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Money Rolls In

Wednesday, December 21st, 2011

In spite of comments about the Obama administration from the right and the left, one of the big coups that has just landed in California comes from a United States Department of Education’s Race to the Top grant. Anyone in the education world is happy to grab money for young kids to provide readiness before they start kindergarten. Finally, the state has written a grant that has been approved. Would anyone raise his or her hand to vote to give the funds back? The GOP has tried time after time to snuff out funds for early childhood education.

So, the Obama administration hasn’t shown leadership-when?

Here is a list from Elaine who commented on David Brooks and Gail Collins post on the Opinionator, December 14, 2011.

President Obama’s successes:
-End the Iraq War.

-Health care reform-this will change the way Americans can access health insurance . It will make health insurance affordable for everyone. Who in their right mind can argue the benefits?

-Brought down Osama bin Laden. This is a big deal.

-A great deal of financial intervention, aside from stimulus, during a time when the economy was poised to go over a cliff.

-Recognized the problem with unemployment and the reasons behind the problem-meaning recognizing the real reasons unemployment stays high. Corporations are holding back, not hiring, and also taking this opportunity to practice age and other discrimination.

Also one might add, help to orchestrate the demise of Muammar el-Qaddifi.

Stimulus funds, though not enough and fought over since they were voted for, helped California fix Interstate 5 after trucks had destroyed the right lane. Have you seen the ARRA signs around?

The repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.”

The resuscitation of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (NCLB) that was about to go another year without revision. The administration finally suggested “waivers” and offered them to states.

The California Early Learning Challenge grant of $52.6 million squeezed out of Race to the Top monies given to eight other east coast states is for a specific program that will primarily fund local Quality Rating and Improvement Systems (QRIS) being developed by Regional Leadership Consortia - voluntary groups of local First 5 commissions, county offices of education, and county governments. These Consortia will work with licensed child care programs, school districts, and child care partners.

Although the current Congress has a perverted way of counting every penny, one of the ways that the administration has led the nation is by looking out for young children. All those, including teachers, who need to criticize, must keep their students in mind.

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Posted in Elementary and Secondary Education Act, NCLB, No Child Left Behind Act, Race to Top, public schools |
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ESEA Revision! Teacher Evaluation?

Wednesday, October 12th, 2011

Good news! The Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee has finally released its draft of a bill filled with revisions to reauthorize the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 2002. The House Education Committee version, as stated in a previous post, is being negotiated piecemeal in hopes there will be no revision until after 2012.

The Senate legislation may pass, not only because Congress has been chastised for taking 4-5 years to make revisions. The bill takes into account the propositions made by the Obama Administration in 2009, the NCLB waivers by “executive authority” authorized by the U.S. Department of Education in September 2011, and it closely aligns with GOP proposals. Bipartisan legislation!

The main aspects to look over closely are standards, school improvement, and accountability.

preparing students to be college or career ready

preparing students to be college or career ready

We’ve heard for a long time that standards for student achievement must assure college or career readiness. But each state’s standards do not have to be aligned with the Common Core Standards, although all but six states have agreed to those standards. Also, English language Learners must have a set of standards which assure readiness to graduate.

As for accountability, the major change is that there are no longer hard and fast targets for achievement in reading and math. The states are accountable for “continuous growth.” Who keeps tabs on the growth for each state?

With growth in mind, school improvement for schools in each state must include intensive intervention for the 5% lowest-performing schools. Schools with the largest achievement gap between aggregates of the student population must implement practices to reduce the gap. Again, what entity will oversee these changes?

Critics point out that in the revisions the state determines the method for measuring the impact of programs. In the old NCLB that was the problem! The language was too vague to assure high standards for the measures used to assess student achievement. Without clear achievement targets, poor and minority students will be ignored.

The Senate draft and the House attempt does address the teacher accountability controversy, but leaves much up to the state. Each state must have four ratings for teachers and student achievement must be a factor. But, for example, how is student achievement and teacher evaluation to be made for subjects and grades not tested?

It appears that states and school districts are left to design and implement a plan. New reports to share best practices for teacher evaluation appear monthly. One of the latest is a report Peer Review: Getting Serious About Teacher Support and Evaluation by Julia E. Koppich and Daniel Humphrey. The report describes two exemplary Peer Assistance and Review (PAR) programs in California:  Poway School District near San Diego and San Juan School District near Sacramento.

Briefly, the program is geared to new teachers and experienced teachers who need to improve their instruction and classroom management. Consulting teachers take a year away from the classroom and provide well-designed accountability plans and intensive support to improve teaching. A governance board made up of administration and the teacher’s union has proven to work well to support the program, in spite of tough decisions about employment. It was apparent to the report writers that increased pressure to do better with less money was the critical factor, given that trained consulting teachers provide the most important role in the success of the program.

