Where Do We Go From Here?

This is a previous post that I think needs to see the light of day again.

Dora

Where Do We Go From Here?

Privatization is about making a profit, whether it’s utilities, war or education. In states where access to  public water has been privatized, the average cost of water to the public is 30% higher. The cost of handling waste water is on average 60% higher in those states. No bid contracts or lack of contracts with private enterprise during the Iraq war and little or no oversight by the government caused cost overruns to soar. We have so little money for education in this country that I wonder sometimes what private companies are thinking when they establish charter schools. Do they honestly believe that there is a profit margin in public education to be garnered? Schools are underfunded as are all other institutions and agencies that are under the umbrella of the Federal government with the exception of the military/industrial/corporate complex. Funding for Federally mandated programs such as our public schools have dwindled over the last sixty years due to the fact that in the 1950’s, 80% of all taxes were paid by large corporations. Now, in 2009, that number has dwindled to 12-15%. For example, in 2008 Goldman Sachs paid an effective tax rate of 1% and yet $40M was paid in bonuses to the CEO.

The balance of public school funding is paid by the middle class and we can only pay so much. With every tax cut and credit provided to large corporations and wealthy individuals, we lose, our children lose, valuable dollars that are desperately needed. Meanwhile, there is a glut of money at the top and it has nowhere to go. All of those billions of dollars have instead gone into Wall Street or been re-invested in other countries and this phenomenon is partially to blame for the crisis that we have had to live through over the last 1 ½ years. Institutions that are part of the public domain such as schools do not enjoy the capitol that was available 40-50 years ago.

When I was attending public school in Los Angeles, we had new books every year, pleasant buildings that were clean, well-lit and safe, nutritious hot meals at lunch, playgrounds with all of the equipment that one would need, physical education classes to keep us fit, art, music and well maintained grounds. This is similar to what a private school offers today. A student during that time received a good education and could go from a public school into any university. You didn’t need to attend a private school to gain access into the best schools in the United States. You were on equal footing with your counterparts. That is not the case now and it has to do with money.

As Federal money has dwindled, municipalities and states have had to rely on property taxes, bonds and levies to fund education. Unfortunately, for many taxpayers who do not have children, public education is not a priority and school bonds and levies often do not pass. I saw this happen in California several times. Because of the state of public schools, many parents who can afford it, place their children in private schools which depleted the school districts of funds that would otherwise be allocated to those students and therefore the gap increases.

We have strangled our school system. There is overcrowding in the classrooms. A student from Franklin High School noted to the school board one night that one of her classes had 40 students in it and she said that the school needed more money. She went on to say that nothing could get done in a class that large. There is also less time spent in class. Because of the decreased budgets, class time has decreased. There are now partial school days and more days off. This has put the onus on parents, if they are able to, to supplement the time through homework sessions and/or tutors. What is left in our school system are valiant and valued teachers and school staff who keep their schools together with small budgets, a vision and a lot of hope.

Then we have Arne Duncan, inculcated with the Broad philosophy, waving a carrot in front of a very hungry populace saying, you can have the money but first you have to do a few tricks. What he wants for a relatively small amount of money is to have all states allow charter schools, but charter schools are not the answer. Charter schools do not provide equality of access to all as is the mandate of public schools. Will charter schools meet the needs of the poor and the marginalized as is mandated by the Federal government for all public schools? No, not when a charter school can expel a student if they do not perform well on a test. These are public funds that are to be used to provide for all, not just a select few. Teachers in charter schools have no protections that are provided by a union in a public school. Pay is on average less and the hours are longer.

I was having a discussion the other day with some parents about charter schools and we all agreed that our children could benefit from that situation. We have the knowledge and wherewithal to either establish or select a school that would fit the needs of our children. We would have knowledge of the programs available, we would understand how to gain access to those schools, and our students would perform up to the standards set by the school. But that is not the case for all families. There are many families who do not have access to information to make these sorts of choices, maybe they do not speak English or have access to the Internet. Maybe, due to circumstances that they have little control over, there is not enough time or resources to ensure that their children will do well on a standardized test that determines whether they remain in a charter school. It is an inherently biased system towards those who have and therefore these schools should not be publicly funded.

