What if Newspaper Editors Were Assessed on Their Job Performance the Way Teachers Are?

Over the past two days, I have read two editorials by newspaper folks who are vastly off-base when it comes to student testing and the Common Core. In the first, Glens Falls, NY's Post-Star newspaper editor, Ken Tingley, minimizes the opt-out movement to whiny parents and thug teachers in his weekly column Opting out of Common Core reaches hysterical proportions. A day later, we're treated to Gannett's USA Today education blogger, Jim Ryan Jr.'s, diatribe, When our children are the losers, which reads like a more nuanced version of Tingley's column.

Ryan's reductionist view can be summed up in this statement:

The new accountability standards being pushed by Governor Cuomo is a tough pill to swallow for teachers that have grown accustomed to a myriad of union protections insulating them from performance-based measurement, whether the virtual guarantee of lifetime employment or the compensation system based on seniority and not student achievement. Given that change is painful, the union led teachers are fighting back and have no doubt encouraged parents to fight as well. But in this fight it is the students who will suffer the most collateral damage.

In both cases, reducing the argument to a selfish and self-serving claim is used to minimize the importance and strength of the opt-out movement and the role of teachers in education policy in general.

There is a very powerful and highly organized movement in our society to condemn public education as being the source of many of our economic and social ills. The forces include testing and other media related corporations, anti-union "Right to Work" groups, hedge-fund investors and other charter school advocates, and an array of school choice proponents. These groups regularly engage in unwarranted assumption fallacies that rely on false information to make broad and inaccurate conclusions. 

But what if these editors, reporters, columnists and bloggers had to live by the same legislated APPR effectiveness standards as teachers? What would that look like and how equitable would they find their working conditions? After all, the print media has been experiencing an unprecedented and massive decline in subscriptions, revenue and readership. THIS AMOUNTS TO A NATIONAL CRISIS! Surely our democracy, our capitalist economy, and our entire way of life are threatened.

Here's the evidence:

Newspaper revenues and public knowledge of newsworthy facts continue to decline. In Pew's bi-weekly "national survey of 1,052 randomly selected adults, Americans answered an average of 6.3 out of 13 questions correctly, including 1% who got them all correct. By contrast, those who have taken the quiz online so far have averaged 9.7 correct answers, with 9% getting perfect scores."

Check that again- The general public scored 48% correct in a two week sampling of current events. However, those who took the poll online, presumably those who are wealthier and more educated, scored 69% correct. Still pretty unimpressive. Even American student assessment scores don't look that bad!

With those declining numbers, let's commit to holding newspaper editors accountable for the information their readers retain and understand. 

First, let's take a look at the proposed APPR laws for New York State teachers passed in the most recent budget. Here's how the system works for teachers. For the sake of argument, let's take a liberal approach to the Governor's proposed APPR scale. Either way, as Politics on the Hudson put it "the law makes clear that teachers whose students perform poorly on state exams won’t be able to get an overall evaluation score better than “developing” — the second-lowest score" (the actual percentages will be determined by NYSED and the Board of Regents at a later date):

• 40 points: Student growth on state assessments or a comparable measure of student growth using a Student Learning Objectives (SLOs) process for teachers in non-tested subjects. 
• 30 points: Observation by a school administrator.This is done using any number of concocted variations of Charlotte Danielson's Framework for Teaching.
• 30 points: Observation by an independent observer/or other regional administrator from a neighboring school district presumably using the same framework.

 So here's what an APPR model for newspaper editors might look:

• 40 points: Consumer growth on state assessments or a comparable measure of consumer growth using a Consumer Learning Objectives (CLOs) process for editors in non-traditional subject matter sections- entertainment, lifestyles, the arts, Hometown, book review, etc. To do this, we will need to develop a testing model for assessing newspaper consumers. Once a year, we'll have behemoth and  profiteering corporate entity perform a series of three simultaneous 90-minute mandatory tests of the year's newsworthy events for all newspaper consumers in their circulation area. Newspaper editors will be assessed based on how well their customers can answer these "current events" quizzes. 

Based on the "Man on the Street" style Q & A's on display at the YouTube sites for several of the late night talk shows, I think the editor's may have some concerns. But honestly, don't newspaper editors bare some responsibility for their customers knowledgeable level and understanding in a democratic society?

• 30 points: Observation of the Editor's job performance by the newspaper's publisher or other corporate manager. In this case, we can use aspects of the Society of Professional Journalists' (SPJ) Code of Ethics and the Pew Research Center's Principles of Journalism. Editors will be scored on the same scale as teachers- Ineffective/Developing/Effective/Highly Effective using a rubric style matrix to assure uniformity. :
• SPJ's Ethics Preamble: Members of the Society of Professional Journalists believe that public enlightenment is the forerunner of justice and the foundation of democracy. Ethical journalism strives to ensure the free exchange of information that is accurate, fair and thorough. An ethical journalist acts with integrity. 
• The Pew Research Center's Principles of Journalism are as follows: 
1. Journalism’s first obligation is to the truth 
2. Its first loyalty is to citizens 
3. Its essence is a discipline of verification 
4. Its practitioners must maintain an independence from those they cover 
5. It must serve as an independent monitor of power 
6. It must provide a forum for public criticism and compromise 
7. It must strive to make the significant interesting and relevant 
8. It must keep the news comprehensive and proportional 
9. Its practitioners must be allowed to exercise their personal conscience

From an anecdotal perspective, take a look at the information above and decide for yourself how well your local newspaper would fair. I can assure you that many editors will face low ratings- particularly in the areas of integrity, verification, and independence.

• 30 points: Observation by an independent observer or other local newspaper professional using the same standards and codes. 

Can you picture this one? A neighboring and perhaps rival editor taking a day to observe and review the target editor's professional practices. How many editors would be willing to have their performance assessed by a peer? Especially one they either don't know or know well enough to fear their conclusions. And if they don't want to go that route, they'll have to shell out some big bucks to pay for annual independent observers. I'm sure that would go over well with investors.

