"Flunking Out Bad Journalism" - Part I

It's difficult to know where to begin with this massive exercise in lazy, ignorant journalism that greets us this morning in the pages of the Star-Ledger. "Flunking Out Bad Teachers" - a miserably failed attempt to address tenure reform in New Jersey - has so many flaws, it's nearly impossible to address them all.

The best I can do is start with this overall theme: your modern media does not care about education. This piece is riddled with inconsistencies, inaccuracies, and bias - but it's also, sadly, par for the course. The front page of the "Perspectives" section features a public poll that comports with the premises of this article, as if this were a justification for pushing the badly formed "solutions" the S-L is touting. I take it, instead, as an indictment of how poorly the media - in particular, the NJ media - is serving the public. If people actually knew the facts about tenure, teacher evaluations, and student performance, they would never sign on to the nonsense this article champions.

Keeping this in mind, let's dig in:

- O'Connor's piece starts with anecdotes about two teachers no one would ever want to stay in a classroom. Even a fairly bright 12-year-old knows, however, that two stories about bad teachers who were difficult to dismiss does not make a pattern. Where's O'Connor's real proof? What does she cite that shows we have such a serious problem with bad teachers who aren't dismissed that we have to radically upend the entire tenure system?

Well..

After three years and one day on the job, teachers get tenure virtually automatically in New Jersey, according to the National Council on Teacher Quality, a nonpartisan research group.

Anytime I hear a journalist say "nonpartisan research group," my BS detector switches on. There are many "nonpartisan" groups out there that are anything but. There are plenty of reasons to doubt NCTQ's research - plenty of reasons - but let's go to the actual study (I think) O'Connor is talking about:

New Jersey’s probationary period for new teachers is just three years, and the state does not require any meaningful process to evaluate cumulative effectiveness in the classroom before teachers are awarded tenure. (p.40)

No, the STATE doesn't require it - but that doesn't mean it doesn't happen, and for one good reason: in the first three years, any teacher can be removed at the end of their yearly contract, for absolutely NO REASON. I've seen this first hand several times.

Now, I hope someone here corrects me if I'm wrong, but I do not believe the state keeps any records of how many teachers are let go in their first three years under this system. We do, however, know several things about those first three years:

• 50% of new teachers leave the profession in their first five years.
• 8-9% of teachers leave the profession every year.

You simply can't have a rational discussion about tenure without taking this into account. Two horror stories do not make up for these well-documented facts.

- Back to the NCTQ report. It's only a survey of state practices, ranked by the criteria NCTQ has decided is important because... well, they say it's important. What the report doesn't do is compare state effectiveness in student learning - which the NCTQ says is CRITICAL to evaluating individual teachers - to see if the state policies actually lead to better results.

(Can I just interject here a minute to say "What the hell"? You're gonna tell us about all these "best practices", and then you won't try to see if they actually correlate to better student performance? Are you kidding me? I feel another post coming on later - especially after a quick look at the "research" the NCTQ's recommendations are based on...)

O'Connor puts a little box based entirely based on this report next to her article to compare NJ to the rest of the nation; however, she makes the same mistake. If student achievement is so important, why aren't we comparing achievement in NJ to these other states with different tenure policies?

Maybe because the results NJ gets don't neatly match up with the argument that the system is a mess:

8th Grade NAEP

O'Connor repeats this canard:

Only eight states require districts to consider any evidence of teacher performance as part of tenure decisions, according to the group’s most recent report. The remaining 42 states, including New Jersey, allow districts to award tenure virtually automatically.

It's not "automatic" if you can be fired for no reason in your first three years, is it? And unless and until you can show me statistics about how many teachers are let go in those non-tenure years, your argument is pointless - especially when so many teachers leave the profession in those first three years!

Honestly, this is so frustrating. How hard is this to understand? More to the point, why didn't O'Connor seek out someone to make this opposing case to her readers?! Did she not think that was important?

- One last thing about the NCTQ report before we go on: O'Connor says NJ got a "D" in the report "for its tenure rules." I can't find that anywhere. I did find the 2009 State Teacher Policy Yearbook, which give NJ a "D+" for state policies related to teacher quality - NOT tenure policies. Again, this has nothing to do with the actual quality of the teachers: it is merely NCTQ's assessment of state policies based on what THEY want to see.

The S-L needs to make a correction here.

- One of the big arguments of the 'formers against tenure is that it has become unnecessary. O'Connor parrots:

Today, the situation is different. Dozens of federal and state laws that didn’t exist when tenure was created now protect teachers and everyone else from being fired arbitrarily. Reformers argue teachers no longer need any special protection.

Anti-discrimination laws are critical, but they do not address the specific issues that tenure addresses: corruption, cronyism, academic freedom, grading, etc. Further, do we really want to tie up the courts with lawsuit after lawsuit? Tenure is a process which frees up the legal system; making schools more litigious is a recipe for disaster.

- This kills me:

Because it’s so hard to get rid of bad teachers, many are just shuffled between districts in what’s been dubbed “the dance of the lemons.”

As any NJ teacher will tell you, tenure is only good in the district where you earn it. If you leave for another district, you lose your tenure. How is it possible that it's so hard to get rid of bad teachers if they keep losing their tenure when they go to other districts?

If O'Connor or her editors had any idea what they were talking about, they never would have printed this illogical sentence.

