Dear Colleague,
While the Vergara
case is being appealed by the state and CTA, activists are busy trying to
figure out what will replace the laws that Judge Rolf Treu said “shock the
conscience.” The Students Matter team has come up with a plan it feels will
make education more child-friendly in California. Regarding tenure, they write:
Increasing the
length of the probationary period alone will not address the core problem of
ineffective teachers obtaining tenure and retaining employment despite poor job
performance. In addition to extending the minimum length of the probationary
period, Students Matter recommends basing the tenure decision on demonstrated
quality of teaching, instead of on time in the classroom. Students Matter
believes teachers should earn a designated number of effective or highly
effective ratings on annual performance evaluations in order to receive tenure;
that a teacher’s permanent status should be portable between school districts;
and that permanent status should be able to be rescinded if a teacher receives
multiple evaluations showing an ineffective rating.
To read the rest of their recommendations, go here - http://studentsmatter.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/Teacher-Employment-Policy-Pillars.pdf
Also Teach Plus, whose mission is to “to improve outcomes
for urban children by ensuring that a greater proportion of students have
access to effective, experienced teachers,” has come out with a survey which
finds that teachers are amenable to change the way California does tenure, seniority
and dismissals. Among the findings:
·
69 percent (of teachers) said tenure protected
an ineffective colleague who should have been dismissed but wasn’t.
·
71 percent said layoff decisions should be based
partly or entirely on classroom performance.
·
74 percent said it should take no more than two
years for dismissal after a teacher receiving help was still determined to be
ineffective.
What, if anything, the unions will do with the results of
this poll is anyone’s guess. For more information and access to the survey, go
to http://edsource.org/2015/teacher-survey-change-tenure-layoff-laws/72779#.VLgAUnt2CVN
While many teachers
and parents favor small class-size, the evidence that students are really
helped by it is scant. As
Hoover Institution senior fellow and economist Eric Hanushek recently wrote in
the New York Daily News,
Nobody has shown that the substantial
class-size reductions of the past 15 years have paid off in terms of student
achievement. Instead, the two main effects of past class-size reduction have
been more teachers and more expensive schools.
Education research is essentially
unanimous: The effectiveness of the
teacher in the classroom is far, far more important than how many students are
in the classroom. But this is not the message that the union wants to
hear, because it would involve evaluating teachers and making personnel
decisions based on the quality of the work they do.
To read “The UFT’s wasteful class-size push,” go to http://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/eric-hanushek-uft-wasteful-class-size-push-article-1.2043575
In another piece
that defies conventional thought, the Independent Institute’s Vicki Alger
penned an op-ed for the Wall Street
Journal, “Education’s No Dollar Left Behind Competition,” in which she
claims,
States that spent
less per pupil tended to have better educational outcomes. More than 45% of
low-income students in Idaho—with its relatively puny $4,100 per pupil
spending—tested proficient in reading and math. Low-income students in stingy
Arizona, which spent $4,200 per pupil on instruction, had 51% proficiency rates
in both subjects. And students in penny-pinching Oklahoma, which spent around
$4,300 per pupil, achieved a 53% proficiency rate in reading and 52% in math.
To read more of
this provocative piece, go to http://www.wsj.com/articles/vicki-alger-educations-no-dollar-left-behind-competition-1421017161
Last month, the
National Education Association posted their ideas about “2014’s Best and Worst
Players in Public Education.” The usual bogeymen – the Koch brothers and
new villainess Campbell Brown – are of course trotted out. But also prominently
bashed is Democrats for Education Reform, which advocates for sensible
education policy changes. But according to NEA, the reforms suggested by DFER
(and many other groups) have “acquired a bit of a stench over the last few
years, as the ideas with which it is most closely associated – high stakes
accountability, vouchers, merit pay, charter schools, not to mention teacher
bashing – have not worn well with much of the public.” (Actually, polls show
that the general public is now at odds with the teachers unions, not the
reformers.) To see the entire NEA list, go to http://neatoday.org/2014/12/09/2014s-best-and-worst-players-in-public-education/
And talking about
unions, there is a bill that has been kicking around Congress since late 2013
called the “Employee Rights Act.” Its goal is to “provide protections
for workers with respect to their right to select or refrain from selecting
representation by a labor organization.” The hope is that with the recent
political shift in Washington, the legislation can be moved along at a speedier
clip. To read more about the multifaceted bill, go to http://employeerightsact.com/
January 25-31 is
National School Choice Week, a time dedicated to shining a positive
spotlight “on the need for effective education options for all children.” Last
year there were over 5,500 events across the country and this year I will be
participating in two of them. For more information about the events in Los
Angeles and Orange County, please contact stephanie@parentsadvocateleague.org.
Over
the last several years, one needs more than an abacus to keep up with the bevy
of school choice lawsuits and countersuits that are jamming courtrooms all over
the country. But thankfully, the good folks over at Watchdog.org have spelled
out many of them in bite-sized pieces. To learn more, go to http://watchdog.org/189775/school-lawsuits-2014/
Also
regarding vouchers, according to a 17-year study in New York City, Education Next reports “Minority
students who received a school voucher to attend private elementary schools in
1997 were, as of 2013, 10 percent more likely to enroll in college and 35 percent more likely than their peers in
public school to obtain a bachelor’s degree.” To read more about the study, go to http://educationnext.org/school-vouchers-help-low-income-minority-students-earn-college-degree/
CTEN has two Facebook pages. If you have a Facebook
account, we urge you to join them and let us know your thoughts. Having a
dialogue among teachers is an effective way to spread information and share experiences
and ideas. Our original Facebook page can be found here http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#!/group.php?gid=125866159932&ref=ts Our second page, which deals
with teacher evaluation and transparency, can be accessed here - http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#!/group.php?gid=126900987357825&ref=ts
As always, thanks for your continued interest and support
of CTEN.
Sincerely,
Larry Sand
CTEN President