Let's face it, this is an absurd way to assess any profession be it newspaper editor, dentist, contractor or restaurateur. The Governor claims the changes are necessary to counter the high rate of "Effectiveness" ratings (up to 95%) for New York's teachers. But ask any one of the professionals mentioned above if they believe their workforce to be effective and they will most assuredly answer "YES". Doesn't the editor at the local newspaper believe that his staff is highly effective across the board; even as his revenues, sales and subscriptions fall? Of course he does. Why? Because he knows there is no causal relationship between the hard work he and his employees do to report the days events and the outcomes that are realized on the current events assessments.

Overall, newspapers, and the media in general, serve a pretty lofty purpose and should maintain high standards. They play an important and valuable role in educating a democratic populace. In order for the public to be knowledgeable, it is imperative that media outlets report on the news in a way that reflects the true essence of the debate while adhering to industry standards. Unfortunately, neither of the pieces referenced here rise up that standard. They're short-sighted and intent on masking the real problems and solutions by scapegoating parents and teachers. Our communities deserve better.

The Absurdity of "Common Sense" Editorializing and Commentary

Throughout my life, I have managed to play nice through many political, economic and social conflicts. However, nowadays I feel myself being pushed further toward the "gloves off" mode when it comes to education policy and reform. A major aspect of this clearly has to do with the prominence of the topic in our state and national discussions. Education has become a lightning rod issue that does not parse along clear ideological lines. Regardless of political party affiliation, you can, and will, find a wide array of viewpoints from just about everyone on the subject of schools, assessments, Common Core, teacher effectiveness and so much more. As the national discussion ramps up, I find myself increasingly agitated with the absurdity of opinions based on the writer's belief in common sense approaches and a lack of evidence-based inquiry to support opinions or solve problems.

I get it. Our media has shifted from fact-based reporting to opinion-based ranting. A place where "thinking" something  has relevance means it actually does. Where scientific evidence or facts are antithetical to opinion. But having an opinion without adhering to fact, or even worse- ignoring facts, just corrodes your argument. And when it comes to education policy and reform, these United States are filled with corroded individuals whose opinions are factless and detrimental to the common good. In fact, it seems the only necessary requirement for having an opinion or being an expert on public education is having sat in a classroom.

As the rhetoric becomes increasingly hostile and divisive, I get the sense that the multitude of teacher "haters" prominent in society today were the students who were designated as, "Does not play well with others", when they were in elementary school. You remember them. The kid who refused to share with his kind classmates. The kid who argued with the teacher over seemingly inane issues. The kid who quit playing when things didn't go their way . . . and took their ball with them. The kid who fought for a position on a topic and wouldn't back down even when presented with evidence by his or her teacher. Governor Cuomo was most assuredly a "Does not play well with others" kid. Even if his teachers feared having to write it on any report, you know that everyone else in class knew it.

Newspaper editors and editorial boards seem to have a knack for jumping into the "Does not play well with others" fray with alarming frequency. The most recent ridiculous and adversarial screed by our local daily newspaper editor, Ken Tingly of the Glens Falls Post-Star, is just that kind of glib, "common sense" reaction to the rise of the opt-out movement. Ken used this weeks editorial opportunity to shamelessly exert his version of common sense on the good people of our fine state who chose, I think admirable, to opt their children out of the state ELA and math assessments (for the record, my wife and I did not opt our 3rd and 5th graders out). In  Opting out of Common Core reaches hysterical proportions, Ken targets the "mass hysteria" of parents who go crazy at the mere thought of any evaluation of their children. His commentary flips from blaming pandering parents for not being tough enough on their kids; to extolling self-gratifying bravado for his brand of real world parenting. He further belittles parents and teachers in what has become the fall-back commentary intended to minimize people- self-interest without rationale:

Whether it is their playing time in Little League or the number of gold stars on an art project, parents are often the least qualified to judge how their children are measuring up in the real world.

So to ensure they had even less information about their child’s development, hundreds of parents across the region boycotted Common Core testing designed to give educators valuable information about the students they are teaching . . . . I don’t see the value of opting out of anything in life. If I did, I would have left my dentist years ago.

I’m of the “If it doesn’t kill you, it will make you stronger” mindset.

Your teacher doesn’t like you? Get over it. You are going to have a boss someday who doesn’t like you.

The test is unfair? That’s too bad. In college, they will give you an impossible amount of work to do in a short period of time.

Can’t do it? Somebody else will.

Now, I can agree that our society has become too heavy in the helicopter-parent realm- after all, I'm a soccer coach. But the fact that 8 year old's should somehow deal with 8-9 hours of testing today because they may go to college someday and they need to have the gumption to compete, is particularly absurd. We've seen this same "minimize the opposition's argument" propaganda tactic used by Governor Cuomo in several interviews leading up to the state budget fight:

The governor, at two separate events, reiterated his argument that teachers' unions have opposed his efforts to implement mandatory teacher evaluations in New York because “their opinion is they'd rather not be evaluated by anyone ever, period.

“I understand that position,” he said during an event in Plattsburgh. “I don't know that I like to be evaluated. I don't know that anyone likes to be evaluated. That having to run for office every four years and go before the voters and explain what you did—if I didn't have to do that, I'd be OK with it, frankly. Take my word for it that I'm doing a good job and let me stay until I want to leave. But that's not how professions work.”

The problem is, none of this has anything to do with the real issue of testing avoidance, the opt-out movement or teacher assessment. And to prove his point, Ken throws in a few urban legends to make his point:

1. "But the basis of Common Core — to make our children thinkers instead of memorizers — is sound."- By attaching tests to the curriculum, the state has nullified this aspect of the Common Core. Furthermore, there are sound pedagogical challenges to the effectiveness of the Core in achieving these goals.
2. "For some time, we've watched our education standards in this country slip compared to other countries. That’s a problem in today’s world economy."- Facts do not support this convenient and misguided assertion. When accounting for poverty rates and economic status, the United States ranks near the top in every measure. The United States has one of the highest child poverty rates in the world- which is a disgrace in and of itself- and we do a better job at teaching ALL children than most countries in the world.

