Tenure and Vouchers and Charters

John Mooney - one of the best reporters in NJ - says it comes down to the big three:

Gov. Chris Christie yesterday put out his now-familiar call for the Democratic-controlled legislature to act on what he said are the state's priorities, starting with his package of proposals on teacher tenure, charter schools, and school vouchers.

The Democratic leadership, for its part, put out its schedule for the next two months, starting next Monday.

And for all of Christie's prodding, which is expected to continue today with an education event in Secaucus, the legislature is actually pretty far along on several of the governor' core proposals.

True, they contain significant Democrat-induced elements, but the chances of passage for at least some of them are pretty strong. [emphasis mine]

Tenure: You can mess around with the number of years, add a "mentoring" year, whatever. The most important thing is that teachers must be able to appeal a dismissal under tenure to an authority outside of their district. Remove this provision, and teaching stops being a profession and starts becomes a cronyism job.

Nothing is more important to a tenure law than this. Any legislator who passes a tenure law without it is guilty of turning school districts into Tammany Halls.

Charters: It's laughable that anyone out there really thinks that more charter schools will help student achievement; the evidence says they will not. If you want a few more, fine, but no charter schools without local approval; that's absolutely necessary. You can't ask a community to fund a boutique charter school at the expense of their students.

And for-profit operators need to stay out.

Vouchers: Again, the people who push this stuff are either deluded or dishonest: private schools do no better than public schools when you account for student differences.  And I hate to tell all the ministers pushing this, but the First Amendment is awfully clear about giving money to churches - not that a little thing like the Constitution ever stops our "originalist" judges anymore.

I've really got to wonder which corporations want their names attached to the fly-by-night operations that voucher cheerleaders see springing up if OSA passes. Why would a corporation take the risk of associating their good name with a school that could turn out to be a train wreck?


One more thing: look at this list above. Take a good, hard look.

Does anyone reading this really believe any of this nonsense is going to do a damn thing to improve student performance in New Jersey?

Again: look at the differences between our highest-performing and lowest-performing schools.

(h/t Bruce Baker)

We know what we need to do to help kids in this state. Our overlords just don't want to do it.

Try and tell me I'm wrong.

The Battle of Jersey - Opening Salvos

And so it begins: with the mid-term elections out of the way, the war over education reform commences in Trenton. I hope those of you who follow me from other places around the country forgive me over the next few weeks for becoming so Jersey-centric.

But understand that this battle does have national implications, much as the Wisconsin protests or the sleaze in Illinois did. Chris Christie is a darling of the right; they practically begged him to run in the primary. And he has staked all of his reputation on his ongoing war with the NJEA. What happens here will certainly ripple across the nation.

At the NJEA convention last week, Acting Education Commissioner Chris Cerf tried to put on a reasonable face in contrast to his boss (here's a great account of what happened, courtesy of Blue Jersey). His attempts at conciliation, however, would have been more believable if:

• His resume didn't show that he is a corporatizer of education with few equals,
• His tenure in New York City didn't include some questionable conduct, including evaluating teachers using standardized test scores without their knowledge,
• His past work for the Newark school district wasn't clouded by unanswered questions,
• The money Newark got from Mark Zuckerberg wasn't flowing to his friends and associates,
• The task force assigned to rework teacher evaluations had more than one currently working teacher on it, and...
• The "pilot" he launched to evaluate teachers was given time for an evaluation before his plans were rushed through.

But you know me: always picking nits...

Tom Moran naturally sees past my fretting to what's really important:

"I just want to assure you, this issue of improving public education, especially for our neediest students, is not a political platform for him (Christie)," Cerf said. "It is the purpose of his being in office. He has the highest regard for teachers and teaching."

The last line was too much for the few hundred teachers who packed a room at the Atlantic City Convention Center to hear him.

They hissed. They booed. Some shouted words that can’t be reprinted here.

Bad words! From adults! When no kids were around! Oh, quick, get the smelling salts; Tom's not used to this, as I'm sure newspaper staff rooms are as chaste in language as Girl Scout troop meetings...

Cerf knew the reaction was too much to ignore, so he went once more into the breech.

"You will form your own judgments, and I can hear that out there," he said. "But he deeply appreciates your work and the amazing successes you’ve brought to this state, something we need to shout from mountaintops."

Okay, so this part of his speech didn’t work. By now, nearly everyone in New Jersey has a rock-hard opinion of the governor, one way or another.

Yes, and some of us based our opinion on what Christie has actually said. Click on the link - I dare you. It ain't pretty.

