ATTN. Arne Duncan. Care to Comment?

At the following link, you can read about the struggle of a Florida woman to obtain a waiver from Florida's testing requirement for her dying son:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2014/02/04/parent-of-dying-boy-has-to-prove-her-son-cant-take-standardized-test/

Testing Uproar Hits Annapolis Today

This just in from the Public News Service:

ANNAPOLIS, Md. - Maryland takes up debate about school testing today at a House of Delegates hearing.

Del. Eric Luedtke, D-Burtonsville, is sponsoring legislation that would cancel this spring's Maryland School Assessments - testing that is required under federal law, but states can request a waiver.

Parents, teachers and others have good reason to support the move, Luedtke said, because Common Core curriculum roll-outs around the state would make the long-used assessments inaccurate.

"People look at this and say giving kids a test that they're not being taught the curriculum for is ridiculous," Luedtke said.

A new Common Core-based assessment will be used next year. The Maryland State Education Association and the Maryland Association of Boards of Education agree and are backing the bill. The Maryland Education Department supports administering the tests - promoting value in determining school performance.

Luedtke admitted that the state is in a tough spot because of the requirement to test. But even if legislation doesn't move quickly enough to force a request for a waiver, the state still could skip the testing and pay a penalty. His guess is that the penalty would be less than the cost of testing : $6 million. He sees a benefit in the discussion because the public has become so engaged in what's going on with education.

"Common Core implementation and implementation of the new PARCC Assessments - I think people are very worried about whether or not we're doing that right," he said.

The No Child Left Behind Act requires yearly testing for grades three through eight.

The hearing on the bill, HB 117, will begin at 1 p.m. before the House Ways and Means Committee. Details of the bill are online at mgaleg.maryland.gov.

Do teachers have a right to be involved in politics?

The Washington Post has seen fit to run yet another editorial attacking the Montgomery County Education Association and its political activism.   One must wonder why the Post, given its stated support of reform efforts in public education, chooses to single out the local teachers and their union who have done more than any other in the area to bring such efforts to fruition.  MCEA has a long and meaningful history of partnering with Montgomery County Public Schools to improve teaching and learning.  The Post itself recognized this when it ran a front page article on (6/29/09) about our Peer Assistance and Review (PAR) program.   PAR is only one part of the jointly designed and managed Teacher Professional Growth System, which is a model teacher evaluation system for school systems around the country and abroad.  Maryland’s schools have been ranked #1 in the nation for five years by Education Week- in no small part due to the student achievement gains that are the focus, indeed the commitment, of the educators of MCPS.

The Post alleges that MCEA has sold its endorsement but offers no evidence to substantiate this claim. We have never traded our support for financial contributions. Never have and never will. Every candidate we recommend is someone we believe will be an advocate for public education. In fact, many of the candidates recommended by MCEA have been recommended by the Post editorial board as well. 

The criteria we use are posted on our website. The Post itself has noted the transparency of our process (which one might note, is markedly more democratic and open than the process the Post’s editorial board itself uses).  We do not apologize for our efforts to inform voters about the candidates our members, the people trusted to care for, challenge, and teach the students of MCPS, believe will best support them in their work. 

In 2006 and to a lesser extent in 2010, we accepted voluntary donations from candidates who recognized that pooling their resources to publicize their support for public education and from educators was an effective means of informing the voting public and seeking its support. The coordinated mailings fully complied with all Maryland campaign finance laws.  No donations were sought or accepted until well after our recommendation process was completed. All contributions were reported to the State Board of Elections. There was no quid-pro-quo - candidates did not have to donate a cent to our coordinated campaign. Some did. Some didn’t. Their choice.

Do we advocate for our members?  Of course we do.  Do we want them to have the resources they need to do their best every day for students?  No doubt.  Do we want politicians who will work with us to protect our classrooms? Absolutely. We want high quality teachers, lower class sizes, and increased funding to help close the achievement gap. So do the candidates we recommend. 

So why is the Post so vitriolic in its smear campaign against MCEA? Josh Kurtz, a senior editor at Roll Call, concluded in 2009 that the Post’s “unbridled ferocity”  was an effort “to reassert its power over Montgomery County elections… by tear(ing) down the institution it sees as its biggest rival for winning the hearts and minds of county voters”. John Farrell, a contributing writer at U.S. News & World Report wrote at that time that the Post’s editorials were “semi-hysterical” and that the paper “owes the teachers a correction, if not an apology, for recklessly tossing around words like ‘corrupt’ and ‘shakedown’.”

We believe that voters deserve to have as much information as possible in order to make informed decisions. We will not back down from our advocacy for our schools, any more than we will lessen our efforts in the classroom every day to help all our students be successful.