The opt-out movement is far too diverse and far too serious to sum up in such meaningless commentary as being only driven by well-intentioned but fearful parents and the teacher's unions that support them. Across the spectrum of advocates there are parents and teachers who disagree with the use of these low-stakes tests in evaluating teacher effectiveness. There are parents and teachers who see the tests as being a tool for destroying public education. There are parents and teachers who are dismayed by the extreme amount of time devoted to test prep at the expense of other curriculum areas and the arts. And of course, there are parents and teachers who understand (and fear) the power of corporate profiteering, greed and the access to student data that threatens our democratic way of life.

However, the biggest mistake Ken makes is in not understanding the basic fundamentals of what is happening. He makes the same mistake that many do, and in doing so, he probably pisses off some of the most ardent Common Core supporters. The Common Core (CCSS) and the state tests ARE NOT THE SAME THING. The CCSS are a set of national standards, established in a flawed manner, but with the intent that, “The Common Core focuses on developing the critical-thinking, problem-solving, and analytical skills students will need to be successful.”. Education standards establish objectives in educational attainment. They may include curricular areas to be covered and benchmarks to assess student progress. What the standards DO NOT do is establish state assessments tied to teacher effectiveness. In a nutshell Ken, people cannot opt-out of the standards, but they can opt-out of the tests that put their children through a testing program more time intensive than passing the New York State bar exam.

In the end, Ken Tingley and his ilk of maliciously ill-informed apologists, do nothing more than further misinformation and perform the bidding of those groups who would prefer to profit from our children rather than actually have them learn something and become productive citizens. And for people like Ken- anti-union, anti-teacher, anti-logic, anti-everything- the fight between the doers and the takers helps support the goals of those who strive to establish a plutonomy at any cost.

Common sense as a concept has been co-opted by individuals and groups to be a means for coming up with solutions or actions that seem natural to most people. However, as is generally the case, this one-sided use of common sense often neglects facts and/or scientific explanation. Ken's brand of common sense- that tough-guy, real American, and predominantly grunty male version- builds on false premises and a multitude of fallacies. As a journalist, we should expect better from people like Ken Tingley who have the power to shape and shift pubic opinion.  Unfortunately, in this case, as with so many that deal with public goods and particularly public education, Ken's personal bias toward the pull yourself up by the bootstrap crowd is a dangerous shift toward a divided community.

If we're basing our societal guidance on common sense, here's what I believe makes sense to most people:

1. Intellectual sense and science tells us that many students will not try to do well on no-stakes tests. As the governor said himself this week, the "tests are meaningless for students".
2. Intellectual sense and science tells us that these assessments provide a snapshot, not a true gauge of student learning. 
3. Intellectual sense and science tells us that each student cohort varies in ability and therefore constant growth (year-to-year) is irrational.
4. Intellectual sense and science tells us that poverty is a real indicator of student achievement.
5. Intellectual sense and science tells us that, due to these concerns, basing teacher effectiveness on test results is unreliable.

So enough is enough from the "Does not play well with others" common sense crowd. It's high time professionals and experts establish themselves as the arbiters of the truth in education policy. Let's call out those who fight from their self-appointed position of authority as being what they truly are- self-serving, uninformed, know nothings- with an ax to grind or a buck to make. Ken Tingley doesn't give a rat's behind about student achievement. What's his real motivation? Knocking whiny parents and unionized teachers off their perch? Standing up for his mildly-libertarian version of common sense? We may never know, but you can be sure, it has nothing to do with what's truly best for all members of society- just the one's tough enough to gut it out in his.

An Open Letter to Senator Betty Little on the Education Bill

Senator Elizabeth Little

5 Warren Street, Suite 3

Glens Falls, NY 12801

Dear Betty,

I wanted to take a moment to respectfully express my disappointment in your YES vote to approve the Education Bill during yesterday's legislative session.

The 2015-16 budget and, in particular, the educational spending bill that it included, will have a lasting negative impact on students, families, teachers and our entire community. Although the final bill excluded many of the more draconian aspects of the governor's requests, it nonetheless furthers unsubstantiated ​and ​punitive measures against teachers while ignoring research on the value of standardized tests as a measure of student growth and teacher effectiveness.

Suffice it to say, good, creative and truly effective teachers will leave the profession. Some of these teachers will depart voluntarily because they choose not to work in a system that does not value them. Others will leave involuntarily due to the ineffective ratings they will receive when their students- many of whom are dealing with issues including homelessness, abuse, non-involved parents or other supports- under-perform on discredited assessment measures.

Even worse, many prospective teachers will now choose not to enter a system that they know does not value them. As Nancy Atwell, the recent recipient of the Global Teacher Prize has said, “Public school teachers are so constrained right now by the common core standards and the tests that are developed to monitor what teachers are doing with them," she said. "If you're a creative, smart young person, I don't think this is the time to go into teaching unless an independent school would suit you."

​As a final blow, the budget​ institutes a merit pay scheme that pits educators against one another and drives a wedge into our best efforts to effectively educate our most needy students. The benefits of merit pay as an incentive are widely panned by economists and social scientists alike as you can read HERE and HERE. I don't believe it is in any of our best interests to have teachers who are intensely competitive and motivated by the prospects of more money. You need look no further than the scandal in Atlanta, currently in the news, to see what happens when we place improper incentives and punishment models into teaching.

Please don't read this as a protection of the status quo. Although I disagree with the education "reformers" who claim that our schools and teachers are failing, I do acknowledge that there exists a need to continually improve our schools and the teaching profession.

