher’s association, and made it abundantly clear that all they needed was an excuse to cause the teacher trouble. After a cursory investigation, the principal recommended that the teacher lose their salary increment for the next year because teachers shouldn’t use foul language in front of students. Two months later, the student admitted lying about the incident because they were upset with a grade they received in the teacher’s class. The teacher was given back the salary increase that was taken from them.

Chances are good that you never heard that story either.

Why do I mention these incidents, both of which actually occurred? Because they illustrate the difference between a teacher having fair dismissal rights and one that does not. They also illustrate the lies and misinformation floating around about what tenure actually means in practice.

Nowhere is this in more vivid view than Tom Moran’s piece in Sunday’s Newark Star-Ledger. It’s essentially a response to an article by Janine Walker Caffrey, the Superintendent of Schools in Perth Amboy, NJ. Both of these writings sound the alarm bells that the public loves to hear. From Moran:

Janine Caffrey, the schools superintendent in Perth Amboy, could hardly believe the teacher was so incompetent.

The kids didn’t have needed textbooks. There was no lesson plan. Other teachers complained that students were learning nothing. And when the principal demanded changes, the teacher wouldn’t budge.

So Caffrey, a spark plug of energy, left her sparsely furnished office to meet the teacher for a showdown, ready to whap some sense into this person once and for all.

But it didn’t work out that way.

“This teacher looked me in the eye and said, ‘I won’t do it.’ Just an outright refusal. And this has happened to multiple people before me. We’ve done multiple corrective action plans, and it’s not achieving any results.”

So the teacher won the showdown and is still standing in front of a classroom full of kids every day, supremely secure in defiance.

Only one word can explain this insanity: tenure.

It certainly sounds horrible, and if the story is true, that teacher should not be teaching in the public schools. The real problem is not tenure, though. It’s buried deep in Morans’ article and it goes like this: 

To be fair, districts share some of the blame as well. Tenure rules might be crazy, but it is possible to get rid of the worst teachers if the district builds a solid case with a paper trail. In the case of the refusenik teacher, Perth Amboy failed to do that. The teacher had won satisfactory evaluations in the past, as nearly all teachers do.

The problem, my friends, is that the principal was not doing their job. There’s no sharing here. If principals are not building cases or informing the teacher’s association representatives that a teacher is a problem, or is having a problem, then the principal is at fault. All on their own. And if the principal or supervisor is routinely giving positive reviews to ineffective or bad teachers, they need to stop. I don’t know where Moran gets his “nearly all teachers” receive satisfactory evaluations data. My guess is that he’s simply repeating what he’s heard. It’s a great story, but he needs to support his statements with facts.

Why is this all on the administration and not the teacher’s union? Because the NJEA has nothing to do with whether a teacher earns tenure. The legislature wrote and passed the tenure laws and school administrators are responsible for implementing them.

Tenure is not a job for life. It’s a guarantee that a teacher cannot be fired for frivolous, personal, vindictive reasons by administrators who don’t like them or need to install a relative in their place.

Tenure is a requirement that a teacher who has earned it is confronted by evidence of misdeed, misconduct or behavior that puts children at risk.

Tenure is earned after working, with positive recommendations by the Superintendent, Principal and, if necessary, Department Supervisor, for three years in the same school district. It shouldn’t be handed out like candy at Halloween, but sometimes it is. And it’s not the teacher’s fault. The responsibility is all on the administrator. And if Superintendents like Janine Caffrey do not build a case, then a bad teacher can only be removed by going through the process, which Moran cites in a nifty chart in his article.

Moran and Caffrey also bring up how much it costs to discipline or fire a teacher who has earned tenure. The NJEA has offered a tenure reform plan that would streamline the process so it would take 90 days at most, as opposed to the possible two plus years it takes now, to settle cases. That would help, but it would do nothing to solve the problem of administrators doling out good reviews to ineffective or bad teachers.

So what to do?

How about having principals and supervisors observe teachers 8 times per year for the first three years (or four years as the NJEA plan proposes) and 6 times a year once they’ve earned tenure? That would create a tremendous amount of data by which a teacher could be evaluated before and after they’ve earned tenure. And since the overwhelming majority of teachers who do earn tenure deserve it and are members of the best teaching staff in the country as measured by national test scores, observing them a few more times might catch the few who would be problems down the road. Another good idea would be to have a teacher’s first year be a residency year, where someone new to the profession could receive help from a qualified mentor. This mentoring could then continue for the next 3 years.

One other issue also rears its head when people discuss tenure, and that’s the question of why teachers have it and other professions don’t. My answer is that other professions should have some kind of objective job protection. The arguments against public workers by governors such as Chris Christie, Scott Walker and John Kasich revolve around the idea that since private sector workers don’t have these benefits, then no workers should have them. They seem to be more concerned with breaking the unions than they do with actually improving education.

That’s backwards.

The decline of unions has meant that workers are more and more at the mercy of management and it’s time that we changed that conversation. Terrible stories, such as the ones in Moran’s article only illustrate one side of the debate. If school management would all do their jobs in an honest, forthright way, we could more readily dismiss ineffective teachers. And that would be a positive step forward for everyone.

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