But this part is what really gets me:

On the impact of poverty, he found the sensible common ground. Yes, it has a huge impact on student outcomes and we can’t expect teachers to produce the same results for rich and poor. But no, that is no excuse for New Jersey’s economic achievement gap, the worst in the nation behind Alaska’s.

I've been down this road several times before, but it looks like I've got to go down it again:

On National Assessment of Educational Progress for 2009, State A's 8th Graders score a 293 in mathematics (tying for 3rd in the nation). White kids score a 302 (also 3rd); black kids score a 267 (9th). The gap between the two is 34 points (tied for 31st).

State B's 8th Graders score a 270 (tied for 47th in the nation) in math. White kids score a 271 (50th - yes, that's right, LAST in the nation!); black kids a 263 (tied for 17th). The gap between the two is only 7 points (1st in the nation).

So: all of State A's kids do better than State B's. The black kids do better in State A. The white kids do WAY better in State A.

But Chris Christie claims State B is doing better than State A. Is he insane, stupid, lying, or some combination of the three?

Oh, and guess what (I knew you were waiting for this)? State B is West Virginia; State A is New Jersey. Is everyone rushing down the Turnpike to get their kid enrolled in one of those "superior" West Virginia schools?

The reason New Jersey has a higher "achievement gap" is because, although our poorer, black, and Hispanic kids do relatively well compared to the national average, our white and wealthier kids do SPECTACULARLY well! We should be PROUD of this!

Yes, it goes without saying that we need to keep working hard to get black, Hispanic, and poorer kids to achieve more. But the "gap" is not an accurate measure of the success NJ schools have had. The only reason Christie focuses on it is to distort the reform debate.

The focus on the "achievement gap" is a deliberate distraction from the fact that New Jersey does well in educating it's disadvantaged and minority kids, but spectacularly well in educating everyone else. The reason other states have such a small achievement gap is not because they do better in educating their poorest children; it's because they don't do as well in educating their more affluent children.

If Acting Commissioner Cerf really wants to make peace with the teachers of New Jersey, he's going to have to do better than this. With the exception of a few editorial writers, anyone can see through this poorly-rehearsed good cop/bad cop routine he's worked out with Christie.

Pants on Fire

Acting NJ Education Commissioner Chris Cerf, 11/11/11:

Cerf explained the Christie administration’s plans to reform tenure and revamp teacher evaluations during an hourlong speech before a crowd of 200 educators. When he commended teachers’ hard work in the classroom, the audience clapped. But when Cerf said Gov. Chris Christie holds "the highest regard for teachers," the crowd erupted. [emphasis mine]

Let's go to the tape. April, 2010, CNBC:

“I love the public schools but the fact of the matter is there is excess and greed there,” said Christie, during an appearance on CNBC’s Squawk Box. [That's in the "public schools," not the union offices - JJ]

July, 2010, MSNBC:

The state teachers union said--they had a rally in Trenton against me. 35,000 people came from the teachers. You know what that rally was? The "me first" rally. "Pay me my raise first. Pay me my free health benefits first. Pay me my pension first. And everybody else in New Jersey, get to the back of the line." Well, you know what? I'm not going to sit by and allow that to go unnoticed, so we'll shine a bright light on it, and we'll see how the people react. But I think we are seeing how the people of New Jersey are reacting, and that's how you make it politically palatable in other states in the country. Just shine a bright light on greed and self-interest.

April, 2010, The Star-Ledger:

 "Scaring students in the classroom, scaring parents with the notes home in the bookbags, and the mandatory 'Project Democracy Homework' asking your parents about what they're going to do in the school board election, and reporting back to your teachers union representatives, using the students like drug mules to carry information back to the classroom, is reprehensible."

November, 2010, The Trentonian:

“These teachers have all summer off. Can’t they have their convention during the summer?’’ the governor said as he spoke to a clutch of high schoolers surrounding him.

“They got to get two days off from school because, you know, they don’t get enough time off now, right? They get two weeks off at Christmas, they get all the different holidays, then they get all the summer off and now they need two more days.

“Why do you think that is? Do you think If they cared about learning where would they be today?’’

Ashley Batts, 16, a Trenton Central High School sophomore answered “in school.’’

“That’s right, in school, baby, they would not be down there in Atlantic City having a party — because that’s what it is.’’ [Does everyone understand that the Governor of New Jersey told a group of students that their teachers do not care about learning? Does everyone think that's acceptable? - JJ]

May, 2010, Politico:

The teacher responded by saying that she has a master’s degree and that her current salary isn’t compensating her for the value of her higher education as well as her experience. 

To that, the governor responded: “Well, you know then that you don’t have to do it.”