Much of this can best be accomplished by involving educators in the discussion and moving toward an assessment system that provides for meaningful feedback, support and growth. By incorporating teacher voice, we gain knowledge, skills and insight into what happens in our schools every day. We gain access to what may work and what may not work. Lastly, we gain support through collaboration in building a better community with citizens who can do more than take a test- they contribute positively to society.

Thank you for your continuing support of your constituents and your future support of teachers.​ I look forward to moving the conversation in a positive direction.

Regards,

Michael Shaver

Social Studies Teacher

Glens Falls Teacher Association (GFTA)

Glens Falls High School

When is a Paradox NOT a Paradox? A Critical Analysis of Adam Ozimek's Pander Piece

In an opinion piece entitled, The Paradoxes of Education Reform Critics, written in the Modeled Behavior site at Forbes, Adam Ozimek opines on the contradictory nature of these traditionalists when approaching the subject of charter schools. Mr. Ozimek seems to find the existence of several paradoxes in the arguments and stands taken up by the reform critics. The trouble is, Mr Ozimek had to stretch the truth or outright lie to make his point. 

1. Administrators can’t be trusted with firing, but are perfect at hiring.

Actually, this is a make believe paradox that Mr. Ozimek has created. To all my teacher friends out there, please raise your hand if you believe your administrator's hiring practices are "impeccable". Anyone? As teachers, we have often seen people come into the profession who did not belong there. Often times, these souls either come to the realization themselves or are removed from the classroom within the tenure period. A study by the Alliance for Excellent Education found that nearly half of all new teachers leave the profession within the first five years of teaching. Not every teacher comes to this realization themselves- many are counseled out or find the stresses of the occupation to be overwhelming. Regardless, there are plenty of examples of poor hiring decisions to backfire on this claim.

However, in a roundabout way, I suppose what the author is truly trying to get at, is the use of due process in teacher removal from the classroom. In this case, he simply lacks a clear understanding of what due process represents. Tenure and due process laws do not protect a teacher from being removed, they allow for the due process rights of notification of allegations and redress of claims to prevent arbitrary use of power by administrators and boards of education.

We don't much appreciate poor hiring OR arbitrary firings. Poor hiring practices makes all teachers look bad. Arbitrary firings weaken student achievement and success.

2. Socioeconomic is the only thing that matters for life outcomes, but standardized tests and insufficient school funding are a serious problem.

Unfortunately, this isn't even a half-truth (or a paradox). Trust me when I say that teachers know, perhaps better than most, the benefits of a sound education in helping low-income students climb out of poverty to have a better and more productive life. In fact, for many of us, it's precisely why we ARE teachers. No teacher has ever claimed that socioeconomic background is the only determinant in a person's life achievement. Many of us, myself included, have benefited from public schooling- Pre-K through graduate studies- to rise out of impoverished beginnings to succeed in our professions. Schools DO
matter that much.

Socioeconomic standing helps explain why it is so difficult for children of poverty to achieve at a rate commensurate with affluent children. We public school teachers struggle each and every day with trying to explain to a young person the importance of an education when their biggest concerns are eating a decent meal, having a safe home environment and overcoming frequent illness. And let's be clear, low income does NOT equate to low achievement. As economist Richard Rothstein has noted, "Lower class families have lower parental literacy levels, poorer health, more racial isolation, less stable housing, more exposure to crime and other stresses, less access to quality early childhood experiences, less access to good after school programs (and less ability to afford these even if they did have access), earlier childbearing and more frequent unwed childbearing, less security that comes from stable employment, more exposure to environmental toxins (e.g., lead) that diminish cognitive ability, etc. Each of these predicts lower achievement for children, but none of these (including low income) itself causes low achievement, and lower social class families don’t necessarily have all of these characteristics, but they are likely to have many of them."

That's why we advocate for fair and adequate funding for all schools.

3. The power of corporate education reformers is a huge undemocratic problem, but union power is not.

Corporate reformers and teacher's unions are hardly in the same league when it comes to democratic principles and spending power. If anything, unions exist as a counter-balance (albeit a diminutive one financially) to corporate power and plutocratic greed. Unlike corporate control, our union leadership is democratically elected by representatives of the membership and are held accountable on that basis. Failure to take up positions that benefit the constituency can lead to removal from office through elections and other means. 

Public schools themselves do represent a democratic institution in many ways, particularly in comparison to the non-democratic and for-profit world of charter schooling. what teachers and their unions abhor, is the use of public funds being channeled into the pockets of for-profit and so-called "reformers" for personal gain. 

The teacher's ability to negotiate a compensation and benefits package along with working conditions and delineation of responsibilities, hardly compares to the educational atrocities of for-profit schooling and corporate testing/data-mining.

4. The only way charters can prove they work is by becoming exactly what they aren’t.

Choice and competition are not the answers to all modes of social and economic construct. The fallacy of choice in a competitive education market is a nice thought in the context of free-market reforms. Unfortunately, the evidence simply does not support their claims that either parents want choice or that competition is beneficial. As Mark Tucker has explained in Valerie Strauss' Answer Sheet blog, the major concern for parents when seeking schools is safety, not achievement, particularly among the lower income populations impacted or targeted by charters. Secondly, there is little to no evidence that charter schools provide any academic benefits beyond or greater than the achievements of public schools when accounting for socioeconomic factors. 

5. Test scores don’t matter, but charters performance on test scores matters a lot.

Test scores don't matter- at least not the kinds of tests that are being widely used to assess our students (and later evaluate teachers) today. Please see above and note that this does not amount to a request for using testing as a measure, it is simply using the testing regimes evidence against themselves.

6. Failing public schools need more help and time, failing charters need to be shut down fast.

First, lets briefly address the holy grail of all big lies- the illusion that there is a failing public school structure. Plenty of economic and academic work has gone into describing the myriad of problems in using national and international testing to rank schools, countries and their effectiveness as school programs. As noted HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE, AND HERE, arbitrary and malicious use of facts results in arbitrary and malicious outcomes.