- It's becoming increasingly apparent that the war on teachers is a proxy fight for the war on the middle class. Teaching is one of the last professions that has vestiges of an earlier time when income inequity didn't rob workers of their share of productivity gains.

Rather than make the argument that the compensations teachers earn should be extended to all workers, the political right makes the argument that teachers need to give up the benefits they've traditionally been given in lieu of lower pay, because those benefits are no longer being extended to other workers (in order to fund the extreme concentration of wealth in the very top of our society).

In other words: the middle class lost its pensions, so teachers need to lose their pensions. The middle class lost affordable health care, so teachers need to lose affordable health care.

And the middle class lost union protections and due process, so...

There’s little hope of improving evaluations when tenure still places such an onerous burden of proof on districts to fire people, said Brian Osborne, superintendent of schools for the South Orange and Maplewood district. The mountains of documents, the expense — it creates a chilling effect on administrators.

“It means people get away with too much,” he said. “What district wants to go through the entire process of mounting a case only to lose? Every time that happens, it tells everyone in the system that what they’re supposed to do is tolerate mediocre performance.”

Screw innocent before proven guilt; screw the burden of proof. If we get rid of those antiquated notions, we're much more like to have a servile and compliant teaching corps: one willing to accept lower pay.

- Again: everybody agrees that bad teachers need to go. How many bad teachers we actually have seems to be a question no one wants to answer seriously, but maybe we can get people to ponder this: how do bad teachers get hired in the first place?

Meanwhile, in districts across the state, reformers are chafing against tenure because it stops them from doing the one thing they are certain will help — getting rid of terrible teachers. Shavar Jeffries, president of the school board in Newark, calls tenure “an albatross on our ability to reform our district.” It makes it really tough to do anything about the “substantial” number of underperforming teachers and principals in the city’s schools, he said.

“When you have tenure, it locks in a large proportion of folks who should not be in front of our kids,” he said. “It does frustrate me, absolutely.”

Mr. Jeffries, are you saying your administration goes out of their way to hire bad teachers? Or could it possibly be that we simply don't have a large enough pool of qualified teachers, and your administrators have no choice but to take the ones they can get?

But if that's the case, how will getting rid of tenure help you in the slightest?

I'm going to tackle the rest of this - including the obligatory interview with St. Rhee of Arc - later. Right now I have to do some prep for my "job for life."

High-Performing Students? Meh...

So says the Gates-funded, ultra-reformy National Council on Teacher Quality:

New Jersey’s report card from a group that seeks to improve standards for the nation’s teachers is dismal: D-plus, 36th in the U.S. and making less progress than most states.

The report, scheduled to be published today by the National Council on Teacher Quality, could bolster parts of Gov. Chris Christie’s education overhaul agenda — though his critics say it shouldn’t.

The analysis considers how teachers are trained, evaluated, rewarded and fired.

But it does not assess the overall state of teaching and learning. That’s an area where, on average, New Jersey is among the highest-performing states — despite being home to low-performing schools, particularly in its most impoverished cities like Camden.

Some of the areas Christie wants to fix are the same ones the Washington-based research and policy group says are broken.

“What the governor has proposed with evaluation and tenure would put New Jersey among the trailblazer states,” said Sandi Jacobs, vice president of the teacher quality organization.

New Jersey’s grade barely budged from the “D” it received from the council two years ago.

Florida, a state where standardized test scores are far short of New Jersey’s, received the highest mark this year — and it got just a “B.” [emphasis mine]

Wait a minute: New Jersey has HIGHER student scores than Florida, but gets a worse grade from NCTQ? Are we sure Florida isn't doing a better job at teaching kids?

Yep:

New Jersey beats Florida in every NAEP assessment listed on the state comparison tool. And New Jersey beats the national average in all of its assessments; Florida beats the national average in only five.

How is this possible? Because - as both Susan Ohanian and I have repeatedly pointed out - these think tanky rankings have nothing to do with student achievement. They are based solely on whether the state in question is doing whatever the think tank making the rankings wants the state to do. But here's the problem...

Florida is doing a good job following NCTQ's prescriptions, and New Jersey is doing a poor job. But New Jersey's students do better than Flroida's. Logic suggests only two possibilities:

1) NCTQ's policies have no effect on student achievement.
2) NCTQ's policies have a negative effect on student achievement.

It's got to be one or the other, folks. But in either case, if you want a state's kids to do well on the NAEP, ignore NCTQ.

ADDING: Trolls, please don't bring up the ridiculous argument that if the NAEP is good for comparing states, standardized tests must be good for identifying good teachers. Just because screwdrivers are great for driving screws doesn't mean they're also good at beating eggs.

ADDING MORE: Even the wingers funded by the Koch brothers can't deny that New Jersey's kids kick some serious academic ass:

New Jersey moved from 10th place to third in student performance based on the 2011 scores for low-income students on the National Assessment of Educational Progress, or NAEP, given to fourth- and eighth-graders. Massachusetts and Vermont were the top two states based on student performance, and both also scored poorly on teacher quality.

Maybe "teacher quality" means something different when you're living in a think-tanky, hermetically sealed bubble. And dig this:

New Jersey gets an A for home school regulations, because the state has none. Parents who choose to teach their children at home are not required to follow any state guidelines or curriculum.

Oy. These people get to spew this stuff all over the press; me, I can't get a simple reply from Tom Moran...