Back again to the same concern repeated many times. Where’s the money? This school year 37 states have cut funding for education. The American Jobs Act did not pass in the Senate as this post is being written. Since the Senate Education Committee seems to be doing some bipartisan work, maybe they will be the instigators of some spending on teachers. And police and the men and women who put out fires– before Congress lets the schools burn.

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Posted in ESEA, Elementary and Secondary Education Act, NCLB, No Child Left Behind Act, Peer Assistance and Review, achievement gap, low-performing schools, public schools |
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“The time has come…

Wednesday, September 14th, 2011

To talk of many things”-Lewis Carroll. But talk about the lack of revision to ESEA (NCLB in its last iteration) is dominating the education world in September 2011.

rural school and district on Lopez Island, Washington

rural school and district on Lopez Island, Washington

The No Child Left Behind Act- President George W. Bush’s title for the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA)– was first authorized in 1965 under President Lyndon Johnson and revised every 5 years until the last alteration in 2001. Since then, all calls for adjustments have hit the high Congressional wall of inaction.

Who’s talking? National teachers’ unions NEA and AFT advocate change. The Council of Chief State School Officers exhorts Congress. Members of the National Governor’s Association have been in the forefront.

All across the country non-union teacher’s groups are the biggest voices: Educators4Excellence in New York; Teacher Plus in Boston, Indianapolis, and Chicago; Center for Teaching Quality in North Carolina, Denver, and Seattle to name a few.

What did the 2001 act provide? The legislation is lengthy and detailed. The sections on which most talk centers are “Improve the Academic Achievement of the Disadvantaged” and “Improving Basic Programs…” which delineate the main provisions of the act. Next, qualifications for teachers and paraprofessionals led to time-consuming paperwork to assure each teacher was “highly qualified.” Also, Innovative Programs morphed into advocacy for charter schools. The section “Improving Basic Programs” outlined the actions to show “adequate yearly progress” in reading and mathematics: in brief, each state must teach to its curriculum standards and provide outcomes on benchmark exams which would lead to 100% school proficiency in reading and math by 2014.

Why is NCLB so despised? All of these mandated programs are underfunded. As has been declared in this blog many times, it was clear to most teachers and administrators from the beginning that to have every student in a state reach grade level proficiency in two subjects by 2014 was a preposterous goal. The cost of upgrading curriculum standards and providing tests that give a single score by which to judge students is a contentious argument.

The ESEA legislation should have been revised by Congress in 2005-2006. It wasn’t. President Obama laid out revisions for Congress to take up in 2009 and March 2011. No go. In August 2011, the U.S. Department of Education used a provision in the legislation to offer waivers to the 2014 proficiency benchmark. States that could show consistent improvement in the four big administration priorities for ESEA revision would be authorized to alter their programs. The administration’s priorities are 1) working state data systems; 2) turn-around plans for low-performing schools; 3) improve experienced vs. new teacher distribution in low-performing schools; 4) boost curriculum standards in the state.

To create jobs in a stricken economy and to provide a further push to Congress, President Obama in his speech on September 8, 2011, recommended $60 billion to be divided among states to save teachers’ jobs and fix the infrastructure of school property. The inference was also to finish ESEA revisions.

Representative John Kline, Education Committee, commented on the high cost and more regulation, calling the program a teacher’s union bailout. Representative George Miller and Senator Tom Harkin of their respective Education Committees were more enthusiastic. So far Congressional revisions have been offered to bolster charter schools, eliminate forty programs under the supervision of the U.S. Department of Education (like the Star Schools Distance Learning Program), and flexible shift of federal funds (like Title 1) from poverty budget lines to special education.

What to our surprise! John Kline’s House Education committee has passed a vote on the charter schools revisions yesterday, September 13, 2011. On to a full house vote.

On the other hand, teacher’s organizations look for revision in school and teacher accountability rules and evaluation; stability in curriculum standards; and testing that leads to better learning rather than a score by which to berate teachers and students when the hurdle is not vaulted even though students may have leaped higher.

The time has come….

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Posted in Adequate Yearly Progress, Council of Chief State School Officers, ESEA, Elementary and Secondary Education Act, NCLB, National Governor's Association, No Child Left Behind Act, highly qualified teachers, low-performing schools, public schools |
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Money Trickles In

Wednesday, May 18th, 2011

After rambunctious teacher demonstrations last week from San Diego to Humboldt, California, the news has changed. Not a mere hopeful whisper, the April state tax revenues have actually been tallied in California (and many other states). School districts, at least for the 2011-2012 year, won’t see further slice and slash to their funds.

Teachers have already been notified by union negotiators that announcements will soon be made to withdraw lay-off notifications. The sigh of relief is more like a cumulative whoosh. No one was looking forward to next year and its combination of draconian cuts in services.

A brief update of why: during the first days of the 2007-2008 recession, state budgets were too optimistic about turn around in revenues. That error was soon obvious and so legislative budgets set cautious estimates, too cautious as it turns out. In California, it’s possible that $6.6 billion more revenue will be collected than last year, most of which will go to fulfill the state’s formula for funding schools.