When the environment is one of a (forced) competitive nature, it is easy to understand why public school proponents would be quick to jump on the closing of charter schools. After all, charter schools siphon money, space, resources and students from public schools. As Moody's noted in their 2013 report, Moody's: Charter schools pose greatest credit challenge to school districts in economically weak urban areas, "While the vast majority of traditional public districts are managing through the rise of charter schools without a negative credit impact, a small but growing number face financial stress due to the movement of students to charters". 

If your raison d'etre is choice and better educational access, then failure to achieve that while also killing off public schools is reason enough.

In the end, Mr. Ozimek's shrill attempt at jumping on the reformist bandwagon was nothing more than the same old discredited junk from the same old self-interested heap. 

From ED WEEK:

American Teachers Spend the Most Hours in Classroom

By Matthew Lynch on December 19, 2014 8:33 AM | No comments

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American teachers spend more hours in the classroom than their peer across the globe, according to a recent education report from the Organization for Economic Co-Operation and Development (OECD). The report outlines the state of education in the world's most developed countries.

The report shows that American elementary school teachers spend more hours teaching students than any other country surveyed.  American middle and high school teachers spend more time educating students than peers in every OECD country except Chile. In addition to classroom time, US teachers are also required to be at school more hours than their international peers.

Despite the long hours, teachers in American aren't compensated well, explains OECD director of education and skills Andreas Schleicher. The pay, compared to other countries, is competitive in the US; however, it lags behind that of other American workers with college educations.

The OECD report shows American teachers see smaller salary increases than their foreign counterparts; in the most recent year surveyed, the average teacher with 15 years of experience saw a salary increase of 32.6 percent. The US average was just 26.6 percent.

A study from the Center for American Progress in July found that slow salary growth is a contributing factor to the high turnover rate. Research shows that 13 percent of teachers leave the profession or take a position at a new school every year.

I think that the time teachers spend in the classroom, both with students present and without, is appropriate to get the job done in many cases. However, I do hope we can find a way to improve salaries so teachers earn what they deserve. Teachers should have at least a middle-class existence. Our nation needs to quickly learn how to attract and retain top talent teachers in the classrooms in order to best educate our children.

Wall Street Journal- Fight Is On for Common Core Contracts

I'm sure there will be no improprieties . . . . .

Wall Street Journal
U.S. NEWS
Fight Is On for Common Core Contracts

Testing Companies Jockey for a Growing Market, Protest States’ Bidding Process

By CAROLINE PORTER
Updated Nov. 12, 2014 12:30 a.m. ET

As states race to implement the Common Core academic standards, companies are fighting for a slice of the accompanying testing market, expected to be worth billions of dollars in coming years.

That jockeying has brought allegations of bid-rigging in one large pricing agreement involving 11 states—the latest hiccup as the math and reading standards are rolled out—while in roughly three dozen others, education companies are battling for contracts state by state.

Mississippi’s education board in September approved an emergency $8 million contract to Pearson PLC for tests aligned with Common Core, sidestepping the state’s contract-review board, which had found the transaction illegal because it failed to meet state rules regarding a single-source bid.

When Maryland officials were considering a roughly $60 million proposal to develop computerized testing for Common Core that month, state Comptroller Peter Franchot also objected that Pearson was the only bidder. “How are we ever going to know if taxpayers are getting a good deal if there is no competition?” the elected Democrat asked, before being outvoted by a state board in approving the contract.



Mississippi and Maryland are two of the states that banded together in 2010, intending to look for a testing-service provider together. The coalition of 11 states plus the District of Columbia hoped joining forces would result in a better product at a lower price, but observers elsewhere shared some of Mr. Franchot’s concerns.

The bidding process, which both states borrowed from a similar New Mexico contract, is now the subject of a lawsuit in that state by a Pearson competitor.

For decades, states essentially set their own academic standards, wrote their own curricula and designed their own tests. In a bid partly to help the U.S. education system keep up with overseas rivals, state leaders began working on shared benchmarks.

With financial and policy incentives from the Obama administration, 45 states and D.C. initially adopted Common Core. But the standards have faced pushback from some parents and conservatives who say they represent federal overreach. Two states have pulled out and are writing their own standards.

Still, most states are implementing Common Core and accompanying testing this year. The sheer size of that effort and this year’s deadline heighten the stakes and exacerbate the difficulty of hiring test suppliers.

“Winning the policy battle was not even half the battle,” said Michael McShane, a research fellow in education policy at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank, who is skeptical about Common Core. “It was more like 10%, and 90% of the battle is implementation.”

The $2.46 billion-a-year U.S. testing market is seeing more competition beyond the three traditional powers of Pearson, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Co. and McGraw-Hill Education CTB, according to Simba Information, a market-research firm. While McGraw-Hill recently got a $72 million contract for assessment services with several states, meanwhile, midsize vendors such as AIR Assessment and Educational Testing Service are winning big states like Florida and California.

Amplify, the education subsidiary of News Corp, which owns The Wall Street Journal, also provides assessment products.

Some experts say legacy companies are best able to meet states’ demands and offer familiar relationships during this period of flux. At the same time, the move to new standards coincided with a switch to digital and online learning that has forced vendors to rethink their strategies.

Maryland’s contract with Pearson was built off the one in New Mexico, which took the lead in writing the bidding documents for a four-year, roughly $26 million contract that applied to that state. But other states in the coalition were meant to copy the contract and competition, meaning its full value could balloon to $1 billion.

In the spring, New Mexico field-tested new state exams. The state relied on Pearson for a piece of software that delivers the test. AIR Assessment, a rival company to Pearson, protested over the bidding process last year and filed a lawsuit in the Santa Fe First Judicial District this past spring alleging that only Pearson could fulfill the bid requirements.