 March, 2010, Blue Jersey, quoting Christie directly:

"Teachers who crowded the statehouse on Monday to try to intimidate public officials like Assemblyman Schroeder and Assemblywoman Vandervalk into not voting for pension and benefit reform.

"And when one teacher was asked, "What are you doing here today? It's a Monday in the school year." She said, 'Oh, we got a substitute. I left a plan; it's not like they're watching videos or something.' 

"They. 'Not like they're watching videos or something.' I thought that was a really interesting part of the quote. That contraction: 'they're.' They didn't say 'the kids' then, did they? No, they only use the words 'the kids' when they want to evoke an emotional response from you which will get you to open your wallet and pay them. 

"When they're talking about protesting and fighting in Trenton, then it's 'they're.' 'They're watching videos or something.' I thought that was an interesting part of the quote. Language matters, ladies and gentlemen. Language is a window into attitude. And this isn't about the kids. So let's dispense with that portion of the argument. 

"And I have heard these stories over the last week, over and over again from all over New Jersey about teachers standing in front of classrooms, and lying about and excoriating the governor and the lieutenant governor."

Do you understand now, Acting Commissioner Cerf, why teachers do not trust you or your boss?

The Two Worlds of Ed Reform

I want to recommend this great piece teacher/blogger Katie O about this weekend's conferences in Chicago. Read the whole thing (us teacher/bloggers need that click-through love), but here's the takeaway:

To me, the moral of this tale of one city’s schizophrenic day of education is this:  Sure, we love progressive education practices, but only for the rich white private schools.  When it comes to the vast majority of our children in public schools, we want to standardize and sterilize learning into easy-to-compare test prep factories.  We want to sort and control public school teachers, just the way we sort and control their students.  While the rich children explore, learn, question, dream, try, experience, fail, and enjoy the process of expanding their minds in beautiful schools and small classes with no pressure of grades or homework, all the other people’s children are condemned to mindless, empty recitation of facts.  These children’s teachers are forbidden to explore progressive ways to inspire these young people, except in the spaces “between the cracks”.  While the privileged choose a school for its unique, child-centered curriculum, public school teachers secretly “interrupt” the scheduled dry testing curricula with real authentic discussion and learning while telling their students “When the Feds come, tell them we’re on page 93.” (David Stovall, Associate Professor at University of Illinois-Chicago)

Progressive education and its respect for the teacher and the learner is something every child in this country deserves.  Let's start "interrupting" the education deforms happening now to see this goal come into reality. [emphasis mine]

Jonathan Kozol's been saying this for years. This emphasis on the "achievement gap" is a distraction from both the funding gap and the curriculum gap.

Adding Ms. Katie to the blogroll now...

Our National Crisis!

A bunch of education writers are meeting in Chicago as I write this. Apparently, according to the Twitter machine, they're all talking about teacher evaluations. And a very serious concern is getting evaluations right for art, music, and PE teachers.

See, there are hordes of these bad specialist teachers roaming our schools' hallways, making kids step off the wrong foot when they throw or endorsing bad color combinations or screwing up their embouchures. Obviously, they are directly responsible for the mess we are in:

This is a national crisis and it must be stopped at all costs. We know scads of these bad teachers exist because we've been told so by think-tanky types who aren't actually educators or researchers, but publish easy-to-read reports.

The solution is to tie PE teacher evaluations to writing scores for their school and have their principals wear x-ray specs, because that is obviously much better than the status quo. And to those of you teachers who think maybe I've lost perspective here: obviously, you care more about adults than kids and you should lose your job protections immediately.

We simply can't treat these teachers like professionals and let them police themselves like every other profession. We must beat Finland! Where they treat teachers like professionals. And don't bombard kids with standardized tests.

Uh...

"A Vast Improvement"

And so falls the New York Times:

Tennessee has a long way to go in improving its schools, but it has made significant headway in turning itself into a laboratory for education reform. It was one of the first states to test a rigorous teacher evaluation system, which was put in place this school year. Yet even before the results are in, political forces are now talking about delaying the use of these evaluations. State lawmakers and education officials must resist any backsliding. 

Tennessee’s need to do better was underscored when the latest National Assessment of Educational Progress, also known as the nation’s report card, ranked the state near the bottom in fourth-grade math performance, just ahead of Alabama, Louisiana and Mississippi. These dismal results — slightly worse than those reported in 2009 — were made public earlier this month during legislative hearings on the evaluation system.

Here's an exercise in logic: did any of the states that far outpaced Tennessee and are at the top of the nation - say, for example, New Jersey - use a poorly conceived teacher evaluation system that is opposed by actual educators but pushed by corporate interests?

