Archive for the ‘Race to Top’ Category

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Am I Highly-Qualified?

Wednesday, September 23rd, 2009

Sometimes I wonder what the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) legislation means when it requires all teachers to be highly-qualified.  It’s still the law.  No changes yet.  No matter how often my union (CTA) brings it up in its magazine.

3rd grader reads at home

3rd grader reads at home

In the latest issue of California Educator, September 2009, the problem is seen in the Race to the Top requirements: “paying teachers based on a single test score will increase the likelihood of teaching to the test and make it harder to recruit and retain teachers.” (p. 30)

I read those words and think how does my training make me want to be paid only for teaching to make sure students pass a test?  Is that what a highly-qualified teacher does?

I spent two years taking classes in the latest research before I was credentialed.  None of it was about teaching to a test.  In reading/language arts, the curriculum focused on the best practices known to show students how to figure out unknown vocabulary and to read for meaning so that no matter what text, fiction or non-fiction, is found in the test booklet, they will be able to show what they have learned.

For mathematics, we were trained to use the most up-to-date strategies to teach students beginning set theory for little kids through pre-algebra for upper elementary students.  In my current class, the students are very strong in mathematical understanding, so I spend my time assembling enrichment materials.

In California, the same as many other states, I wrote my own research papers, using the students in my student-teaching classes as subjects to test the strategies I was studying.  I took the CBEST, the exam that new teachers must pass before being credentialed.  I observed and student-taught at three different grade levels.  I was evaluated on my lesson plans and classroom management skills for those weeks.  Even in my second year, I’m still observed and evaluated, being a probationary teacher.  I get good remarks for my work.

Doesn’t it sound like I’m highly-qualified?  I know, however, that I’m fortunate to teach students that are highly motivated and who have parents who encourage them and spend a great deal of time giving them after-school opportunities.

What if, like some teacher friends from my credentialing program, I was hired in a low-income neighborhood where the students don’t have the advantages my students enjoy?  What if the students were struggling with another language?  Enough food?  Illness?  Parents who worked all the time and still didn’t have enough money for trips to museums or the beach or the sights of San Francisco, much less a home library?

And what if, no matter all the best practices of the teachers and enthusiasm of the students, the yearly test scores improve, but only little by little, and it takes relentless struggle to reach the benchmarks set by the state each year.  Some years, the benchmarks aren’t met.

Do those teachers not deserve recognition just like the teachers in schools where most students surpass the benchmarks every year?

So how is this ‘pay based on test scores’ evaluation plan supposed to fairly identify highly-qualified teachers?

Will this be another mandate with no guidelines and no money behind it?  Please say no.  In fact, put forward other well-documented ways to help students succeed, not pay-for-test-score-performance at all.

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Posted in California Teachers Association, NCLB, No Child Left Behind Act, Race to Top, highly qualified teachers, public schools, teacher preparation |
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Charter Schools vs. Public Schools

Wednesday, September 9th, 2009

Until Arnold Schwarzenegger’s desperate attempt to get Race To The Top money in order to turn around schools with dismal scores on the latest 2009 once-a-year exam, charter schools were floating under most teachers’ radar.

Known as places where parents, upset with the curriculum in their child’s school, and public school reformers got together and set up their own school.  Sometimes it was back to basics that charged them up, sometimes free-wheeling ideas about children choosing their own curriculum.  Many mission statements have been drafted, some authorized.

After much wrangling between the proponents and, often, teacher’s unions, legislation for charter schools was established (see US Charter Schools website), and now in 2009 about 750 California schools with about 276,000 students are chartered.  Not many, considering there are well over 6 million students in California.

For reformed-minded educators like those in New Schools Venture Fund and the Broad Foundation, the biggest draw to charter schools is the freedom from excessive regulation and the opportunity to set up innovative curriculum, instruction, and internal accountability for student success.

In the U. S. Department of Education’s Innovation in Education series, one finds that the effective charter schools do everything effective public schools do.  None of it is extraordinary, except those campuses are governed by a local board, not a far off school district board.  So those board members can move quickly to make changes without waiting for bureaucratic district approval, a big plus for reformers.

The California Teacher’s Association (CTA) agrees that the effective charter school has strong community support, small classroom size, good oversight of its financial management, health and safety plans with substantial attendance improvement, and instructional quality.  Everything all public schools want.