This summer, Judge Sarah M. Singleton ruled that state administrators had to review AIR Assessment’s concerns. New Mexico officials subsequently found the concerns invalid.

AIR Assessment is appealing that finding and asking that New Mexico reopen the bidding process with new specifications for the next school year—potentially reopening the contracts in all 11 states and D.C. Judge Singleton could rule as soon as this month, according to Jon Cohen, president of AIR Assessment, a division of the American Institutes for Research, a not-for-profit organization.

“We just want a fair bid,” Mr. Cohen said, whose company recently won a $220 million contract to provide Common Core-related testing products over six years to Florida. A spokesman for New Mexico’s education department called AIR’s allegations “frivolous.” Pearson declined to comment on the suit.

“You’re seeing a whole ecosystem transform,” said Shilpi Niyogi, a Pearson official. “There’s new players and new innovation, and we’re constantly looking at the relationship between innovation and scale.”

An Open Letter to Campbell Brown

Dear Ms. Brown,

Before going into my personal problems with your attacks on teacher tenure, let me first state that I have for years appreciated your work as a news correspondent with both NBC News and more recently CNN. You have spent the past twenty years honing your craft and reporting the news we, as a nation, require for a functioning democracy. However, I now find myself wondering what your motivations might be for entering this fight against public teacher tenure. More on that later.

Let's be clear right up front, I am a public education teacher with over 16 years experience in the classroom and I benefit from seniority and tenure laws. However, you may be surprised to learn that I believe very strongly, as do many of my educator colleagues, that these systems need to be reformed. Many of us agree that it is too costly and too difficult to remove an ineffective teacher from the classroom. Likewise, during this age of budget cuts, many of us have seen highly effective teacher's cut while ineffective teachers remain in the classroom simply due to the date they were hired. I agree that students in urban schools are often left with inferior and insufficient educational experiences. Too often these students sit in classrooms with weak teachers, outdated materials and disparate financial resources.

So, we have some common ground from which we can approach this problem. However, we first need to get beyond your stated reasons for opposing these practices. Simply stated, you're attacking the wrong issue to come up with a solution for your problem. It isn't teacher tenure and seniority laws that are providing the neediest students with bad teachers- it's economics.

In 1997, while working toward my Master of Science degree in Education at the University at Albany, I had the pleasure of attending an event with Jonathan Kozol, author of the 1991 groundbreaking social-educational work, "Savage Inequalities", in which he observes the unequal distribution of educational funding in inner-city public schools and the impacts it has on students. During his talk, I recall the question of educational spending as a solution to inequalities being presented. Kozol's reply, "When does anyone ask if throwing money at the military will solve a problem? They don't. They only question throwing money at things that represent human decency." And here lies our current problem- socio-economic status, funding inequities and greed.

Money, spent wisely and thoughtfully, CAN solve the very problems we are all facing, and in particular the problems you face, with public education. I'm not talking about raising taxes and randomly throwing it at schools. I'm talking about a redistribution of the funds that creates an equitable funding source for students in ALL schools. 60 years after the landmark Brown v. Board of Education supreme court case, schools continue to suffer due to economic inequalities as stark as those based on race. That's because school district in New York fund their schools primarily through their local property taxes. Poor communities = poor funding which leads to funding gaps. Worse than that, New York State has continued to decrease their share of funding which leaves schools with less money to accomplish more. Wealthy districts can continue to provide programs while poorer districts struggle. These districts, like the one I teach in, continually cut faculty and programs which results in fewer opportunities and larger classes for our students.

Ms. Brown, solving the economics of public school funding will help resolve many of the concerns you have with teacher quality. Ending tenure protections will do little to strengthen the effectiveness of teachers. In fact, it may have the opposite effect. Without tenure protections, teachers will be reluctant to experiment with new ideas and methods. Teachers will be reluctant to speak out on behalf of the many issues we and our students face on a regular basis- issues like equity, access to resources and constitutional rights. More importantly, destruction of tenure may actually prevent highly qualified prospective teachers from entering the profession as instability enters into the equation. 

Now, as I mentioned, I am not necessarily a fan of tenure and seniority as they are currently practiced. I agree that bad teachers are too often protected and too difficult to remove from the job. As a teacher, I feel this reflects poorly on our entire profession. However, tenure is not absolute as many will try to imply. It is costly and prolonged, but not absolute; and lets keep in mind that behind every bad teacher is an administrator who recommended that teacher for tenure. Teachers don't "turn bad", often times all the signs are there from the start, but overworked administrators don't have the time or resources to fully observe or evaluate teaching. So the goal here, to remove truly ineffective teachers, must be streamlined and reformed. 

To start, tenure should be granted after a longer time period than is currently used along with higher professional standards and expectations. Current tenure law in New York State allows for granting of tenure following three years of teaching. Extending this to five years may provide a longer period for observation and teacher support. The longer time period may also have the impact of improving new teacher quality as they seek professional development in order obtain tenure and Administrators can have greater input into teacher concerns and development.

Seniority is more difficult to address. As districts face budgetary concerns, there may very well be a push to cut the fat at the top, not because these teachers have become lazy and apathetic, but due to the cost of maintaining these teachers. In addition, these teachers often represent the most outspoken members of the faculty and can be seen as being politically adversarial. Fixing tenure will allow for some natural reform of the seniority concerns by keeping the best teachers in the profession. 

Lastly, how do we identify poor teaching? Standardized testing is not the answer as teacher ratings rely on the randomness of student assignment. The New York system of pre-test and post-test comparisons is an absurd joke. Students barely try to perform on a pre-test that has no meaning or consequence for them, while teacher determined Standard Learning Objectives (SLO's) are completely random and immediately suspect when realizing that pre-test score indicate unreliable information.