Sometimes, when I read about these charter schools, I think that these global corporations that fund the Broad and the like are just wanting to train the cogs in the wheel, children who can have basic information drilled into them with no opportunity for developing perspective or creative thinking skills. You then have an even more divided social stratum, the unquestioning workers/soldiers and the ruling class.

The answer to the question as to where do we go from here is two tiered. First, there is the overall picture. The idea of a trickle down economy is a myth. It is apparent to all that the idea that people who have wealth will provide opportunities for others to also prosper is absurd and I would dare to say, manufactured by those with the greatest wealth. The only businesses that I have seen prosper from the wealth of others are businesses that cater to the wealthy such as yacht makers, luxury auto dealers and of course, the brokers. The accumulated wealth of a few that has nowhere to go at the top needs to be reinvested in our country and in our future. Our future is our children. Good business practice is that you reinvest part of your profits.

Corporations have made billions of dollars from the opportunities afforded to them by simply being in the United States. That money now needs to be reinvested in our children through the reinstatement of a tax structure that is equitable and no longer allows tax breaks and subsidies to oil companies and other large corporate businesses, a financial structure that demands oil companies who drill off of our coastlines pay for that privilege and end the tax breaks for the wealthy as instituted by our previous president Ronald Reagan and furthered by George Bush, Jr. Because there has not been a significant investment in education over the last 50 years, businesses have had to look elsewhere for talent, to other countries where people have been more adequately educated. The shock for many was that they had to import talent. Microsoft is an example of that. Because of their awareness of the problem, the Gates Foundation has tried, unsuccessfully, to come up with an answer to the problem. Unfortunately there is no quick solution and actually they don’t need to reinvent the wheel. They just need to reinvest with tax dollars that are due in our state and our country.

The answer is before their eyes and in their own backyard, the alternative school system that has existed in Seattle for 40 years. The public educational system can work but it requires money to function and to function well as it did 50 years ago. This gets me to the second and more quickly attainable tier. Seattle has a rich and varied history of alternative school programs starting with Alternative School #1 (AS1) which was established in Seattle about forty years ago.

When my daughter and I moved to Seattle, I discovered the alternative school program and was greatly impressed by what the school district had to offer. There are programs for students K-12 at various locations throughout Seattle. High schools such as Nova have a track record of high test scores, the WASL Language Arts scores are the highest in the city, and placement in some of our best colleges in the country. There are waiting lists into each of these programs and the level of quality of the staff is outstanding. These well established programs need to be maintained and supported. These schools provide an opportunity for all students to succeed, not just a select few. That is what Seattle has and other schools can be developed based on the proven track record of the original alternative school program structure.

The answer can truly be in your own back yard. What we already have is tried and true. The new STEM school, financed in part by the Gates’ Foundation,  looks to Nova High School as an example of project-based classes. The basic tenets of these programs can be used in developing additional programs that can provide an even greater diversity for our students and an opportunity for all students to succeed.

Charter schools are not the answer. Well financed, community supported schools are.

Dora

Is our School Superintendent, Dr. Goodloe-Johnson, Far Behind?

In an op-ed piece at truthout that our own Jesse Hagopian wrote, Jesse points out the flaws of D.C.’s teacher evaluation system and why a teacher is only one part of a student’s success in school . Michelle Rhee, Chancellor of DC schools, sits on the Broad Foundation’s Board of Directors, along with our own superintendent, Dr. Goodloe-Johnson.

The Broad Foundation is about charter schools which incorporates merit pay and does not hire union teachers, only inexperienced, inexpensive teachers to keep cost down and profits up.

Is this what we want in Seattle?