RTTT Handicapping

I took a quick look at the National Council on Teacher Quality's assessment of the Race To the Top applications. A few things strike me:

• NCTQ puts a big premium on undermining tenure. I've asked this before: where is the research that shows that poor teachers who were granted tenure is a big problem? I'm always astonished at how many people "know" that burned out teachers are a huge issue - are they? Where's the proof?
• NCTQ loves them some standardized testing. Too bad they don't seem to care about the quality of these tests, and whether anyone is looking at whether they are an accurate measure of teacher quality (or student quality, for that matter). And who decided 50% was some sort of magic number for weighting these tests?
• No where does NCTQ take into consideration the many criticisms Bruce Baker and others have made of value-added assessment: the 25% to 35% error rates, the massive legal issues, the fact that so many teachers won't be evaluated by standardized testing, the problems with cheating. Shouldn't the RTTT applications have to deal with this stuff? Or is it just OK to just slap some high-stakes testing in there and call it a day?
• I never saw such hoopla over so little money. $4 billion: we spent that in Afghanistan each month in 2009. And this is a one-shot deal.

We are radically messing with our education system for a few peanuts, promoting ideas that are either untried, untested, or have been shown to be failures. And groups like NCTQ haven't even stopped to think about it.

But don't mind me - full speed ahead!

We may be lost, but we're making great time!

UPDATE: In the comments, Thinker adds:

So let me get this straight, the governor's office hemmed and hawed about taking the federal money to put teachers back in the classroom, even threatening not to take the funds because...it was a one shot deal and they were concerned about what strings could be attached. On the other hand, they have been sprinting forward to try to get their hands on the rttt money even though....is is a one shot deal and there are strings attached. Ok, I see now...ummmm, not really.

Spot on. There is no hypocrisy capable of shaming this governor. 

NCTQ Fail

In 2008, the National Council on Teacher Quality gave NJ a "B" for how well we do at "Exiting Ineffective Teachers":

Exiting ineffective teachers 

New Jersey’s policies for exiting ineffective teachers are better than most states but still leave room for improvement. Although the state requires three annual evaluations of new teachers, with the first occurring in the first half of the school year, no policy has been articulated regarding teachers who receive unsatisfactory evaluations. Commendably, the state also requires that all teachers pass all required subject-matter tests as a condition of initial licensure. (p.40)

In 2009, the NCTQ gave NJ at "D+" for how well we do at "Exiting Ineffective Teachers":

Exiting Ineffective Teachers

New Jersey commendably requires that all teachers pass all required subject-matter tests as a condition of initial licensure. However, the state fails to articulate a policy regarding teachers who receive unsatisfactory evaluations. Regrettably, New Jersey does not address the appeal process for tenured teachers who are terminated for poor performance, and it fails to distinguish due process rights for teachers dismissed for ineffective performance from those facing license revocation for dereliction of duty or felony and/or morality violations. (p.77)

Now, were I a snarky bastard, I'd point out that the only change in NJ's educational policy between the publication of the 2008 and 2009 reports was the election of Chris Christie. But, hey, NCTQ is "non-partisan" - I'm sure they'd NEVER politicize their reports...

I'll just leave you to conjecture for yourself why NJ would get such a different grade with no accompanying changes in policies.

I'll also leave you to ponder the irony that these are the people who insist that results on tests are an effective way to judge teacher quality, because testing instruments are SO reliable...

Born to Teach?

Via Twitter, Leonie Haimson points us to a post by Gene Glass about every refomyist's favorite academic mercenary, Eric Hanushek. This piece mostly concentrates on Hanushek's absurd contention that money doesn't matter in determining school success (I'll leave it to Bruce Baker to explain that it most certainly does). That's important; but what really intrigued me about Glass's piece was this:

Hanushek is nothing if not a believer in the unconditional truth emanating from his regression equations. But of course, those equations have not always been as clear cut in their implications as some might believe. In 1997, Hanushek published an article in which he argued that a summary of dozens and dozens of correlation studies proved that teacher experience is unrelated to their students’ achievement—the financial implications being obvious. He presented the following summary of studies that investigated the relationship (in terms of regression coefficients) between student achievement and their teachers’ “years of experience.” 

 

Although a statistically significant regression coefficient for “teacher experience” was six times more likely to be positive than negative, Hanushek nonetheless read the results as negative for the effects of teacher experience on achievement. “Importantly, … 71% [of the regression coefficients] still indicate worsening performance with experience or less confidence in any positive effect,” he wrote. 

The logic of this conclusion is illusive—no; it makes no sense. Of results that reach statistical significance, 85% (60/70) are positive; students of more experienced teachers achieve at higher levels. Of the statistically non-significant results that can be determined, 55% are positive, but fail to reach conventional levels of significance. Hanushek creates an impression of no effect of teacher experience by lumping together the category (1) “indicative of worsening performance or less confidence of beneficial performance” all significant but negative coefficients (5%), (2) all nonsignificant coefficients whether positive or negative (30% + 24%) and, (3) remarkably, the 12% of the coefficients that were so incompletely reported that it could not be determined whether they were positive or negative. The treatment of these data is hardly even handed. By such logic, ten “positive studies,” “no negative studies” and 100 studies so poorly reported that the results could not be discerned would lead Hanushek to a conclusion of no confidence in a positive result. My reading of these results is much different from Hanushek's. Regression studies have generally shown a positive relationship between teacher experience and student achievement. Period. [emphasis mine]

This is, of course, one of the reformies' favorite arguments: after the first few years, experience doesn't make much difference. It's the basis of coming up with illogical and unworkable schemes like NCTQ's teacher pay "restructuring." The problem is that it is a house built on statistical sand.