Unfortunately, none of the reforms you mention will lead to better educational outcomes. Students, particularly those you are choosing to defend, are suffering NOT because the schools can't remove the teachers, but most likely because the best teachers have probably chosen to leave the school. The structural and physical condition of many of these schools are failing and the pay scales in many of these schools are often below regional standards. As a result, some of the best teachers move from these schools to higher paying and safer suburban schools. These schools offer greater access to technology, resources, and course offerings. Why wouldn't they leave?

As Lawrence Mishel of the Economic Policy Institute recently wrote, "Addressing the core drivers of these schools’, and students’, problems requires working in close partnership with teachers and unions. The vast majority of teachers are doing yeomen’s work under very difficult conditions; improving education means improving those conditions, making teaching in the schools that need strong teachers more attractive, and supporting those teachers to help them improve their craft." 

Lastly, let us consider your motivation Ms. Brown. As a current board member of Success Academy charter schools, your interest in these students and the future of public schools is questionable. Much has been written concerning the negative impact charter schools have on public schools and the lack of achievement demonstrated by these charters. In fact, Success Academy has had their own struggles with student achievement considering their inability to place students in the top public high schools in New York City. So lets not pretend that your motives go far beyond the destruction of public education and the privatization of our educational system. 

Overall, private charter school businesses have shown little actual success in improving student achievement. In fact, the achievement levels at public schools and charter schools have historically been similar. Given the lack of tenured positions and seniority, I'm guessing that the problems these schools face are not a result of said programs. If tenure and seniority are the problems then charter school scores should be through the roof! So why is it, Ms. Brown, that you are not going out of your way to file law suits against the charter schools that are failing students? I suppose there's a greater return in pandering to hedge-fund managers and other privateers who gain financially through tax credits and the destruction of the public schools. 

So in the end Ms. Brown, is it the public good you're trying to benefit, or your own? I think it's pretty clear in which direction your interests lie. If you truly want to help students in this country, then we welcome your help in trying to end the inequities that exist in public schools. We can do this by reforming public taxation and revenue distribution rules and by helping struggling urban schools and other low-income schools across the state to balance their budgets, help them stop the endless teacher and program cuts and help them restore programs that will help ALL students in New York to have a true common and equitable educational experience.

Dead Man Walking . . . .

Just to be clear, that headline is NOT a threat . . . just a point of reference that insinuates the demise of testing culture.

It seems Commissioner John King is becoming increasingly desperate. As his world closes in around him, he finds it necessary to marginalize the opposition to his Common Core policies and testing fervor. 

Education Commissioner John King hopes Common Core controversy behind him

King asked supporters at a breakfast forum to push back against critics who label the educational standards ‘a national conspiracy’ of either the left or the right.

“When your elected officials acquiesce to people saying higher standards are a national conspiracy of the left or a national conspiracy of the right we need you to push back,” he said. 


To which I would say, when your constituents insist that you be critical of a public policy and program, conduct your due diligence, research the policy, its background, its implementation, its costs and benefits to society and then rule as you see fit. Don't acquiesce because a commissioner of any entity says, "trust me". 

Toxic Culture of Education: Joshua Katz at TEDxUniversityofAkron

I could only hope to be as eloquent as Joshua Katz in this TEDx address. Mr. Katz sums up many of my own personal beliefs surrounding testing culture and the true problems facing education today.

The truth about education policy is that it is written and enforced by people who have either spent little or no time in the classroom with the students that these very policies affect. Why not allow the individuals in direct contact with students to mold and shape the environment of the students? Education is the only industry that is developing a product without any valid market research from its users! Students aren’t asked what they want or need. Teachers aren’t asked what would work for their students. Teachers are not the enemy: it’s the private companies like Pearson and interest groups like ALEC, that write policies and laws that are passed over steak dinners with words like “accountability” and “rigor” to perpetuate their bottom lines on the heads of our students. Follow the money: of all the tax dollars that go into education, how much goes directly to students? How much goes directly to a teacher’s relationship with students (which by the way are another leading indicator of student success)? Compare that to how much goes to private companies for materials and resources, as well as bureaucracy? Just follow the money.

We must change the public narrative on education. We must fight our Toxic Culture! We must end high stakes testing for the sake of “accountability”. Let’s have education policy that builds up our students with sensible human standards instead of fitting them into robotic boxes for “college readiness”. Let’s focus on getting students out there in the evolving global economy. Let’s focus on teaching them the important things: how to read, how to think, how to research, how to reason, how to master basic skills, and how to be good citizens. Let’s talk about the Non-Cognitive factors that are the true measures of student achievement: persistence, integrity, character.

Let’s teach them how to learn and how to innovate, NOT how to take tests. We must change the focus of our Toxic Culture away from curriculum, teachers, and schools, and WE MUST focus on our students!

King's Brown v Board Speech: Right Problem- Wrong Solutions

May 14th marked the 60th anniversary of the United States Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education. The Brown case set the standard for school desegregation and made "separate but equal" a supposed practice of the past. While the Brown decision remains important today, it has also failed to be a solution for inequalities. In many inner city school systems and small upstate districts, separate but unequal is a reality. Decades of well-intended attempts to remedy this problem have resulted in very little progress.

To mark this momentous occasion, New York State Commissioner of Education, John B. King, Jr., spoke at the Rockefeller Institute of Government to decry the continuing failures of public education, the damaging actions of non-reformers and hail his holy grail solution to all things unequal . . . . the Common Core!  

As a prelude to his main points, Dr. King begins by asking a pointed question: Why are we silent?

The question isn't asked in an inquiring fashion. He isn't actually wondering why the silence exists. He's framing his question in the form of a criticism. A criticism levied at an imagined public who sits back and allows the unequal schooling to continue. It's levied at the parents, the administrators, the politicians and, of course, the public school teachers who sit idly by and watch as poor kids and children of color fall through the cracks.

