Sins of the Peacock

Which is worse?

That Keith Olbermann gave political contributions to three Democrats?

Or that NBC did an entire news "event" on education that barely included substantial criticism of Race To The Top?

The more you know... (sol'-mi-do)

Steve Sweeney Awakes From His Slumber

At least temporarily:

State Senate President Stephen M. Sweeney said this morning that some local mayors essentially have been duped into supporting Gov. Chris Christie’s proposed toolkit to aid municipalities in controlling property taxes. 

“I can’t believe the mayors let themselves get bought into something that’s not going to save them,” Sweeney, D-Gloucester, said during a news conference at the Statehouse. “Because it’s not.” 

Sweeney argued that civil service reform -— one of the major parts of the governor’s toolkit -— would only affect one-third of New Jersey’s municipalities. 

“So how is that going to fix everything?” he asked. “It needs to be reformed, and we’re going to reform it. 

He also said that, although it is needed, arbitration reform -— the process through which public contract negotiations at impasse are resolved —- would not fix all municipal budget ills either. And he added that the governor was hiding behind the toolkit as a way of deflecting blame when property taxes continue to rise. 

“These are sound bites the governor has convinced people are going to fix things, so when taxes go up again, the governor is going to say, ‘I gave them a cap. I gave them tools, and it’s their fault that taxes and spending keep going up. Don’t look at my … funding cuts to municipal aid, school aid, rebates. Don’t look at them, they had nothing to do with it. It’s the mayors’ fault.' ” Sweeney said. “This is about assigning blame and … pointing fingers.” 

But the TOOLKIT fixes everything! Its magical powers prevent tooth decay, make your whites even whiter, and gets 50 MPG on the highway!

I wonder what made Christie think he could get away with a goofy scheme like this? It's not like Sweeney has stood up next to him and endorsed any of his cockamamie plans before...

Oh - never mind...

Another Biddle Riddle

Bruce Baker knocked down a previous post by RiShawn Biddle. Let me take on another:

Congressional Democrats angered centrist school reformers, MoveOn.org-style progressives, and other party activists in Augustwhen they voted to ladle $10 billion in federal subsidies (funded from future cuts to the Food Stamp program) to school districts in order to stave off layoffs of 160,000 teachers (or just 2.6 percent of the nation's 6.2 million school employees). 

Liberals were angry that the money was coming out of food stamps, and not out of 10,000 other things liberals want money cut from. But if you really think liberals wanted to cut teacher jobs, you must have a screw loose.

In turn, the National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers poured more than $40 million of their hefty campaign war chests (including more than $15 million by the NEA in the last weeks of the election season alone) to help the Democrats keep full control of Congress.

Perspective is a good thing, so let's add some: this last election cost about $4 billion. The teachers unions spent 1% of that.

The fact that NEA and AFT efforts yielded little fruit is one more sign to Democrats that their alliance with the unions -- already frayed over President Barack Obama's school reform initiatives -- is no longer of much value.

"Frayed"? You must be joking. Race To the Top is a worse affront to teachers than No Child Left Behind ever was. I'm going to go out on a limb here, as I am not a political pundit (thank God), but there's been plenty of conventional wisdom that the Dems took a beating because their base is demoralized. Obama's treatment of teachers is just another example.

The fact that centrist and progressive Democrats think that improving the quality of teachers is as critical a civil rights issue as integration was during the 1960s also means a long-term break is coming. The NEA and the AFT are the most obstinate opponents of teacher quality reform efforts such developing alternative teacher training programs -- especially Teach For America, a vanguard of the school reform movement -- and using student performance data to evaluate teacher performance. Last month, the Economic Policy Institute -- a think-tank cofounded by Community Reinvestment Act author Robert Kuttner that has benefited from more than $1.3 million in NEA largesse -- issued a petition against stronger teacher performance management.

No one in the unions is against raising teacher quality; in fact, the unions have been at the forefront by advocating for better teacher pay, something one would think the free marketers at the Spectator would embrace.

And everyone would be happy to embrace TFA if it actually worked.

But it's the statement about "using student performance data to evaluate teach performance" that really frosts me. Did Biddle even bother to read the EPI page he linked to?

The heavy use of VAM in a teacher evaluation system will misidentify large numbers of both effective and ineffective teachers. Leading authorities (such as the Board on Testing and Assessment of the National Research Council of the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Education, and researchers from RAND and the Educational Testing Service and a recent Economic Policy Institute paper by a group of prominent scholars, Problems With the Use of Student Test Scores to Evaluate Teachers) concur that VAM is too inaccurate to be used as the primary way to evaluate teachers. Most uses of test scores in teacher evaluation, in practice, actually fall far short of the flawed VAM measures because of a lack of appropriate data and the adoption of weaker statistical methods.