But it also brings me to a larger point: if Hanushek and NCTQ and all the other reformyists think experience doesn't make a great teacher, what does? Bill Gates says it's not advanced degrees. TFA is predicated on the idea that it's not extensive training. What's left?

Talent, I guess. Which never changes with experience, training, or education. Either you're a good teacher after a couple of years, or you're not, and nothing can change that.

Folks, does that make any sense to you?

I'm not saying that talent doesn't matter. I'm not saying that some people won't show a natural ability at teaching, just like any other field. But it's absurd on its face to think that experience doesn't matter. It's silly to think good education and good training won't make anyone better at what they do.

The notion of an innate super-teacher, however, fits nicely with the corporate CEO/hedge fund manager worldview. They see themselves as extraordinary individuals, imbued with special powers. Their mirrors reflect the image of Nietzschean supermen who deserve their obscene wealth due to their inherent superiority.  No wonder they believe a great teacher is simply imbued with top-rate pedagogical abilities. It's a Ayn Randian fantasy: Howard Roark as Mr. Chips. And it plays directly to their own vanities.

The problem, of course, is that it has nothing - nothing - to do with reality.

ADDING: Via Miss Katie, this was always the plan:

As one of its deficit-reduction strategies, the District 65 administration plans to replace all teachers who retire or leave the District with teachers who have three years of experience and a lower salary level. Before that proposal becomes policy, some Board members would like to know its potential impact on student learning. 

In a proposal to the District 65 School Board discussed at the May 29 Board Policy Committee meeting, Human Resources Director Beth Sagett-Flores said, "There is a large body of research that has examined the relationship between teacher experience and teacher effectiveness. There is evidence that teachers in their earliest years of experience have a significant impact upon student achievement." 

The proposal also stated that this research, "like much of the research in the field of education, does not lend itself to deriving definitive conclusions." Because of that she said, the District is implementing a "rigorous screening process to review each application, using decision-making criteria and standards consistent with best practices. …" to ensure that the District hires high-quality teachers. [emphasis mine]

We're data-driven! Except when we're not. Or something. It's confusing...

Someone send Ms. Sagett-Flores this post, would ya? Before her bizarre dismissal of the value of experience destroys Evanston's schools.

Reformy Logic

I really do mean it when I say that many in the corporate reform movement appear not to have thought their arguments through. For example: I took another look at "Restructuring Teacher Pay to Reward Excellence" from the National Council on Teacher Quality, and found this:

As painful as the recession has been on

school districts, it provides a useful

opportunity to reexamine how money is spent. 

When negotiating new teacher contracts, most districts, no doubt, are focusing discussions on averting

wage freezes and massive layoffs. But prudent districts—those looking for long-term solutions to budget

problems as well as those seeking to more fairly compensate the most effective teachers—are reconsidering

the traditional salary schedule, which rewards teachers for years of experience and graduate credits. 

More than a half century ago, districts developed teacher salary schedules, embedding the incentives for both

experience and education as a response to real inequities in pay. Previously, higher salaries had been reserved for principals’ favorites, high school teachers rather than their elementary counterparts and males instead of females. But today, one can make the case that the current approach to teacher compensation has outlived its usefulness. For example, accountability systems discourage principals from making salary choices that are not in a school’s best interest and anti-discrimination laws protect teachers against unjust compensation decisions. 

Most significantly, the salary schedule, as currently defined, does not consider teacher effectiveness, making it

inherently unfair to talented teachers. It has also led to “wage compression,” meaning that teachers with the

most aptitude earn no more than teachers with the lowest aptitude, rendering teaching an unattractive career

choice for talented college graduates.1

OK, the recession will decrease school revenues. So schools should look at getting rid of salary guides or modifying them as a way to save money.

Wait...

The only way that would work is if the teacher makes LESS over his or her entire career, right? I mean, you wouldn't want a teacher to make MORE if revenues are down, wouldn't you?

Despite comparable starting and ending salaries, teachers

in Detroit, Boston and Columbus earn significantly more

during their careers than teachers in Broward, Pittsburgh

and Northside because they do not have to wait until the

end of their careers to receive a competitive salary. (p. 7)

So, in a time of decreasing revenues, NCTQ wants to raise the total payroll of teachers. Because the recession is giving us an opportunity to do so, as revenues are down. Or something; it's confusing...

By the way, NCTQ doesn't really give any practical strategies for how a district would implement their plan. Would you make the veterans take a pay cut? Good luck with that. They suggest eliminating masters bonuses; yes, after your staff has put in all those hours earning degrees, let's get rid of any reward for doing so - that'll raise morale...

Again: these people don't work in schools, so they don't know what's going on. I'm left to wonder: does the ABA release a lot of policy papers on public lawyer employment by written by people who aren't lawyers? Does the AMA support non-doctors and ONLY non-doctors making compensation policies for their members who are public servants?

Hey, but those are REAL professionals...

Tenure-itis

I'll grant Laura Waters this:

All’s curiously quiet in the aftermath of Ed. Commissioner Christopher Cerf’s speech on Wednesday describing his five-part proposal for tenure reform. Sure, the leadership of NJEA hurled aspersions: “This proposal is an unproven step in the wrong direction. All reliable research suggests that evaluating teachers primarily on their ability to raise student test scores is bad policy, but that doesn’t deter Governor Christie.” Major editorialists, however, have generated little commentary.