No. So maybe we want to look somewhere else for solutions, ya think?

The Times continues:

Teacher evaluations now have three components: 50 percent from classroom observation data, 35 percent from student growth on test scores and 15 percent from student achievement measures that are locally selected. The teachers are rated on a five-point scale, from “significantly below expectations” to “significantly above expectations.” School districts are not required to fire anyone based on the ratings, but the state now requires teachers to work for five years, instead of three, before they are eligible for tenure. Those who want tenure have to earn high ratings for two years.

Honestly, how many times do we have to go over this before the ill-informed commentariat gets it? It may be 35% of the evaluation, but it becomes 100% of the decision. And we know the volatility across years in value-added models is far to great to make high-takes decisions.

It's depressing that the Times - considered to be the gold-standard of journalism - clearly offers this opinion without having educated itself. It's especially depressing because their own Michael Winerip has reported so well on this very topic:

For 15 percent of their testing evaluation, teachers without scores are permitted to choose which subject test they want to be judged on. Few pick something related to their expertise; instead, they try to anticipate the subject that their school is likely to score well on in the state exams next spring.

Several teachers without scores at Oakland Middle School conferred. “The P. E. teacher got information that the writing score was the best to pick,” said Jeff Jennings, the art teacher. “He informed the home ec teacher, who passed it on to me, and I told the career development teacher.”

It’s a bit like Vegas, and if you pick the wrong academic subject, you lose and get a bad evaluation. While this may have nothing to do with academic performance, it does measure a teacher’s ability to play the odds. There’s also the question of how a principal can do a classroom observation of someone who doesn’t teach a classroom subject.

Is there a person on this planet who thinks this is a good idea? Do the failed members of the Tennessee business community - Tennessee's unemployment rate is higher than the national average, close to 10% - believe that stupidity like this will cover up their failures to produce a strong economy?

Once again, we teachers are left to contend with poorly designed systems cheered on by politicos who are clueless, business leaders who should spend their time fixing their own massive failures, and journalists who either can't or won't understand what they are writing about.

All of you need to step back and let us do our jobs. You are killing this profession and you need to put your egos and your self-interest in check and let us be the professionals we are. You will find you then have the time to fix your own political, economic, and media systems, with are in far worse shape than American education ever was.

Guyland's Got It

Now we're talking:

Across Long Island, there is growing concern about the direction being taken by the New York State Education Department. In breathtaking speed, State Education officials have made sweeping changes to how our schools operate, how our teachers and principals are evaluated and how our students are assessed.

As building principals, we applaud efforts aimed towards excellence for all of our students. We cannot, however, stand by while untested practices are put in place without any meaningful discussion or proven research. This is why we have prepared an Open Letter of Concern Regarding New York State's APPR Legislation for the Evaluation of Teachers and Principals. Written by two high school Principals (Dr. Sean C. Feeney and Dr. Carol C. Burris) and reviewed and edited by Elementary, Middle School and High School principals across Long Island, this letter states why everyone who cares about schools should be concerned about New York's APPR Legislation. The letter also articulates a better path forward for our schools and students.

Visit the links on the side to read the paper, support the paper and read the research behind the paper. The key to change is to make your voice heard! Be sure to contact your local legislators in order to express your concerns about the APPR legislation.

It is time for all educators to stand up and be heard. We are professionals and we should not be dictated to by those who don't have a clue about what we do.

Good on these dedicated, engaged, and knowledgable professionals for standing up to the nonsense that is being thrust upon them. More like this - MUCH more.

Why Do They Say What They Say?

Matt DiCarlo has another important post up today about Value-Added Modeling (VAM), the error-ridden statistics tool promoted by the corporate reformers as the solution to the "problem" of teacher evaluation (a "problem" I still contend no one has shown to be an actual problem).

Matt does what he does best: debunk think-tanky reforminess with actual research. In this case, he raises some important cautions about VAM's inability to account for student effects outside of a teacher's control (it can't), and about its volatility across years compromising its ability to make high-stakes decisions (it does).

To this, I'd add two things: one Matt will probably agree with, and one I'm sure he won't.

First: VAM is predicated on the idea that the standardized tests administered to students are themselves valid and reliable. There is every reason in the world to doubt this. But maybe my fears could be assuaged if every administration of every standardized test was followed by a public vetting of the tests themselves. In other words: if my job as a teacher is on the line here, shouldn't I get to look at the test and my student's answers?

I don't know why any teacher should buy into VAM if the testing process itself remains secretive and unaccountable. There no point in getting into the weeds of the technical problems with VAM if we can't even agree to that.