Why is it an anti-reform position to reject a method of teacher evaluation that every study shows will not work?

Biddle continues:

At the state level -- where the NEA and AFT have traditionally wielded even more clout -- the damage couldn't come at a worse time. President Obama's Race to the Top initiative (along with the accountability measures contained within the No Child Left Behind Act) has given school reform-minded governors of both parties cover to expand charter schools (the nation's most-successful form of school choice), and allow the use of student test score data in evaluating teacher performance.

That's one hell of a claim. Where's the data to back it up? Because there is a lot that suggests the opposite is true.

Or maybe this is a clever turn of a phrase: if school choice doesn't yield meaningful results, it's pretty easy for charters to be the most successful way of not yielding those results.

Meanwhile the NEA and AFT face a longer-term threat to their influence -- the $1 trillion in lavish public pensions and retired teacher healthcare benefits that are now pressuring state budgets. New Jersey, Vermont and even New York State took small steps to force rank-and-file teachers to contribute more to their retiree benefits and retire at ages more in line with what is acceptable in the private sector. More steps will come by 2018, when states have to figure out ways to finance increasingly underfunded pensions for teachers and other state workers.

Well, having government actually pay their share, just as teachers have been doing all along, would be a good start. Taxing the richest citizens, who control more of this nation's wealth than any time since the Great Depression, would help as well.

Considering that the traditional system of near-lifetime employment, degree- and salary-based pay scales and seniority privileges have done little to improve the nation's woeful public schools or attract talented people into teaching, the NEA and AFT will have difficulty defending the status quo.

Our public schools are not woeful; far from it. But if you really think they are, and you think the problem is that the teacher corps isn't talented enough, I'd like to know how you think decreasing teacher pay and benefits, opening up more schools to corporate control through charters, discouraging teachers from getting advanced degrees, gutting teacher pensions, and using statistically flawed evaluation methods is actually going to help recruit a better group of teachers.

Actually, I'd suggest that the American Spectator run an experiment. The quality of your bloggers is obviously very poor; start paying them less. I'm sure Mr. Biddle would be happy to volunteer to help in this important research.

Tipping Point?

I have always hoped - maybe naively - that a sustained war with teachers was a losing political strategy. Have we reached the tipping point?

ATLANTIC CITY — At least one member of the state Board of Education today questioned whether Gov. Chris Christie pressured his education chief to reject an invitation to speak at the annual New Jersey Education Association convention in Atlantic City.

[...]

"She may have signed (the letter), but I honestly don’t think she wrote it," said board member Edithe Fulton, a former NJEA president who said she has known Hendricks for 25 years. "She’s between a rock and a hard place, and she serves at the pleasure of the governor. It’s unfortunate that she was not allowed, I believe, to come to this convention because she would have had wonderful things to say to our teachers." 

[...] 

State Sen. and former Gov. Richard Codey (D-Essex) said Hendricks’ decision is a missed opportunity for the Christie administration to speak directly to teachers about its school reform agenda.

"I’m not sure every governor has had the support of the NJEA, but that didn’t stop them from reaching out directly to the teachers at this convention," Codey said. "If the administration thinks it has a solid case for reform that is being stopped at NJEA headquarters, then the smart move would be to have the commissioner take it directly to the rank and file."

This really does look small and petty. I know the posters at nj.com love that stuff, but normal people have got to see this and wonder what is up with this guy.

Maybe.

Just Smell That Charter School Money!

Mmm, mmm, good!

TRENTON — Gov. Chris Christie today made good on his plans to introduce rules limiting how much school superintendents are paid — an action that would shave $9.8 million off the salaries from about 360 school executives when their contracts expire.

[...]

Under the plan, superintendents would earn no more than $125,000 in districts with no more than 250 students. Salaries would increase incrementally, based on district size, to a pay limit of $175,000 in a district with 6,501 to 10,000 students. The state education commissioner could allow a higher salary in districts with more than 10,000 students.

A recent Star-Ledger review found 235 school administrators earned more than $175,000 in the 2008-09 school year. 

[...]

The rules would not apply to charter school superintendents or executives who run private schools for disabled students funded by public dollars.

No wonder Wall Street LOVES the charter movement.

I wonder what the superintendent of the new Haliburton/Facebook Charter School will make?

New Frontiers in Incoherence

Chris Christie says we have to pay managers of large public projects well:

Gov. Chris Christie yesterday defended the high pay of executives at the Schools Development Authority (SDA) at a time when it has suspended much of it construction. He said the agency is going through a reorganization that would lead to a leaner more efficient outfit.