Aside from the pejorative use of the verb "hurled" (it really is amazing how "serious" education types have all decided that the NJEA never has anything but nefarious motives), she's right: nary a peep. This right after Christie said he wanted to eliminate tenure altogether and replace it with 5-year contracts.

Maybe they think Cerf’s not serious. Or maybe everything he said made sense. Or maybe they recognize that the public regards tenure reform as so inevitable as to be just a big yawn.

Or maybe it's that every time someone brings up how important it is to "reform" tenure, they always add the caveat, "We all agree that most teachers are doing a good job." Well, if that's true, this really isn't addressing much of a problem, is it?

But here's where Laura goes completely off the rails:

In fact, Cerf’s proposal for tenure reform is not so radical. There are plenty of studies out there that show that the essential ingredient to student growth is a series of effective teachers. Highly-regarded non-partisan research organizations like The New Teacher Project, the National Council on Teacher Quality, the Data Quality Campaign,Education Sector, Harvard’s Program on Education Policy and Governance (just to name a few) all testify to the our growing ability to use data to judge teacher effectiveness.

Seriously? You're going to sit there and try to convince me that there is a consensus among researchers that using standardized test scores is perfectly fine for making high-stakes decisions on things like tenure and layoffs?

First of all: your list of "experts," Laura, is highly suspect. Take NCTQ: their "studies" are highly suspect. The New Teacher Project was founded by proven liar exaggerator Michele Rhee - that alone should disqualify it as "non-partisan."

The list of those who oppose using Value-Added Modeling (VAM) in high-stakes decisions, however, includes National Research Council of the National Academy of Sciences, ETS's Policy Information Center, the RAND Corporation, and the Economic Policy Institute (p.2). Even the Center for American Progress, in supporting the use of VAM, acknowledges it has serious flaws:

Part of the reason that the correlations are only modest is that VAM estimates of effectiveness include measurement error, both because standardized tests are imprecise measures of what students know and because there are random elements such as classroom interaction that influence the performance of a group of students in a classroom.

That's some awfully weak tea - especially considering that no one has yet shown any serious evidence that there are significant numbers of "bad" teachers who hold tenure.  (BTW - my links are to specific sources; Laura's are not. Hmm...)

It reminds me of the "debate" on global warming or creationism. Sorry, there is no debate; a few nut jobs who can't understand science do not get equal footing with serious, peer-reviewed study. Period.

Laura does get this right:

Of course, it’s not all blue sky. There are legitimate questions about the NJ Department of Education’s ability to build and manage the complex data system necessary to support value-added models for teacher accountability. (See yesterday’s NJ Spotlight for more on this obstacle to reform and Cerf’s comment that there were "’some very serious mountains to climb’ on the data system that would make it possible to link individual teachers with student performance.”) Is the much-maligned DOE really up to the task of creating state-wide teacher evaluation forms typically negotiated between local unions and school boards? Would that delegation of responsibility from district to DOE start only when contracts expire? Is the Legislature really prepared to stand up to NJEA executives? (Might be a tough sell. See today’s Glenn Beck award below.) Will local school boards cotton to this unusual usurpation of local control?

(Again with the assumed bad-faith of NJEA - this is getting tiresome.) She's right about the DOE being completely unprepared for this, and about local boards: so many have lost so much state aid, and now they have another mandate?

But there is an insouciant attitude toward VAM here that is enormously grating. Do you understand that we teachers chose this career knowing that long-standing traditions to protect us like tenure were in place? And now you want to radically change those traditions to put in place unproven policies based on faulty logic? And that all serious research has shown that we teachers will be treated unfairly by these untested and extreme changes?

And, no, I don't buy into your premise that the current evaluation system is broken. I think the number of "bad" teachers is completely overblown. Again - I have yet to see the evidence that significant numbers of "bad" teachers populate our schools. Prove that to me - and prove to me you have lots and lots of great teachers just waiting in the wings to take their places - and then we'll talk about tenure reform.

But, even then - don't expect me to sign on to a new, faulty system just because it's new.

Who Gets a "Superstar" Teacher?

The NY Times writes about merit pay in post-Rhee Washington, D.C.:

“The most important role for incentives is in shaping who enters the teaching profession and who stays,” said Eric A. Hanushek, a professor of economics at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. “Washington’s incentive system will attract talented teachers, and it’ll help keep the best ones.” 

Under the system, known as Impact Plus, teachers rated “highly effective” earn bonuses ranging from $2,400 to $25,000. Teachers who get that rating two years in a row are eligible for a large permanent pay increase to make their salary equivalent to that of a colleague with five more years of experience and a more advanced degree.

Those rewards come with risk: to receive the bonuses and raises, teachers must sign away some job security provisions outlined in their union contract. About 20 percent of the teachers eligible for the raises this year and 30 percent of those eligible for bonuses turned them down rather than give up those protections.

Two thoughts:

1) If Hanushek is right, and better teachers come into the profession, won't more and more of them earn bonuses? Won't that increase the teacher payroll for Washington? How will they pay for that?

(NCTQ has said that they'd rather pay good teachers more up front and keep salaries stable throughout a teacher's career.  Well, if the lifetime earnings of a teacher remain the same, where's the incentive for "better" candidates to come into the field? You get what you pay for, folks.)