Next - and I'm sorry Matt, but I have to do this: Why do these people continue to push this stuff when it is clear all of the evidence is against them?

Bruce Baker today points out that the situation has become so bad that career educators now have to have b.s. detectors wired into their heads as a prerequisite for the job:

Over the past year, I’ve actually become more supportive of the notion that our future school and district leaders really do need to know the research, understand statistics and other methods of inquiry and be able to determine how it all intersects with their daily practice, even when it seems like it couldn’t possibly do so.

Unfortunately, a major reason that it has become so important for school leaders to know their shit is because state agencies, including departments of education, which to some extent are supposed to be playing a “technical support role,” have drifted far more substantially toward political messaging than technical support, and have in many cases drifted toward driving their policy agendas with shoddy fact sheets, manifesto’s and other shallow, intellectually vacuous but “easy to digest” Think Tank fodder.

In many cases, this intellectually vacuous, technically bankrupt think tank fodder is actually being trotted out by state education agencies as technical guidance to local school administrators.

In other words: the people who actually run the schools are far more likely to know what the hell they are doing than the politicos and thinktanky types and media pundits, who push policies based on... what? On what are they basing their decisions? Research? No, the research is clearly pointing in another direction. So why do they say what they say? Why do they want what they want?

Are they too lazy to challenge themselves intellectually? Are they indifferent to the truth? That may be part of it. Do they accept incoherence as part of modern American political rhetoric? Watching the Republican primary debates, it's hard to argue that rigorously thought out policies are not only irrelevant to a political career - they may be a hinderance.

Certainly, we know there are hucksters out there looking to make a buck during the Haliburtonization of our schools. But even I acknowledge that this is only a part - and probably a small part - of the overall agenda for these folks.

No, I keep going back to the same place: this is all a distraction.

American conservatism is a 32-year-old experiment that has completely and utterly failed. The commercialization of our culture, the crony capitalism, the militaristic foreign policy, the disintegration of our infrastructure, the disintegration of civil rights, the indifference to human suffering, the rise of unchecked corporations, the selling of our government to the highest bidders... it has led us to disaster.

The only thing that will save us at this point is a return to real democracy, real capitalism, and a real sense of patriotism. This will require overturning the massive inequality that was the inevitable outcome of the policies we've had foisted on us these past decades. The problem, of course, is that it will also require the 1% (really, 0.1%) to give up their stranglehold on power. And many of them are not interested in that.

So they look for a new villian. Ah ha - education! Of course, if everyone went to college, we'd being doing swell (forget that college is massively expensive and out of reach for many Americans even if they are qualified)! It's our lousy schools that are keeping us back! Yeah, that's the ticket...

Let me be clear: do I think that corporate reformers like to see kids in poverty? No, of course not. Do I think corporate reformers want awful public schools? No, they don't. Do I think they make a legitimate point in saying we could and should be doing a better job teaching kids? Absolutely.

But I also know that their own interests in keeping the status quo line up very, very neatly with the corporate reform agenda. And I find it more than a little curious that the think tanks pushing this agenda - again, an agenda that has no evidence to back it up - are being funded by the very, very wealthiest among us.

And this is where Matt and I part ways. He believes the better argument will win; I'm far more skeptical. The corporate reform movement has both implicitly and explicitly questioned the motivations of both teachers and their unions in making their case for "reform." I believe that playing field needs to be leveled; I believe no one will listen to the better argument until we push back on the motivations of the arguer.

I admit, this isn't pretty. But it's the world we live in. We need to be honest about this.

A Star Is Born

Obviously I'm disappointed that Marie Corfield lost her race for the NJ Assembly; we've lost a chance to have a voice for those of us who care about education at a time when we really could use it.

Considering the gerrymandering going on (and not just in Jersey, but in statehouses everywhere), Corfield did incredibly well. I know losing after such hard work is disspiriting, but she and her running mates should be proud of their showing.

And I don't think this is the end for Marie Corfield:



We need more teacher-candidates like this woman, and she needs to stay in the fight somehow; she's too gifted a politician to stay on the sidelines.

We're proud of you, Marie.

Oh, Marie!

If you agree with anything I've ever said, then I ask - I BEG - you to do one thing:

Support Marie Corfield for NJ Assembly!

If you live in the NJ 16th District, you must, must, MUST get to the polls and vote for her. Friends and family too - no exceptions. This is important!

If you don't live in her district, contribute now. Every little bit helps in the her final push.

This woman is our best chance of having someone in state government who gets it. When she gets elected, we will finally have a voice for educators in Trenton. Think what that would mean for all of us:



We need this woman in the legislature. Let's do this - Oh Marie!