So why is there antagonism?

Mostly, it’s that charter schools came into existence to get around heavy-duty collective bargaining contracts that give teachers endless time to dispute termination decisions, as described in Steve Brill’s article “The Rubber Room,” The New Yorker, August 31, 2009.   Especially in the takeover of a regular public school, the charter hires its own teachers and administrators, some of whom don’t have credentials and who displace tenured staff.

However, the latest rendition of charter high schools in Los Angeles, Green Dot Public Schools, incorporates unionized staff under agreement with the public school district that those who don’t want to stay in the charter school can be placed in other schools.  From Florida to Oregon, as at Chicago International Charter School, “dissatisfied with long hours, churning turnover and, in some cases, lower pay,” teachers are organizing.  See “As More Charter Schools Unionize, Educators Debate the Effect” by Sam Dillon, New York Times, July 27, 2009.

Why else is CTA discontented?

The U.S. Department of Education’s Race To The Top (RTTT) guidelines suggest the best bet is charter schools, even though studies show very mixed results on exams used to hold schools accountable, and other non-charter public schools have turned themselves around.

CTA finds itself one of the few education organizations to be concerned about how teacher compensation and evaluation in all schools, including charter schools, will be designed.  The current emphasis on one test to judge the whole school as in No Child Left Behind is a huge problem.

It’s difficult to turn a school around, assembling the curriculum and instruction plan, committed teaching staff, consistent assessment and analysis, good facilities, and extra resources to address the needs of students and families in low-performing public schools or charter schools.

Finally, amassing enough money to run the charter school is as big a conundrum as it is for any campus in a public school district.  How many silent auctions can a parent attend?

What is difficult to understand is why CTA isn’t pushing for legislation in California to reform school finance, well-known as the first step to turn every low-performing school around, the entire purpose for RTTT funds?

(By the way,  the TakeCare project is a tool to facilitate talk about ‘turn-around’ in the school community.)

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Posted in NCLB, No Child Left Behind Act, Race to Top, low-performing schools, public schools, school accountability, school community, school finance reform, successful schools |
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Not a Gap-It’s a Chasm

Wednesday, September 2nd, 2009

In California education talk, the most important words are “achievement gap.”  Next most important are the tangle called “school finance reform.”

The two problem/solutions are as thorny as the briar patch at the edge of the moat surrounding Sleeping Beauty’s castle.

As if more money in itself is going to solve the multitude of education needs to close the achievement gap, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger is calling a special session in the Fall to design legislation ensuring the state’s ability to compete for Race to the Top (RTTT) federal funds.

Actually, the education world should be relieved that the real issues may finally come to the fore.

Federal Department of Education guidelines for any state plan expect measures to turn around struggling schools.  This blog has outlined one of many proposals and its recommendations (post 6/30/09).

Lawmakers’ first argument will be about repealing California’s charter school cap, a no-no for the National Education Association (NEA).  Their argument is that school governance by charter schools is only one of many options to improve the chances for low-income, at-risk students to achieve, while in the federal RTTT guidelines charter schools are being treated as the one best way to achieve student progress.

California students will benefit from the guidelines’ focus on the 5% of consistently under-performing schools.  It will, however, require money to provide consistent staff development for on-site assessment and analysis tools that help students; train, recruit, and retain highly-qualified teachers; and supply resources to keep those schools running smoothly.

Which highlights the section in the governor’s proposal to retain highly-qualified teachers and administrators.  For a long time, education articles have argued for pay arrangements to accommodate the difficulties for teachers in the most under-performing schools.  In truth, coaches or advisors to support the teacher’s best practices and counseling services for students and parents would do as much if not more to create incentives for achievement.

The last two pieces of the federal Department of Education guidelines to be debated in the legislature’s special session will leave lawmakers teetering on the edge of the chasm.  Improving accountability and linking student achievement to teacher performance are the most prickly of issues.

First, think about accountability.  How the state uses the data from one summative exam a year to designate successful and unsuccessful schools does little good.  How each school analyzes all the data collected from formative tests and uses it to diagnose what to teach next has been proven, for the few staffs trained in the techniques, to help students improve.  How will schools improve student performance with no funds to train teachers how to analyze the data?

