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5 de Mayo Victory for California Teachers

Wednesday, May 5th, 2010

My school district is taking teachers off the Reduction in Force (RIF) list after negotiations with the district’s local union, a branch of California Teachers Association-National Education Association (CTA-NEA).  Union representatives have agreed to five furlough days, that is, no pay for a break during the fall term.

Unlike vacation days which are included in the teacher’s yearly salary, furlough days save money.  Instead of a battle negotiating revision of the pay schedule to lower salaries, furlough days seem to be preferable.  Perhaps the union’s thinking is that unpaid furlough days can be eliminated when the funds for schools increase someday.  (No way will that happen anytime soon in California!) If the state finally does conquer its budget, another revision of the salary scale would have to be renegotiated.  We can see the lines drawn right now in Oakland over salary negotiations in a poor district.

Anyway, due to retirements and resignations in my district 45 third year teachers who were on the countdown list for layoffs were notified last week that they will be working next year.  I’m happy for them and my chances of being retained are looking better.

I don’t know what will happen in big districts like Oakland or San Francisco which has a much worse deficit than my mid-size district that has already passed a parcel tax to support its schools.  Several parcel taxes-or extensions of parcel tax time limits-will be on the June and/or November ballots this year for a number of school districts up and down the state.

Our superintendent is lucky.  We have a PTA and Foundation group that is using every ounce of persuasion to get parents and the community businesses to support the schools.

May 4, 70 businesses in the surrounding shopping areas donated a percentage of their sales for the day to the Foundation.  It’s one of those win-win deals.  The businesses make money on a slow day and the schools benefit from the community support.

So far the Foundation has raised more than one and a half million $$, mainly so that school faculty and staff aren’t laid off, which would make class sizes larger, fewer librarians and other resource teachers available, and classified support minimal.

On Wednesday May 5 we will commemorate Cinco de Mayo, a festival celebrated by Mexico and Californians of Mexican descent, that honors a single victorious battle in Mexico against the French well over 100 years ago.  I hope I will be celebrating the single-handed collection of enough funds to support our school district and keep the rest of us employed.

There are over 6 million students in California.  Do voting adults in this state have to be this close to a school collapse before they are willing to put money in the pot for the student education they say they support?

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Posted in California Teachers Association, layoff notices, public schools, school community |
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When At First You Don’t Succeed

Wednesday, April 7th, 2010

The first winners in the Race to the Top competition were two small states: Delaware and Tennessee.  Good for them.

Being small compared to say California, they managed to get all school districts and teacher’s unions on board.  Not only that, it seems the two states wrote decent, clear proposals.

Too bad the other states didn’t take their lumps without fussing and excusing themselves, without criticizing the judges and scores on the proposals as if they were unfairly disqualified.

This is like any competition: the grant writers, state departments of education, and state legislatures knew the rules of the game.  Some states refused to take the cap off the number of charter schools.  Some states couldn’t persuade all school districts to collaborate.  Some states couldn’t manage to change their education laws to allow reform of teacher evaluation combined with state testing.

For some states-like California-the depths of fiscal collapse is the real reason that the state didn’t win a prize.  Like many contestants, the state needed the money to compensate for its own deficit and now complains because of a cap on the next set of awards.  California, for instance, asked for $1 billion in the first round and has found out it can only max out at $700 million if it wins in the second round of application.

Now, now, swallow your pride and dig in.  That’s what students are told to do.

For one, rewrite the grant to allow small rural schools and big urban districts to reform the issues that affect each individually.  If the school is persistently low-performing (whether large or small), there are at least two ways to restructure, not counting change to a charter, the least best of the ways to reorganize for most schools.  An adept grant writer could show how a school might combine parts of all the possible models; the point is to design a reform model and stick to it along with improvements as needed over time.

The most difficult issue to resolve and the one that held up many proposals is linking teacher evaluation and state testing.  There are those who can’t imagine how to design a teacher evaluation that is fair and accounts for the variables that lead to discrepant test results.  How can the two be combined?

Above all content standards must be agreed upon and assessments must be improved.  Common content standards are being revised right now.  A multiple choice test doesn’t assess all the learning skills a student needs.  Not all teachers are working in a grade or subject that the current state test assesses.

Next, systems must be set up to provide a community of accountability in a public school.  For example, yearly a principal with a formal evaluation rates plans to reach the many groups of student abilities in the class and analyzes assessments for improved student growth. Also observers come into the classroom frequently, using a checklist of items that teachers collaborate on to design a successful classroom.  Those are the techniques to observe.  Feedback is provided immediately, either from the check list or by conference and an ‘action plan’ is developed to help the teacher with any strategies that might improve class work.