Dora

Below is an excerpt from the op-ed:

Re-Hire the Teachers and Retire the Chancellor: Teaching in the D.C. Public Schools

“We are going to impose the new evaluation tools regardless” [of the outcome of talks with the union]. “We are going to be moving people out who are not performing.”

~ District of Columbia Public Schools Chancellor, Michelle Rhee, March 2, 2009

In a culmination of her three years as head of the D.C. public schools, Michelle Rhee acted on her union-busting pledge, firing 241 teachers, five percent of the district’s total. All but a few of those dismissed received the lowest rating under a new evaluation system, dubbed “IMPACT,” which ties students’ standardized test scores to teacher evaluations. An additional 737 employees were put on notice that they had been rated “minimally effective,” the second-lowest category, and would have one year to improve their performance or too be fired.

A closer look at the IMPACT evaluation method, however, reveals its ineffectiveness as tool to judge teacher performance – while simultaneously exposing its true purpose: a smoke screen to obscure the real factors necessary to provide a quality education.

Under IMPACT, all teachers are supposed to receive five 30-minute classroom observations during the school year that account for 40 percent of a teacher’s evaluation, three by a school administrator and two by an outside “master educator” with a background in the instructor’s subject. However, some teachers never received the full five evaluations because some of the master teachers hired to do those jobs quit. Moreover, educators have questioned the scoring criteria for the evaluations of teachers. During the 30-minute observation, usually unannounced, a teacher is supposed to demonstrate 22 different specified teaching elements. As Washington Post blogger Valerie Strauss pointed out, “What teacher demonstrates 22 teaching elements – some of which are not particularly related – in 30 minutes? Suppose a teacher takes 30 minutes to introduce new material and doesn’t have time to show…Oh well. Bad evaluation.”

Another 50 percent of the teacher’s IMPACT score is calculated – in a process designed to turn students into a commodity with a specific worth on the education market – by what they actually call “value added” improvement in scores on the District of Columbia Comprehensive Assessment System, or DC CAS. As Strauss astutely notes, “Judging teachers on the test scores of their students is all the rage in school reform these days – thanks so much, Education Secretary Arne Duncan – but, frankly, this is unconscionable for several reasons, not the least of which is that D.C. CAS wasn’t designed to evaluate teachers. That’s a basic violation of testing law. Ask any evaluation expert.”

From 2001 through 2004 I taught in a public elementary school in South East Washington, D.C. – an area sectioned off from the city both geographically, by the Potomac River, and socially, by its dearth of everything from jobs to grocery stores. And to borrow from the great educator and author Jonathan Kozol, the schools there are savagely unequal.

The elementary school at which I taught was almost completely segregated, serving 100 percent African-American students – until my third year when one white student entered kindergarten. Directly across from the entrance of the school was a decrepit building with vegetation growing out through the windows. Around the corner lay a pile of cars that had been stripped and incinerated. Our school offered neither a grass field nor a basketball hoop for the kids to use at recess. The library’s book collection was more appropriate for an archeological study than a source for topical information. Our textbooks were woefully out of date and we seldom had enough for every student. Police roamed the halls of our elementary school looking for mouthy kids to jack up against the wall.

But to fully capture the ambience, you would want to enter my classroom. I had one hole in the middle of the chalkboard and another hole in the ceiling. The first time I noticed the opening in the ceiling was a Monday morning, when I came back to school after a rainy weekend and found standing water on the floor and all of my students’ U.S. history poster-board projects waterlogged. After the second flooding of my room, I got smart and put an industrial sized garbage can under the hole.

One lasting memory of my teaching experience in D.C. came on my third day of standing before these sixth graders. I had asked the students to bring a meaningful object from home for a show-and-tell activity. We gathered in a circle in the back of the room that Friday morning and the kids sat eagerly with paper bags on their laps that concealed their autobiographical mementos. One after another, each and every hand came out of those crumpled brown lunch sacs clutching a photo of a close family member – usually a dad or an uncle – that was either dead or in jail. By the time it got to me, all I could do was stare stupidly at the baseball I had pulled out and pick nervously at the red stitches as I mumbled something about how I had played in college.

