Collective Bargaining Under Attack...Again.

Earlier this year, we witnessed Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker attack the ability for teachers and other public employees to unionize. His law passed, but not without a fight.
The attack on public employee unions has spread to Ohio where the Governor there signed a bill that strips away most collective bargaining rights for teachers, firefighters and police officers. Unions have mobilized in Ohio and they are fighting back. They collected nearly 1.3 million signatures to have the issue placed on the ballot this November to be considered for repeal. Check out the website We Are Ohio for details and how you can help.

News Round-up

It's been a busy few days in the education world:
Senate Republicans blocked the Educator and First Responder Jobs Act, which could have helped save or create 400,000 jobs.
The Senate committee working on the ESEA re-write, passed it's new version of the bill on to the full Senate. It basically kills NCLB as we know it. While it pulled back significantly on the federal government's role in educator evaluations, some groups feel that there is still too much federal involvement in education policy.
Let's get a group of people together to evaluate the (limited) impact of Race to the Top and not invite two of the most important stakeholders; teachers and principals.

No Child Left Behind bill is showing improvement

Late yesterday, word came that calls from various groups and emails from NEA members helped spur a change to the proposals around teacher evaluations in Senator Harkin's ESEA re-authorization bill. The new changes restore local control on designing and implementing teacher evaluation systems. Those school systems that receive Teacher Incentive Fund (TIFF) grants would have to accept the federal rules for evaluation. While there is still concern abut the turn-around programs contained in the bill, NEA President Dennis Van Roekel said:
“We also remain committed to advocating that school accountability systems contain true multiple measures of performance and embrace promising, locally-developed ideas to turn around struggling schools and allow educators to have a real voice in reform.  We look forward to continuing these discussions with Senators Harkin, Enzi and the members of the committee as the legislation moves forward.”
You can read his statement here. You can also get a breakdown of the bill at Education Week.  The bill is scheduled for mark-up later in the week and looks like it will make it out of committee and to the Senate floor.

Slowing Down on ESEA Reauthorization

Over the last few weeks, we've been writing in this space about the upcoming retooling/reauthorizing of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) and its main component NCLB. Last week, Senator Harkin's proposal was released and the details have become more clear. From Education Votes, the bill will:

• Still rely heavily on test scores instead of supporting true multiple measures of school performance;
• Prescribes top-down models of school turnarounds that are not based on research, don’t work, and
• ignore promising locally developed ideas; and 
• Takes away teachers’ rights to have a real voice in their own evaluation systems

Last week, leaders of the NEA, National Association of Elementary School Principals, National School Boards Association, American Association of School Administrators and the National Association of Secondary School Principals wrote to the Senator, urging that Congress slow down and allow for greater stakeholder input on these measures and to allow for the rightful local development and control of these issues. 

To that end, we need you to take action! Take a few minutes and click on this link to contact your Senators and urge them to do what's right and slow down on reauthorizing ESEA!

Quality Education as a Constitutional Right: Creating a Grassroots Movement to Transform Public Schools

SNCC veteran, founder of the Algebra Project, and education activist Robert Moses will discuss and sign Quality Education as a Constitutional Right: Creating a Grassroots Movement to Transform Public Schools at an event sponsored by Teaching for Change, the Algebra Project, and Busboys & Poets on Monday, October 17 from 6:30-8:00pm at the DC Busboys & Poets (14th & V). Free and open to the public. More info: http://bbpbooks.teachingforchange.org/book/9780807032824

What are we "waiving?"

Thirty nine states have already signaled their intent to apply for the Department of Education's waivers from meeting the 2014 requirements of NCLB. This is not surprising as the efforts and costs to deal with the fall out from not meeting those goals would be monumental.
What seems to be lost in this is that to qualify for the waivers, a state must submit to more Federal requirements. These requirements mirror those in the Race to the Top program.  13 of the 14 jursidictions that won Race to the Top funds have indicated that they will apply. Maryland is one of the states that will apply and they are in good position to receive the waiver as most of the requirements are in place or in progress. The Baltimore Sun is reporting that Maryland will not apply in the first round.
The big problem for the 25 states that may apply for and be granted the waivers is that it becomes another unfunded mandate. A spokesman for the Pennsylvania Department of Education pointed out; “In Pennsylvania, this is viewed by many as a replacement program, not a waiver program,” 
This continues to raise the question of whether this common sense on the part of Department of Education or continued over reaching of their authority. 

100% proficient vs. continuous improvement

Yesterday, Senate democrats released details of their framework for reauthorizing No Child Left Behind. Rather than continuing to push for the unattainable goal of having 100% of students be proficient in math and reading by 2014, the new plan focuses on schools showing "continuous improvement."
Richard Rothstein writes about the follies of this idea in his latest blog post. Everyone wants top performing schools, but does the idea of  "continuous improvement" help? Under the current NCLB system, there are numerous schools around the country that are rated poorly because they don't make AYP but have high numbers of students performing at proficient and advanced levels on the standardized tests that rate them.
"Continuous improvement" could create a situation where schools that perform at their highest level are penalized because they have reached their potential. Others believe that this creates a loosening of standards and that school systems will relax efforts to help their neediest students, while some believe that this will restore local control to school districts in setting education goals and policies.
The bill goes to committee next week, so we can expect some changes when both sides are in the room working together. Depending on how long this takes to pass (if it does at all), it is yet to be known how this will impact the Presidents plan to allow the Secretary of Education to provide waivers from current NCLB penalties. 