As the demonstrations last week clamored, even while rumors made the rounds, the state still has a large imbalance to the budget. The tax legislation that will sunset this year must be extended to begin to balance the state budget over time.  But the conflict over spending cuts vs. raising revenue remains.

At the state and federal level, for whom and to where money is allocated continues to hurt the actual detailed reforms that numerous public school think tanks wish to implement. It has been a year since Congress began to fiddle with revisions to the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), better known since 2002 as No Child Left Behind (NCLB).

Teachers unions want changes to testing, student achievement benchmarks, and accountability. Most conservatives in Congress want to cut various programs funded by ESEA as a way to reduce the deficit. Others feel the state and local Departments of Education should take all the responsibility for flexible dispersal of funds in a state.

The last possibility affects federal Title I monies for disadvantaged children and Title II funds for English Language Learners. How will compromise be made when the National Education Association (NEA) sees that flexible use for those monies only means disadvantaged and ELL students will be short-changed as states try to balance budgets?

Most education think tanks that want to see reform begin, advocate for fully-funded models. Any kind of evaluation is for teachers, administrators, and school boards, including tenure issues. Plans must be clearly designed to support teachers, administrators, and school board members not meeting standards.

Now, with conflicts in many states between teachers and public employees’ benefits and pensions and state legislatures effort to decrease deficits, it seems improbable to bring reforms into the public schools.

Let’s hope the increase in tax revenue isn’t ephemeral, but the forefront of an improved economy.

(See article about tax revenues in The New York Times, May 18, 2011, “For States, a Glimmer of Hope on Deficits” by Michael Cooper.)

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Posted in California budget crisis, ESEA, Elementary and Secondary Education Act, NCLB, National Education Association, No Child Left Behind Act, layoff notices, public schools |
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NEA Takes a Stand

Wednesday, March 30th, 2011

Talk, talk, talk! What are you saying? We’ve been waiting, and now NEA speaks out.

The National Education Association (NEA) magazine Neatoday, March-April 2011, has finally laid out its positions on evaluation and teacher’s rights. As outlined in an earlier post (1-19-11), in the early 20th century teachers were at the beck and call of their superiors. When 40 hour weeks, health benefits, vacation, due process before termination, and other conditions workers take for granted were wrested from corporations and school district boards by unions, then school teachers could stand up for their rights.

But now in their 21st century hearts, teachers are caught between fear of losing rights that assure stability and security in a profession where teachers suffered unnecessary injustices, and realization that current evaluation procedures are a joke. Don’t lay the blame on collective bargaining. Don’t focus on high-stakes decisions like the tenure bugaboo and the compensation gremlin. Those three issues sidetrack negotiations toward a successful evaluation system.

NEA’s article debunks most current efforts at evaluation plans. Particular variables are not taken into account. For example, unions dislike high-stakes testing as designed in the Elementary and Secondary Achievement Act (ESEA) known as No Child Left Behind. “This enormous, expensive, painful venture has had little or no effect on achievement.” NeaToday, March-April 2011, p. 20.  We read every day how school districts, in a poor budget environment, constantly scramble to find monies to put a basic program in place, much less pay for high-stakes testing.

Scratch “value-added” measurements of test scores over time.  It’s another theory proclaimed to provide an effective tool to separate strong from weak teachers. However, factors to determine those scores throw analysis into confusion. The variables complicate any attempts to determine the effectiveness of a teacher.

Have you heard of the sure-fire tool to improve student achievement? “Pay for Performance?” NEA doesn’t think so! Plenty of studies like the Scholastic Teacher Survey establish the incentives to motivate student achievement-for instance, collaboration, analysis of student success, administrative support.

The National Education Policy Center (NEPC) report, Getting Teacher Assessment Right by Patricia H. Hinchey, summarizes the valuable qualities of a teacher assessment/evaluation system that state Departments of Education would do well to read before going any further in designing a model.

The finger is pointed at critics who claim the only educational purpose of schools is to produce student academic success for which standardized tests give easily advertised scores to evaluate teachers.

Look the other way–most research laid out in the report’s detailed bibliography shows that the goal is to establish protocols for evaluation based on factors of Teacher Quality (education, experience, beliefs, capacity to learn), Teacher Performance (classroom interaction, collaboration with school community), and Teacher Effectiveness (curriculum implementation, student test scores, student motivation).

Let’s examine some of the participants in NEA’s Priority Schools Campaign. The union tries to keep an eye on the progress of schools in school districts trying to transform from failing to high-performing designation. Go to the article “In Alabama, ‘A Good Attitude is Infectious’” by Greg Johnson. There are ups and downs, but no quitters.

Those who offer a new plan proclaim its wonders. Those that fear change hate all evaluation systems. The outcome, however, depends on implementation as well as the design.

You know what that means, don’t you?

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Posted in Elementary and Secondary Education Act, NCLB, No Child Left Behind Act, public schools, school reform |
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