The problem is, so long as I have been in public education (16 years), the plight of these children has been the central focus of nearly every conversation concerning a host of problems ranging from testing achievement to drop-out rates to homework completion and reading levels. No one in my public education experience has been silent. We've cried for funding equity, condemned unfunded mandates and pleaded for real solutions to these problems. We've read and discussed Ruby Payne's "Understanding Poverty", developed mentor programs, organized after school programs and increased school-based support services. But as No Child Left Behind became the law of the land and we moved toward a system of testing and accountability, we have only found that a narrowing of the curriculum coupled with high-stakes testing results in increased disinterest for these students.

So, to start with, the problem isn't silence. The problem is in the solutions that benefit market-forces more than they do the students. The problem is a society that obsesses over their fears of income redistribution and taxation of the wealthy. The problem is that we have communities that have had to cut their teaching staffs, increase their class sizes and put on hold long overdue building repairs and infrastructure upgrades. If we want equality of opportunity, we need to offer equality of resources.

During his speech, Dr. King made some valid points and provided a very strong and compelling assessment of the current state of public education New York State. In particular, he summed up the challenges many schools face when dealing children of color and those who come from impoverished households.  His claims about the impact of public schools mirror my own beliefs when addressing those from poor neighborhoods:

Schools have often been called the great equalizer – the place where the impact of our differences of economic class and background can be erased – and where our qualities of intellect, creativity, hard work, and persistence can triumph. 

He further states his view that schools have gained little since the Brown decision:

Believe it or not, 60 years after Brown, we also remain deeply segregated. According to one recent report, New York has the most segregated schools in the country – both racially and economically.

Not only do our 700 school district lines often track patterns of residential economic segregation, there are school districts in this state today – including New York City – with boundary lines within the district that keep children of wealth starkly separated from children of poverty -- and we know from our history that segregation – whether it’s economic or racial -- breeds inequality.

The facts are plain: America spends less to educate poor children than wealthy children. Fewer poor children have access to high quality pre-school. Poor children are often assigned to less effective teachers and have fewer resources in their schools.

They have fewer after-school programs and fewer social and emotional supports. If they are high achieving students, they have less access to rigorous courses and they are far less likely to go to a top-notch college.

By every single measure – whether it is classroom grades or test scores, or high school and college graduation rates, our children of poverty and children of color are further behind, and the promise of equality through education still eludes us.

I would be hard-pressed to find any disagreement with Dr. King in any of these important points. Clearly, the challenges facing many public schools revolve around race and poverty issues. As I have already alluded to, where I strongly disagree with Dr. King is in identifying the solutions for these societal problems and in his overly simplified and exaggerated dismissal of those who oppose Common Core and the ancillary reforms.

Among the litany of solutions for Dr. King are charter schools. Although Dr. King tries to make the point that charter schools outperform public schools, the facts tell a different story. In a 2013 study conducted at Stanford University, 25-29% of the charters outperformed public schools in the areas of growth on reading and math. Most demonstrated no significant statistical gains. Other concerns surrounding charter schools have been well-documented- increased suspension rates, high levels of expelled students with special needs and behavioral problems and more. Clearly, public schools are not in any position to do any of this.

Dr. King also offers a flippant description of those who oppose his reforms:

You’ve seen it in the media and in the political arena. You’ve seen it in schools and communities across the state where some parents, some educators, some union leaders and some politicians say the standards are too high. They argue that we should not hold ourselves accountable for student learning.

Being against the use of no-stakes, poorly written standardized assessments as a means for assessing achievement and determining teacher effectiveness, and therefore accountability, is not the same as refusing to be accountable. Most teachers I know want accountability. We want accountability as a means to clean up our profession and strengthen our positions in our community. We acknowledge that every field has members whose actions, or inaction's, reflect poorly on the whole. We recognize that, in order to be viewed as fully professional, we have to have a means for accountability. We just want it to be conducted in a fair and effective manner, using evidence and data that is relevant and reflective.

I think we can all agree on the problems facing our schools and on a larger scale our society. As income inequality continues to grow and more and more people are preoccupied with providing for their families, the ability for low-income and middle income families to provide educational support, assistance and supervision  for their children has dwindled. When parents are too busy working multiple jobs to provide food and shelter, they simply do not have the time to devote to these important tasks. Children from well-educated, professional and wealthy families will always do better as a group. The solutions are in finding ways to make the problems of poverty less damaging to the lives of the children with fewer supports.

This is why the story of Finland is so important. Finland continually scores high on all metrics associated with international testing. Yet, despite the fact that Finland has a growing income inequality that is comparable to the United States they continue to achieve at all income levels. It's what Finland does to resolve these problems that is important in explaining why Finnish children, regardless of socio-economic status, score high on international tests. 

In Finnish schools, ALL children receive breakfast and lunch, ALL children receive the same educational instruction, ALL teachers are treated as highly trained professionals and continue to receive high quality professional development throughout their careers. There is little to NO standardized testing, university education is FREE and medical care is provided to ALL students at schools. There are no charter schools or voucher programs and very few private schools. Their students attend less school per year, spend more time playing at school, and have less homework than American students.

So why do we NOT learn from the Finnish model and implement their strategies and practices? Maybe because there is little to no room for profiteering and it looks and sounds far too much like that dreaded SOCIALISM. Many people look toward other high scoring countries for examples, but the structural divergence between who tests and who doesn't is less egalitarian. We cannot, and don't want to duplicate nations like Singapore or cities like Shanghai. 

If we want to solve our educational problems, we must deal effectively with poverty. Until we can provide for the non-educational needs of all of our children, we will not be able to expect them to be concerned about learning. Living in poverty provides children with endless distractions and few opportunities when compared to their more affluent peers. What the Finnish model does is provide a framework for a society that educates 100% of its children from a variety of social and economic backgrounds in a highly effective manner. Dr. King and other reformers must grasp these models and institute policies that have proven to be effective elsewhere. 

The direction the United States is moving is a path of educational destruction. In the end, reformers are making promises that their policies cannot fulfill.