Of course, this kind of reform needs financial resources to include administrators to take on school operations and observers who agree to help with this type of accountability, leaving the principal to attend to the learning in the school.  Please note that the district’s school board must focus on academic achievement for each school, high as well as low-achieving.

It will not do to leave the teachers to take on all of the above and then be handled roughly if achievement doesn’t immediately improve.  This blog has long maintained the relentless, consistent nature of reform for an entire school community.

So the moral for state is “try, try again.”

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Posted in California budget crisis, Race to Top, low-performing schools, public schools, school accountability, school community, school reform |
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Hurricane Katrina a-coming; school districts drowning

Wednesday, February 10th, 2010

School districts are cutting budgets like crazy.  In Colorado, the state will reduce its contribution to school districts by roughly $350 million in 2010-2011, leaving districts scrambling to high ground while figuring out how they’ll cut millions from their operating budgets.

Pension fund deficits hurting budgets

On top of budget cuts, Colorado’s state pension fund (PERA) is underwater by about $30 billion over 30 years.  If left unchanged, the fund will go broke in 2032, which is not a problem if you’ll be dead within the next 22 years, but a challenge if you intend to live past that.

Colorado’s SB10-001, a bipartisan bill to square up the pension fund, will reduce the automatic annual COLA increase of 3.5 down to 2.0, and will increase employee contributions by 2 percent and employer contributions by 2 percent.

Salary freezes, furlough days, and larger classrooms on horizon

At the same time, many districts are looking to freeze salary steps and levels right now to balance their short-term budgets.  The freeze in Colorado teacher salaries could extend over two or three years, depending on state and local property tax revenues.

These facts leave boards and all school employees between a desk and a hard place.  It’s difficult to picture how school districts will provide any staff raises in the near future.  Starting teachers in the $30 thousand range may be stuck, sliding farther behind workers in other professional fields, such as investment banking.  New college graduates may struggle to figure out how public school teaching can ever provide enough of a living to be worthwhile.

While taxpayers certainly feel the pinch in this recession, schools are doubly hit as the budget crisis proceeds.  If a salary freeze occurs in ‘10 -’11, budget balancing in ‘11-’12 will require larger classrooms and layoffs.  By the third year out, budgets may be so drained that furlough days will be piled on salary freezes and increased classroom size.

High quality education at stake

Meanwhile, schools try to bring the highest quality education to kids, including all the technology necessary to keep students technologically literate.  They’re asked to reduce the learning gap between ethnic groups.  They need to get kids up to speed in reading, math, writing, and science.

Schools have so many fingers in the dykes that it’s inevitable that a New Orleans style flood is on its way, drowning kids in inadequacy and insufficiency.  School districts will need to offer their best arguments to their constituents to bring more money into the system.  But communities will also have to step up to avoid Hurricane Katrina destruction in classrooms across the nation.

*Serious discussion needs good communication to promote successful solutions for the school community.  See the website with this blog for a possible support program.

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Posted in Colorado Budget Crisis, public schools, school community, school finance reform, school reform |
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Whose Fault???

Wednesday, December 23rd, 2009

Having been a teacher, blame placed on teacher’s unions “that view reforms more for how they affect pay and job security than whether they improve student learning” is unfair and inflammatory.

The accusation by David Davenport in the article “Value-added education in the race to the top” San Francisco Chronicle, November 29, 2009, is based on the country-wide dispute about using data to help students learn, rather than to evaluate teachers.

This is not to go along with every position NEA, for example, has taken in the past, but the constant denigration of teacher’s unions about their position on evaluation and student testing performance is misleading about a complex reform.

Davenport, a research fellow at Stanford’s Hoover Institution, well-known for its conservative views, advocates the “value-added” model, originally a manufacturer’s economic theory, to address the problem of teacher evaluation with data, collectible from the vast pool of scores since NCLB began.

Actually, the teacher and student evaluation reform issue is touchy, easy to manipulate with statistics, and difficult to resolve because of the multitude of variables.

It’s easy for the media to grab onto student test scores and conclude the results are attributable to the skill, or not, of the teacher.  It doesn’t matter that a superintendent, a principal, or a teacher defends the year’s testing outcomes, if scores have not soared higher than a kite, those educators are said to be making excuses.

The term “value-added” education, partly referring to the student’s gain in reading and math proficiency over a year, has been around for nine years, at least, in California.  Every school knows its exact place in relation to other schools in the state.  Those in need of program improvement are deep into the change process.

Several reports can be found (Mass Insight Education & Research Institute and the California Governor’s Advisory Committee on Education Excellence are two) elaborating on conditions for bringing change to schools so that students actually learn more and more each year.

In addition, “value-added” refers to the other attributes in the school and classroom that can be assessed, such as the instruction received.