Next, as the NEA in its letter to the U.S. Department of Education says, “It is inappropriate to require that states be able to link data on student achievement to individual teachers for the purpose of teacher and principal evaluation.”  Governor Schwarzenegger’s press release notes linked data may provide transparency, but numerous sources give reasons why it’s difficult for a single test’s data to inform anyone  how one teacher assures that an under-performing school closes the achievement gap.

It will take a lot of compromise to fairly make choices about evaluation of highly-qualified teachers and a process to ensure proficient student achievement.

Have your eyes caught the words “money” and “funds?”  In California (post 8/19) the tallest thorny vines surround the abysmal school finance system that hides the chasm, delicately referred to as the “achievement gap.”

No matter the bite from the $4.3 billion RTTT funds California might get if the legislature manages to rewrite education policies, one sure way to seal the achievement gap is to reform how state money is allocated to school districts.

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Posted in Race to Top, highly qualified teachers, low-performing schools, public schools, school accountability, school finance reform |
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Who Will Race to the Top?

Friday, July 31st, 2009

Race to Top money provides short-term grants for teacher professional development, teacher pay, standards-based assessment, and accountability for struggling schools.

Colorado is running a full-court press to compete for the Obama administration’s Race to the Top money for education reform.  The state’s Lt. Governor, Barbara O’Brien, says Colorado is well positioned to bring in some RTT money.

Colorado needs RTT and budget reform to meet kid needs

Colorado’s legislature, through its interim School Finance Committee, is also trying to revise its long-term strategy for funding public schools. The current school finance formula focuses on equity and adequacy based generally on district size. The state provides extra money to low-property-tax districts to “equalize” funding with high-property-tax districts.

The question remains: Is any of this funding adequate to achieve a “world class” public education system?

Colorado uses ‘categoricals’ for special-needs funds

The state uses “categorical grants” for special education, vocational education, gifted and talented programs, transportation, expelled and at-risk students, and English language proficiency. The current school finance bill, SB09-256, provides $230 million-plus in categorical funding for 2009-2010.

Does funding through categoricals meets the learning needs of kids?

Colorado just gets by ‘on the cheap’

According to State Senator Chris Romer, D-Denver and co-founder of the nonprofit Great Education Colorado, the state gets by “on the cheap” for education funding.  Colorado’s large middle- to upper-middle-class population provides a setting for middle-class kids who are “prepared for school” and have lots of resources at home. This advantage helps kids learn, despite the state’s near-bottom-of-the-nation financing for public schools.  The state is rated “average” in school performance across the nation.

But this low funding hurts kids in poorer homes who don’t have the same learning edge.

Poor kids struggle, unprepared for school

More than 65,000 Colorado kids under 5 years old live in extreme poverty, according to the Colorado Children’s Campaign. This number is growing faster than the national average. Eventually these children, and many other poor kids, end up in the state’s dropout statistics.

Most public school districts in the United States use free and reduced lunch as a “proxy” or predictor for at-risk kids. Dr. Alex Medler of the Children’s Campaign acknowledges that poverty is the largest umbrella indicator for at-risk kids.

Precise indicators exist to determine school funding and education reform

In Colorado, if a ninth-grade student has one or more F’s on a semester report card, there’s a 9 in 10 chance the child will drop out. Similarly, if a high school kid has 20 or more absences in a quarter, the child is at least 60% more likely to drop out. Fifty percent of dropouts have had at least one suspension in four years.

Student centered funding gives new approach to school finance

The School Finance Committee, concerned about dropout levels and under-performing public high schools, is looking at a student-centered funding system as a possible replacement for the current method.

Student-centered funding “drives funds to schools, with additional weights for school-based decisions.”   Schools will receive more money for English language learners, low performers, kids with lots of absences, etc.

The goal of student-centered funding is to give local schools more flexibility in dealing with diverse student populations. The system also can more closely connect budgeting with standards and assessment, providing more accountability.

Of course, any school-finance change begs the question of reform if it ends up that not enough money is in the system to begin with.  While the state is trying for school finance reform, Race to Top can provide the short term resources to give students a chance at excellence.

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Posted in Great Education Colorado, Race to Top, low-performing schools, public schools, school reform |
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