2) How will Washington decide the class lists and building assignments next year for these "superstar" teachers? How would you feel if your kid had the new TFAer - whose training is a 5-week summer seminar - while down the hall your neighbor's kid has last year's big bonus winner?

I've said this many times: the people who push this stuff just don't think it all the way through.

The Question Never Asked

I've noticed a pattern lately in all of the discussion about teacher quality. Nobody seems to want to ask an obvious question:

How big of a problem is it that some "ineffective" teachers are tenured?

I mean, do we really have any evidence that there are large numbers of tenured teachers who can't teach? Is it really a serious problem?

John Mooney - whom I really like - doesn't ask here:

Ending the Dance

As much as it drives parents crazy, the dance is no joy for principals, either.

Take Linda Richardson, the principal of the high-performing Ann Street School in Newark, which Gov. Chris Christie visited Thursday to trumpet his education reform plans for the district.

When asked afterward what one change she would want in Christie’s whole reform agenda, Richardson didn’t say ending tenure or a better evaluation system or anything like merit pay.

She’d said she’d just like to control her own staffing.

"What we really need is autonomy over who works in the building," said Richardson, who has been in the district more than 30 years. "When we are able to select and train the teachers, that continues and propagates our success."

"When people are transferred in for a variety of reasons, we have to work three times as hard in developing them to the Ann Street way of thinking," she said.

Well, OK: how often does that happen? Does it happen more in large districts than in small ones?

First presented in Cerf’s rollout of Christie’s tenure reform proposals last month, the mutual consent proposal is still in development. It's included in various draft bills that continue to circulate in the Statehouse but are yet to be filed. 

Still, it could be a tricky proposition in New Jersey. The abundance of small districts with just a few schools makes the mechanism largely moot in many communities, where there are limited places to shuttle teachers between.

So how many "bad" teachers are there in those smaller districts? Has anyone bothered to find out?

The usual answer seems to be: "Well, so few teachers are dismissed as ineffective!" Yeah, OK - so what? Somewhere between 25% and 50% of teachers leave in the first five years (depending on whom you ask - wish I could get a reliable figure on that). Many must be ineffective. Maybe we're good at weeding them out before they get tenure. Maybe tenure is working EXACTLY as it's supposed to: it's not being granted until it's earned.

Has anyone bothered to look into this? Because I can't find the answer at NCTQ, or CAP, or Public Impact, or...

Teacher Pensions: The Stupid Keeps On Comin'

Make it stop! MAKE IT STOP!!!

As the Philadelphia School District scrambles to come up with enough cash to open for students in September, a new report suggests the city’s school funding crisis is on par with municipal issues in Detroit, Chicago and elsewhere. 

At the heart of it all: pensions. 

Payments to retired teachers and public employees are a growing threat to government budgets everywhere, and it is no different in Philadelphia. A new report from the Thomas Fordham Institute, a conservative education nonprofit, estimates the district’s total retirement costs will balloon from $73 million in 2011 to $349 million by 2020. On a per-pupil basis, that works out to $900 per pupil in the district for 2011, growing to $2,300 per pupil by 2020. [emphasis mine]

This is like the perfect reformy storm: the Philadelphia Inquirer, which, under their new owner, George Norcross, must always find a way to blame teachers for school funding woes, even when it's not their fault; Fordham, the font of all reformimess; and the Franklin Center, one of the top propaganda outfits funded by the rabidly right-wing Koch brothers. You couldn't find a trio with better anti-union, anti-teacher bona fides anywhere on the planet.

Let's start by making something crystal clear: the fiscal problems of the Philadelphia schools were created because Pennsylvania has one of the least fair school funding systems in the nation. I imagine the rest of Fordham's staff is afraid to look at Bruce Baker's posts on this (seeing as how Baker smacks around Andy Smarick so badly that the wonk must be lying on the floor in the fetal position). But they and this op-ed's writer, Eric Boehm, had best get themselves up to speed:

For the past few decades, Philly public schools have been systematically financial deprived as a function of one the nation’s most inequitable state school finance systems. To review:

1. Pennsylvania has among the least equitable state school finance systems in the country, and Philly bears the brunt of that system.
2. Pennsylvania’s school finance system is actually designed in ways that divert needed funding away from higher need districts like Philadelphia.
3. And Pennsylvania’s school finance system has created numerous perverse incentives regarding charter school funding, also to Philly’s disadvantage. (see here also)

The Philly area remains among the most racially and economically segregated areas in the nation.

Let's me add a few more relevant facts:

In terms of salaries, Philadelphia teachers, on average, earn 15 to 20 percent less than teachers in surrounding counties. (Although starting salaries are comparable, salaries for experienced teachers top out at a much lower level.) If the salary reductions being proposed are put into effect, then Philadelphia teachers' pay will be even less competitive with their suburban counterparts.

Then consider that working conditions in Philadelphia schools are more difficult than those in the suburbs. Class size is larger; there are fewer books, materials, and supplies; computer access is scarcer; instructional, social, and health supports are insufficient. And these working conditions will be significantly worse if other proposed reductions go into effect, including the elimination of counselors, nurses, assistant principals, and sports programs. [emphasis mine]

So Pennsylvania has a school funding system designed to screw cities like Philadelphia. And Philly has seen its revenues drained from the public school system by rampant, unjustified privatization. Which has forced the city to pay its teachers less than the surrounding suburbs, even though teaching in Philly is more challenging.