None of the “turn around” measures advocate evaluating a single teacher solely on the improvement in scores of his/her students.  As I’ve read it, unions are against that particular type of evaluation (which is the magic bullet whirling around in the media air), but NEA and AFT have offered suggestions to use the test as one part, along with other tools, to assess the teacher’s skill in the classroom.

As part of Race To The Top grant preparation, California’s Governor Schwarzeneggar has signed two bills to support data availability for teacher and school evaluation.

Next problem.

While reading that the “value-added” proposal can provide a foundation on which to build accountability, to be practical, how can time be spent to develop these evaluation tools when there is so little money?

And what will be done when the evaluation procedures are developed?  Will there be money to set in motion the practices needed to truly and fairly move unsatisfactory teachers from a school district?

Besides, does Mr. Davenport surmise that just getting rid of weak teachers is going to fix a school?  The article notes Eric Hanushek’s comment that replacing 6-10% of the nation’s poorest teachers with average teachers will make a difference in the quality of American education.

How will that happen?  A bit of research into Mr. Hanushek’s theories may provide some insight.  See next post.

Having supervised teachers in a program improvement school, the advice is every Race To The Top dollar should be spent for program evaluation, professional development for highly-qualified teachers, facility improvement, parent education so they know how to keep track of their children’s work and expect achievement, and school community celebration of effort and success.

While each teacher must be accountable, the overall success of those “good” school characteristics is the key.  That’s how the program improves.

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Posted in American Federation of Teachers, Mass Insight Education & Research Institute, NCLB, National Education Association, Race to Top, highly qualified teachers, public schools, school community, school reform |
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Elite

Wednesday, December 9th, 2009

Americans are conflicted by two versions of the “good school.”

after school

after school

On the one hand, people want a well-run, up-to-date facility with every teacher highly-qualified and every student a high-achieving mathematician-scientist-literary whiz.  Their parents are behind every effort to make education a high priority-including even $30,000 a year in tuition (in a private school) to provide the best.

On the other hand, since the Puritans landed in New England, a “good” public school has been the backbone of American society.  Every child, no matter the ability of the family to pay out of pocket, should have the opportunity to succeed in a well-run, up-to-date facility with every teacher highly-qualified.  That’s the mantra, but the tax-paying citizen isn’t willing to pay.

Of course, not all children love school like this utopian picture promises.  In any case, what do we end up with?

In the 21st century, the child-citizen can attend a public school, often a crumbling high-rise from the 1930’s in the urban core, or a single level five-finger school like those built in the 1950’s in California, or a fortress-like stone building to protect students from the bad guys in the outside world.

Or the student can be admitted to a parochial school, a charter school (sort of public, sort of private), an independent learning program (like home schooling).

Or sent to a detention facility with a mandated math and reading literacy program.

Or admitted to a private school, improved upon and supported by parents who will do anything to make sure their child gets the best.

The question is, as mulled over in the November 29, 2009, San Francisco Chronicle article by Beatrice Motamedi, “All youths deserve an ‘elite’ school,” why should there be such a discrepancy in the way the public perceives students in a private school and treats the children in a public school?

It doesn’t seem to matter what kind of non-traditional school is under discussion- back to basics charter, Montessori, Waldorf, boarding ‘prep’, parochial-some funded partially with taxpayer money, some by a religious organization, some completely private, those schools are seen as ‘elite’ and deserving of every good thing that can be invested.  The picture may not always be accurate, but that’s the vision.

Why can’t that be sustained at a traditional public school?

From my reading, the problem occurs because public schools depend on budgets determined by the economy’s vibrancy that generates taxes and also on the whim of the voter who, in most states and definitely in California, must approve any changes in the amount of taxes.  Right now, everyone feels sorry about the lack of light bulbs, mold on curtains, ceiling tiles that fall and send down torrents of rain water onto the computer desks, but can’t bring themselves to actually put cash on the table.

Unless, of course, it’s a non-traditional school without a supposed reliable funding source.  Those communities have huge fund raisers like the one held by 30-something hedge fund fellows for the Harlem Success Academy 4-right down the street from the antique four story public school I taught at briefly in East Harlem 40 years ago.  (New York Times, December 6, 2009, “Scholarly Investments” by Nancy Haas)  I don’t begrudge the money, those students deserve every dime.

Perhaps the reason the money is forked over is a smaller school can be seen and rooted for easily, a sort of ‘hands on’ experience.

In many posts, I’ve commented that each individual school must put its hands on the reform.  Let’s hope Race To The Top funds insist on program performance evaluation of reform at the school level.  Let’s hope each small community will generate the funding will.

Shouldn’t the “good” public school offer ‘elite’ vocational or technology or college prep models to help students find their way to a job after graduation?

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Posted in Race to Top, highly qualified teachers, program improvement, public schools, school community, school reform |
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