[...]  

Nearly 50 out of 308 employees are paid $100,000 or more, with the average salary coming in at $74,000. The list is topped by chief executive officer Marc Larkins, a former assistant federal prosecutor under Christie, at a salary of $195,000. 

[...]   

“I’ve asked Marc to take a look from top to bottom at that place,” he said. “We have to take a look in the end at what are the bottom line numbers in what they are spending in salaries." 

“You want to pay well to manage these projects that run in the tens of millions of dollars,” he said. “But also we have to get the overall census, and that is what Marc will do. People shouldn’t prejudge his plan.”

A poster at this article for NJ Spotlight puts it very well:

You want to pay well to manage these projects that run in the tens of millions of dollars,” he said.

Newark schools: $940,181,924
Jersey City schools: $618,836,174
Camden schools: $337,011,700
Hoboken schools: $57,882,147

Mendham Township schools: $16,356,226
Chester schools: $22,212,631
Parsippany schools: $126,825,843

These "projects" are run every year - and they should be of the highest priority. What is he willing to pay to run these "projects"?

Posted by ACClark on November 4 at 12:17 PM

He's already said what he's willing to pay:

Q: How will it work?
A: The salaries will be limited by the size of the district or districts served:

• 1-250 students: $120,000 maximum
• 251-750 students: $135,000
• 751-1,500 students: $150,000
• 1,501-3,000 students: $165,000
• 3,001-10,000 students: $175,000
• Over 10,000 students (16 districts): “Subject to separate rules developed by the Department of Education.”

Gee, you'd think Christie had a problem with people who work in schools or something...

The Incoherence of Rochelle Hendricks

She really is the perfect education shill for Christie. For example:

Consistently, the New Jersey Education Association has shown it is unwilling to accept reforms that put results for our children first and use them as part of our metrics for evaluating teacher performance.

But then:

After the meeting, Hendricks said the data has been difficult to assess so far, but the department is working on it.

“The data we got back just wasn’t clean,” she said. “Are we talking about the same kinds of schools and students? I want the kind of data that you can share and makes sense.”

But Hendricks maintained that charter schools as a whole do perform well, and it is not just about test scores.

By achievement measures, “I think they do better or as well as district schools,” she said. “But you also have families where they feel charter is safer, where they feel more engaged, they feel they can facilitate change in what’s going on.”

So, it's OK to use failed methods of analyzing data to evaluate teachers, but it's not OK to use "dirty" data to evaluate charter schools.

Because it's not just about test scores. Except it is. Or something. It's confusing...

Simple Answers to Simple Questions

Are charter schools really better?

No.

No.

No.

This has been another simple answer to a simple question.

Courage Under Fire

All class, once again:

Bucking decades of tradition, New Jersey’s acting education commissioner has declined an invitation to address the state’s largest teachers union at its annual convention in Atlantic City this week. 

The acting commissioner, Rochelle Hendricks, told Barbara Keshishian, president of the New Jersey Education Association, in a letter dated Monday that she was declining the union’s invitation to speak at the convention because the union is resistant to “fundamental change.” The convention opens today and runs through Friday. 

[...]

Christie fired his education commissioner, Bret Schundler, in August after a clerical error cost the state $400 million in federal education grant money. Schundler later testified that Christie forbade him from submitting an application that the NJEA had endorsed, saying that he could not “cave in” to the union. The union’s endorsement would have earned the state enough points to qualify for the grant money in spite of the clerical error.

So, the NJEA won't work with the Christie administration, except when they do.

Just last week, Christie appointed nine people to serve on a task force charged with finding ways to use student achievement and other criteria to evaluate teachers and principals. No one was appointed to represent the NJEA, although the task force does have one representative from the much smaller American Federation of Teachers New Jersey, which represents about 30,000 teachers.

So, the NJEA needs to work with the Christie administration, but has been excluded by Christie from working with the administration.

Hendricks noted in her letter to Keshishian that “New Jersey schools are led by some of the finest, most talented teachers in the nation.” But she chided the union for its refusal to consent to changes that would tie teacher tenure to student performance.

So, NJ has great teachers, but they need to give up tenure on the basis of an evaluation system that they won't have a say in creating.

In a near future edition of the Record, I'm sure Al Doblin will say that it is up to both sides to put aside their differences and come together...

The Record's Al Doblin (staff photo)

Speaker Boehner = Monica Lewinsky II

Think about that before you pull the lever for that Tea Bagger today.

Of course, I know some of you actually WANT that. You want to be distracted as the wealthy take even more of the money you created and we go to war with Iran...