Here's one of the ironies in all this: Fordham is the progenitor of the National Council on Teacher Quality, which states that it exists to advocate "... for reforms in a broad range of teacher policies at the federal, state and local levels in order to increase the number of effective teachers." How will slashing the compensation for Philadelphia's teachers relative to surrounding districts help "increase the number of effective teachers" in the city?

It's always amused me to watch "conservative" organizations like Fordham and Franklin and NCTQ twist themselves into incoherent knots over labor market effects when it comes to teachers. These stalwart defenders of free-market principles when it comes to school "choice" never care to acknowledge that maybe the free market comes into play when addressing teacher quality. They pretend that districts can simply cut compensation and gut workplace protections and make teaching less attractive (by, among other things, increasing class size and tying compensation to testing) and fire "bad" teachers... and yet, still, crowds of highly-qualified, well-trained, better-performing candidates will still magically line up to take jobs teaching in America's most benighted cities!

What are these people smoking? Do they really think that Economics 101 does not apply to the teacher labor supply? That the evil unions have so distorted the market that poor urban schools will attract better teachers when they renege on their pension promises?

I actually don't think they believe this fairy tale at all -- and you can find evidence in the language used in a report like Fordham's The Big Squeeze: Retirement Costs And School District Budgets. In the report, pensions aren't cut; they're "reformed." Pensions aren't compensation; they're "promises." Slashing pension payouts and retiree health care isn't reneging; it's "flexibility." This is an Orwellian warping of language in an attempt to deny the truth:

Pensions are not really "benefits"; they are deferred compensation. And they can actually save the taxpayers money if they are managed correctly. I've quoted David Cay Johnston on this many times before:

The fact is that all of the money going into these plans belongs to the workers because it is part of the compensation of the state workers. The fact is that the state workers negotiate their total compensation, which they then divvy up between cash wages, paid vacations, health insurance and, yes, pensions. Since the Wisconsin government workers collectively bargained for their compensation, all of the compensation they have bargained for is part of their pay and thus only the workers contribute to the pension plan. This is an indisputable fact. 

Not every news report gets it wrong, but the narrative of the journalistic herd has now been set and is slowly hardening into a concrete falsehood that will distort public understanding of the issue for years to come unless journalists en masse correct their mistakes. From the Associated Press and The New York Times to Wisconsin's biggest newspaper, and every broadcast report I have heard, reporters again and again and again have written as fact what is nonsense. 

Compared to tax, this economic issue that reporters have been mishandling is simple. But if journalists cannot grasp the economics of this issue, then how can we hope to have an intelligent debate about tax policy?  [emphasis mine]

So you can't "reform" pensions without cutting teacher compensation, and you can't cut that compensation without affecting the teacher labor market. But Fordham and Franklin and all the other reformy right groups out there don't want to make this connection. Want to know why?

This is from the good folks at the Institute for Taxation and Economic Policy. In addition to having one of the least-fair school financing systems, Pennsylvania also has extremely regressive taxes.

I can't say for sure that raising taxes on the wealthy would completely solve the underfunding problem -- but it sure would help. Of course, making the funding problem out to be insurmountable is what the reformy right is paid to do: that way, they can make the argument that raising taxes on the wealthy just won't matter very much, because we are in such a big hole.

However, as both Paul Krugman and Dean Baker have argued, the pension crisis is manageable, if state and local governments start making their contributions (something they have required from teachers, by the way -- our mandatory contributions are the only thing keeping the system afloat). At least some of the money is there; all the governments have to do is start collecting taxes from the wealthy at a rate equivalent to what they collect from the poor.

But this, of course, will never be allowed. The end game here has always been to defund and eventually destroy the public education system. If neglecting pension obligations helps move school systems toward collapse and screws unionized workers out of the compensation they earned...

Well, that's a twofer!

Tom says: "Screw union retirees AND destroy Philly's schools? What a deal!"

ADDING: Am I the only one who thinks it is more than a little deceptive to state pension liabilities in terms of past, current, and future "costs per pupil"? Today's pension costs aren't only for current pupils: they are for every previous pupil who was taught in the system by a retired teacher. I understand paying off the liabilities comes from the current budget, but this reflects a generational shift: if the bill had been paid previously, costs wouldn't be rising as fast.

In other words: that growth to a high cost in the future wouldn't be nearly as great if the district and the state paid in more money now. So making a comparison between past, present, and future costs per pupil is not particularly germane to the discussion.

I'm no expert on this stuff, so someone please tell me what I'm missing here.

ADDING MORE: Oh, my:

About 40,000 public school teachers are supplementing their salaries with a night gig likely too scandalous for your average PTA. The job title? Sugar baby.

That's according to dating site SeekingArrangement.com, the go-to Internet marketplace for "mutually-beneficial relationships" almost exclusively between older men and younger women. The site's "successful and generous" sugar daddies provide pre-determined allowances to "attractive, ambitious and goal oriented" sugar babies, in exchange for their young, nubile companionship.

The website recently announced it noticed an "influx of teachers signing up last month, prior to heading back to school."

[...]

The top school district where teachers are seeking out the sugar baby night shift? Philadelphia. (Incidentally, that school district announced 646 teacher layoffs this past June alone, according to the New York Times. Now, the district is pushing its teachers' union to accept $133 million dollars in cuts.)