Does merit pay really motivate?

As those who push for education "reform" continually talk about the need for merit pay for teachers, there are always questions as to whether or not those schemes work. Esther Quintero writes about it on the Shanker Blog and looks at some of the studies around merit pay. Quintero writes:

"In 1999, Deci and his colleagues published a meta-analysis of 128 studies (see here), again concluding that when people do things in exchange for external rewards, their intrinsic motivation tends to diminish. Once a certain activity is associated with a tangible reward, such as money, people will be less inclined to participate in the task when the reward is not present. Deci concluded that extrinsic rewards make it harder for people to sustain self-motivation."

This is also illustrated (literally) in this video:

We can't discount student poverty

"Before we throw quality public school teachers under the school reform bus, it would seem far wiser to first fully explore ways of bringing them students prepared to learn. It makes much more sense to support Early Head Start and other programs with proven track records." - Marcus D. Pohlmann

Corporate school reformers love to focus on teacher effusiveness and evil unions when dissecting why some students don't perform well in school. What they avoid discussing is the impact of a student's poverty on his/her ability to learn and succeed in school. Marcus D. Pohlmann, a professor of political science at Rhodes College has written extensively on this and related topics. He paints a vivid picture of the hurdles that poor students have to overcome to be successful in the K-12 setting and ultimately be prepared for college or the work force. He was a guest columnist in today's Answer Sheet in the Washington Post and shares his views on why we can't discount the socioeconomic status of our students when we try to determine the best way to serve them. 

What does a "new" NCLB look like?

In a previous post, we wondered what will become of No Child Left Behind. Would it be completely overhauled, would it be left alone, with waivers to help escape penalties, or would it just be tweaked and essentially be more of the same? 
Leaders of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee are beginning to weigh in. Yesterday, we talked about the the proposals of Senator Lamar Alexander and what the NEA thought of them. Tuesday looks to be the day that we hear from the committee Chair, Senator Tom Harkin.
Monty Neil writes in today's Washington Post about what he thinks should and should not be included in a revamped NCLB. Specifically,  he calls for less standardized testing, not linking test scores to teacher and principal evaluations and leaving matters of accountability and improvement to local decision making processes. 
You can read the article here. 
Update: Education Week has some of the "fluid details" of the upcoming proposal here. 

NEA Likes Senate GOP's Bill to Overhaul NCLB (sort of)

There have been many questions surrounding No Child Left Behind (NCLB) over the years of its existence. Recently, the burning questions have been when will Congress act to overhaul the law and what will be the impact of the President's plan to allow for waivers of the penalties NCLB levies on schools and districts that do not meet Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) goals or reach the overall goal of 100% proficiency for all students by 2013.
Education Week reports that the NEA recently sent a letter to Republican Senator Lamar Alexander (TN) both praising and criticizing some of his recommendations for changes to the law.  The NEA likes his views on creating better systems of accountability and instituting multiple measures of student achievement to reduce the reliance on standardized tests. The NEA also shared its disapproval of his plans for charter schools and the potential for the law to weaken teachers collective bargaining rights. 
It is expected that Democratic Senator Tom Harkin (IA) will be releasing his vision of the reauthorized bill in the coming weeks. It will be noteworthy to see how the Senators' visions will compare and what NEA's reaction will be.

Can we effectively link teacher evaluations and student test scores?

Today's Washington Post has an article by Carol Corbett Burris and Kevin G. Welner, two educators who have had conversations with President Obama and Secretary of Education Arne Duncan about the use of student assessments in evaluating teachers. 
Their conversation was based on discussions around the new evaluation system for teachers in New York State that was put in place as a result of applying for Race to the Top. The authors feel that the evaluation system and its connection to test scores is punitive and will lead to further narrowing of the curriculum. 
New York state has long had the Regents Exams, standardized tests that measured student learning in a number of core high school courses. Unlike similar tests in other states that helped determine whether or not school made AYP, students had a vested interest in the Regents; if they did not pass, they did not get credit for the course and jeopardized their chances of graduating on time. That's very different than the use of MSA and HSA scores here in Maryland. 
We also need to keep in mind that there are other things that are hard to account for. Recently Washington D.C. schools were faced with the conundrum of teachers have high value added scores (i.e. their students performed at or above standard) but did not score comparatively in their classroom observations. New York City celebrated the amazing gains made by their students, only to have the Regents admit that the tests were getting easier over the last few years. 
We keep hearing about making educators more accountable by connecting their evaluations to test scores. But if the tests are flawed and cannot accurately measure learning, how can they be expected to accurately measure teaching?