Dear Colleague,
According to American Federation of Teachers president Randi
Weingarten, the national teacher
shortage could turn into a crisis. She claims that we have a “teacher
brain-drain unseen in any other profession.” To explain why this is happening,
she adds, “The last 15 years have been marked by top-down education policies
that promoted testing over teaching, competition over collaboration, austerity
over investment, and scapegoating teachers rather than valuing them.”
But is any of this true? Not according to many reliable
sources, the latest of which is economist Dan Goldhaber. As reported in the
latest National Council on Teacher Quality newsletter,
The current decline is what we normally see when unemployment dips and the pool of folks looking for work isn't as large as in other years.
And as programs have not traditionally seen it as their responsibility to direct candidates to shortage teaching areas (e.g. special ed), there continue to be massive misalignment between the types of teachers trained and the types of teachers public schools need to hire.
Most notably, programs have been routinely graduating twice as many new elementary teachers as public schools hire each year.
To see more of the
NCTQ newsletter, go here -http://www.nctq.org/commentary/article.do?id=262 To read Weingarten’s piece, go to http://www.huffingtonpost.com/randi-weingarten/how-the-teacher-shortage_b_9712286.html
The
peripatetic Weingarten turned up in England in April to protest Pearson. The AFT has a long and complex relationship
with the global education company. Twenty-seven of its affiliates have
holdings in Pearson, including retirement systems in California, New York,
Arkansas, Colorado, etc. According to the union’s press release, “The American Federation of Teachers,
along with teachers unions and nongovernmental organizations throughout the
world, will speak out during Pearson’s annual general meeting Friday, April 29,
in London to call for a review of its business model that pushes high-stakes
testing in the United States and privatized schools in the developing world.”
Pearson’s board considered the unions’
resolution but recommended that its shareholders vote against it. And indeed
they did. Only 2.4 percent bought what Weingarten was selling, and the
resolution was defeated by 578,510,587 votes to 14,016,634. To read
Weingarten’s statement, go here -
http://www.aft.org/press-release/aft-joins-global-allies-lobby-pearson-shareholders-meeting To see the results of the Pearson vote, go to http://shares.telegraph.co.uk/news/article.php?id=5332426&epic=PSON
Coincidentally at the same time as AFT’s confrontation with
Pearson, the latest NAEP scores were released and they did not paint a pretty
picture. As reported by US News &
World Report, “Only about a third of U.S. high school seniors are prepared
for college-level coursework in math and reading. And while the performance of
the country’s highest achievers is increasing in reading, the lowest-achieving
students are performing worse than ever.” To read more, go to http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2016-04-27/high-school-seniors-arent-college-ready-naep-data-show
On the school reform
front, Students First, the creation of Michelle Rhee, has merged with 50Can.
Both organizations have similar goals. Current Students First president Jim
Blew said, “The move makes sense because with the passage of the Every
Student Succeeds Act, the replacement of the No Child Left Behind Act, state
legislatures are crucial in determining the future of education in America.”
Blew added that Students First is “stronger on the lobbying side, and 50Can is
stronger in advocacy.” To learn more, go here - http://www.latimes.com/local/education/la-me-edu-michelle-rhee-studentsfirst-50can-20160329-story.html
CTA and SEIU
announced last week that they have collected nearly a million signatures
in hopes of placing a measure on the November ballot that would extend part the
Prop. 30 taxes for an additional 12 years. (The sales tax hike will expire at
the end of this year.) The
so-called “temporary tax to fund education,” passed in 2012, was due to expire
in 2018. For more, go here - http://www.sfgate.com/politics/article/Unions-gather-1-million-signature-for-Prop-30-7462916.php
On the school choice
front, University of Arkansas professor Patrick Wolf and his team released
a meta-analysis of 19 “gold standard” experimental evaluations of the
test-score effects of private school choice programs around the world. “The
sum of the reliable evidence indicates that, on average, private school choice
increases the reading scores of choice users by about 0.27 standard deviations
and their math scores by 0.15 standard deviations. These are highly
statistically significant, educationally meaningful achievement gains of
several months of additional learning from school choice.” To examine the
study, go here - http://www.uaedreform.org/downloads/2016/05/the-participant-effects-of-private-school-vouchers-across-the-globe-a-meta-analytic-and-systematic-review-2.pdf
Paul E. Peterson,
editor-in-chief of Education Next and
director of the Program on Education Policy and Governance at Harvard, claims,
“The Bush-Obama era of reform via federal regulation has come to an
end.” He maintains that reforming the system from within is unlikely to succeed
in the years ahead. “If school reform is to move forward, it will occur via new
forms of competition—whether they be vouchers, charters, home schooling,
digital learning, or the transformation of district schools into decentralized,
autonomous units.” To read more of this provocative article, go to http://educationnext.org/end-of-bush-obama-regulatory-approach-school-reform-choice-competition/
Not surprisingly, anything that smells of privatization
is anathema to the teachers unions. Courtesy of Mike Antonucci, we can see just
how the National Education Association plans to go about fighting off the
threat to its pocket book. “This ‘step-by-step crisis action plan’ is designed
to help local union activists defeat efforts by school districts to privatize
support services. They are advised not to argue about cost savings and insist
‘You can’t get the same service for less!’” To see
NEA’s anti-privatization combat manual go to http://www.eiaonline.com/NEABeatPrivatizationToolkit.pdf
And finally, as you well know, information
is frequently used to score political points and make cases for various causes.
To that end, CTEN has a “cheat sheet” on our website – with original sources.
To see it, go to http://www.ctenhome.org/cheatsheet.html If you have information that counters
what’s there or would like to see something added, please let us know.
Anyone wishing to
make a donation to CTEN can do so very simply through a personal check or
PayPal - http://www.ctenhome.org/donate.html As a non-profit, we exist and operate only
through the generosity and support of others. Many thanks to CTENers who have
already donated and a special shout-out to those of you who do so on a regular
basis.
Sincerely,
Larry Sand
CTEN President
Larry Sand
CTEN President