Along with Philadelphia, other popular school districts for teacher/sugar babies include Miami-Dade, Los Angeles and New York.[emphasis mine]

Talk about a "defined contribution"...

No Lobbyist Left Behind

The NY Times reports that Arne Duncan wants to change No Child Left Behind to acknowledge that children are, in fact, fallible human beings:

Unless Congress acts by this fall to overhaul No Child Left Behind, the main federal law on public education, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan signaled that he would use his executive authority to free states from the law’s centerpiece requirement that all students be proficient in reading and math by 2014.  

The Obama administration has been facing a mounting clamor from state school officials to waive substantial parts of the law, which President Bush signed in 2002, especially its requirement that states bring 100 percent of students to proficiency in reading and math by 2014 or else face sanctions. In March, Mr. Duncan predicted that the law would classify 80,000 of the nation’s 100,000 public schools as failing this fall unless it was amended.

Now, who could have a problem with that? Well...

Sandy Kress, an Austin lawyer who as a senior education adviser to Mr. Bush helped devise the No Child Left Behind law, said he saw trouble in the administration’s new stance.

“This idea of, ‘if you don’t act, we’re going to go do these massive things’ — to me there’s the feel of a threat to Congress in it,” Mr. Kress said.

"An Austin lawyer," huh? Do you think maybe he might have some interest in keeping up the corporate testing regime?

Yep:

Here's a list of companies that pay NCLB architect Sandy Kress to push their interests.

From the Texas Ethics Commission:

Citizen Schools Inc.

$10,000 - $24,999

Client Start Date: 03/10/2010

Client Term Date: 12/31/2010

Edvance Research Inc.

Less Than $10,000

Client Start Date: 1/22/2010

Client Term Date: 12/31/2010

National Council on Teacher Quality

Less Than $10,000

Client Start Date: 1/22/2010

Client Term Date: 12/31/2010

Pearson Education

$10,000 - $24,999

Client Start Date: 1/22/2010

Client Term Date: 12/31/2010

Teach For America

Less Than $10,000

Client Start Date: 1/22/2010

Client Term Date: 12/31/2010

Texas Charter Schools Association

Less Than $10,000

Client Start Date: 1/22/2010

Client Term Date: 12/31/2010

Wireless Generation Inc

$25,000 - $49,999

Client Start Date: 1/22/2010

Client Term Date: 12/31/2010

Pearson is one of the largest testing companies in the world and the NY Times has a history of ignoring their role in corporate "reform." Wireless Generation is, of course, Rupert Murdoch and Joel Klein's little adventure into crony education capitalism. NCTQ is another phony-baloney "think tank" that produces "research" that fuels the corporate reform movement; much of what they produce is a joke.

Doesn't the NY Times think it's readers should know about Sandy Kress's interests before taking him at his word?

Teachers Who Threw Away Their Money

A question for the evening:

Suppose the company you worked for told you that if you went and got your MBA, you'd get a nice raise. Suppose that was the practice at your firm for years, and you signed a multi-year contract that spelled out the deal.

Suppose you OK'd the college and the program with your boss and your boss's boss. You went to night school and studied during your vacations and weekends and nights and you earned your degree. For the first year or two, you got the raise. Then a new CEO came in.

The CEO had heard of a few studies at a few other firms that showed that managers only got 'better' when their MBA was in a specific field - say, accounting. The studies didn't take into account where the managers earned their MBAs. The studies didn't measure the managers' performances; they measured the performances of their subordinates, whom the managers didn't pick to work for them and who couldn't be fired (it's an odd firm). In fact, only 10%-20% of the possible managers were studied anyway, and only when working in specific parts of the companies.

On the basis of this very flimsy evidence, the new CEO decides to terminate future raises for anyone who earned that MBA outside of accounting. Your MBA is in marketing, so it's is no good, even though it was before, and even though you took accounting as part of your program. All that work you did and all the money you spent to get that degree is now for naught.

You'd be pretty pissed off, right?

Well, this is exactly what Chris Christie wants to do to teachers. His draft bill eliminates the "masters bump", unless the Education Commissioner says the degree is one he likes, like in math (no matter that you may have studied math education in an elementary ed program). There is no grandfather clause: if Chris Cerf thinks your degree is useless, out goes your raise - even if your district had approved your program years ago.

This bill is based on very shallow research that was conducted using state-wide standardized tests - not necessarily in New Jersey, however. The National Council on Teacher Quality's meta-study is cited most often by corporate reformers; there was no attempt, however, by the NCTQ to assess the quality of the studies, the statewide tests the studies were based on, or the quality of the teachers' graduate programs.

(It's also worth pointing out that the studies that show a negative correlation between graduate study and student test scores are the oldest, dating back to 1985. Is it not possible graduate programs have changed over the years?)

Bruce Baker has noted that "reformers" haven't even questioned whether there may be a difference in quality between various graduate programs in education. He's also pointed out that only 10-20% of teachers could possibly be assessed on this criteria. Yet Christie is willing to throw out the thousands of hours and thousands of dollars that thousands of teachers put in to earn their degrees on the basis of "research" that won't even address these core issues.

That he would even propose such a thing is the height of disrespect. It is grossly unfair and dismissive of the work teachers have done to better their craft. It's also dismissive of the many excellent and challenging graduate programs in education around the county, and the professors who have worked hard to develop those programs.

It is completely demoralizing to think that all of the hard work I and my fellow teachers did in graduate school may now become a complete waste of our time...

Seven years of college down the drain...