You can read the rest at truthout.

Seattle Teachers Speak Out on Merit Pay and High Stakes Testing

Bravo to Pat Bailey, Robert Femiano and all of our other hard-working and fabulous teachers that we have in our fair city!

Dora

“Seattle Public Schools wrong to tie teacher evaluation to high-stakes tests”

The Seattle Public Schools administration is proposing to tie teacher evaluations and employment to student test scores — a bone of contention in current negotiations with the Seattle Education Association. Guest columnists Pat Bailey and Robert Femiano, past union board members, argue that the district’s approach is wrong.

By Patricia Bailey and Robert Femiano

Special to The Times

The Seattle school district is proposing to tie teacher evaluations and employment to student test scores.

The current teacher evaluation includes student growth as a factor but the district wants an easier path and quicker time frames for teacher dismissals. The district officials’ plan is to use test scores to fire those teachers they claim are responsible for the poverty and racial academic gaps and reward those with high improvements in scores. History shows this carrot-and-stick approach not only fails to reduce the achievement gap but is ultimately unhealthy for good teaching.

One result of high-stakes testing is clear: The inordinate focus on test scores narrows what is taught. Diane Ravitch’s “The death and life of the great American school system” documents this and other unintended consequences. In order to keep their jobs, teachers will teach and re-teach to the test. Lost are the arts, music, PE, civics, science and even recess. Early-childhood experts point to rich school environments as crucial to healthy development, so who wants to cause the opposite?

High-stakes testing is not healthy for administrators either, as evidence of cheating and gaming the test abounds. We see it in New York City’s recent test-score plummet and the ongoing Atlanta cheating scandal. Even small districts are not immune to the pressures: an elementary principal in our superintendent’s previous district in South Carolina was investigated in 2008 for “systematic accountability test cheating.”

High-stakes testing is also unhealthy for the student-teacher relationship. Not only does the narrowing of curricula remove the joy and enthusiasm from teaching, the increased stress (will I lose my job because Johnny didn’t study?) fractures the personalization that makes for good teaching.

Teachers cannot view students as individuals when they are “products” — products that determine employment. Similarly, cooperation among teachers disintegrates as colleagues become “competitors” in the fight for layoff order and merit pay.

High-stakes testing is offered as an objective way to measure the effectiveness of teachers, but it is not scientifically valid because it fails to control for all the variables that influence the results. An objective teacher evaluation would account for the impact on student learning caused by variables including absenteeism, family mobility, food or shelter scarcity, health needs, language issues, student effort, home support, etc.

To rate teachers without accounting for these variables would be akin to judging a doctor’s effectiveness by their patients’ degree of wellness. Would anyone argue doctors should lose their license because patients couldn’t afford medicines or didn’t follow the prescribed diet and exercises? For this reason, evaluations of professionals focus on the process; did the practitioner use good practices accorded by research in their fields?

Teachers should reject high-stakes tests as a determinant in teacher employment not only because is it unhealthy for education but because it won’t solve the problem of underachieving students. We believe the district needs to make changes that will truly help struggling children, such as lowering class size to 17 in the primary grades, as recommended by the Tennessee STAR project research and Gov. Chris Gregoire’s Washington Learns Commission.

The district says it doesn’t have the money, but we say disassemble the $12 million teacher-coaching model and trim administration as suggested by the state audit. The district estimates a $4 million cost for administration of this high-stakes evaluation scheme, which doesn’t include the bonus pay itself.

Until the district prioritizes its budget to what research shows actually reduces the achievement gap, it risks appearing disingenuous with the demand that teachers bargain away their evaluation, salary and due-process rights under the guise of improving student learning.

Given the deleterious effects and the lack of research showing that rewarding and punishing teachers helps students, one wonders why this proposal is on the negotiation table in the first place.

Robert Femiano and Patricia Bailey are Seattle teachers and past Seattle Education Association board directors.