Teacher World

I would like to tell you about a school in Boston, a school that was in bad shape two years ago, but seems to be working diligently to turn a once failing school around in a positive way.

A news report from November 19, 2009, will help set the scene for this story. On this day, Carol R. Johnson, School Superintendent for the Boston City Schools, revealed the names of 14 schools which would be undergoing massive overhauls, reinvention, or possible closing. The decision was precipitated by the habitually low scores these schools achieved on their standardized tests. 

In a speech delivered at Orchard Gardens K-8 School in Roxbury, a new facility with an attendance of approximately 600 students, Johnson announced, “For our very survival, we must launch a new era for Boston public schools. We are prepared to innovate.’’

One of the schools earmarked in 2009 for an overhaul was Orchard Gardens, which had chronically low test scores, and a 60% Latino population and a 40% black population, two groups which tend to lag behind other ethnic and racial groups on state tests. Approximately a third of the students who attended were learning to speak English, and the school had gone through five principals in seven years, making it a very unstable environment in which to try to achieve a long-term improvement plan.

The district’s pilot schools program allowed administrators to deviate from its district’s curriculum mandates and teacher union rules in the hope of spurring innovation. Five thousand schools have been chosen nationally to get millions of dollars from the federal government to turn around, and Orchard Gardens is one of them. Its goal is to become a top-performing school.

The principal of the school, a very young Andrew Bott, stated in an interview with CNN in September of this year, “We need to do something bold. We need to really restart Orchard Gardens.” According to turnaround rules, principals must replace at least half of their staff, but Bott boldly fired 80% of the original staff, and hand-picked replacements for the teachers he had fired. He will receive $3.7 million in grants over the next three years to help facilitate his goals.

Seven months into the school year, Bott is feeling very confident about the improvements they have made so far, and predicts that within three years they will have over 90% of their students testing either proficient or advanced, and on a college track.

Justin Cohen is much more cautious. He works with failing schools in an effort to help them turn around, and he warns Botts against becoming too overconfident. “What happens is, schools that have achieved fragile gains can often slide back into underperformance once either resources are taken away or attention is distracted. What I worry about with school turnaround is we hit a plateau or we increase student scores to some extent, but they’re still performing well below their peers in affluent neighborhoods.”

How significant is Orchard Gardens’ improvement so far? In a school where only 10% of its population scored proficient in the past, Botts claims that they are anywhere from 35% to 50% proficient in English and 15% to 75% proficient in math. Of course, these are projections. The real figures will not be available until the summer.

I can’t help but question these projections. I am curious what data has been used to make such bold predictions. But I am equally curious about the wide range in percents, particularly in math. Is anyone else questioning the enormous difference between a child scoring 15% and 75%? That’s a pretty padded bet, don’t you think?

Regardless of loosey goosey percentages and unexplained data, I wish this school well. I am all for good news from any source regarding public schools. And the turnaround of Orchard Gardens would be a tremendous thing for the students, the teachers, the parents, and the entire Boston community.

Educational Reform, Funding Education, low-performing schools, state achievement tests, Teacher-World's Blog Andrew Bott, Boston, Orchard Gardens K-8 School, state achievement tests, turnaround school

I am writing tonight with a very heavy heart; a heart that is fearful of the future of education, fearful of the future of my job, and frankly, fearful that my salary could be reduced if I am able to keep my job.

Schools everywhere are facing drastic cuts which will affect our staff and our students in significant ways and will make it harder to achieve the goals which will continue to be expected of us. Our school system is one of many hoping to stop the financial bleeding by passing a levy, which is unlikely to pass. We have been warned of impending cuts that will have to be made in the likelihood that the levy fails, but the warnings have been pretty sketchy until recently.

Information is trickling in which tells us that we would probably lose a teacher at basically every grade level in our building. With SB5 hanging out there and loss of collective bargaining, there is palpable panic as to how these cuts in staff will be made. I find myself wondering tonight if, in spite of all of my years of dedicated service to this school system, I might find myself on the chopping block.

Those of us at the top of the pay scale have much to fear, as our cuts would save the district more in the long run. Will this be the determining factor? Will service and evaluations be considered? Will our test scores make or break us? Or, at least for now, will seniority be the basis for next year’s decisions?

And what will this do to our class sizes? One less teacher adds at least 4-5 students to each classroom. Increased class size makes it more challenging to meet the individual needs of students. It makes it harder to intervene with those who are struggling, and it will make it more difficult to adequately prepare students for their standardized tests.

Just when the news seemed as bleak as it could get, we are hearing about the current language in the budget bill, HB 153, which would completely eliminate local associations’ ability to bargain salary. Instead, local school boards would have the authority to adopt a teacher’s salary schedule with a minimum and maximum salary for each category of licensure annually, and they would be able to designate salary placement for each teacher. At this point, there is no indication of what criteria would be used in making these decisions; what will evaluations be based on, will “highly qualified” status, class size, hard-to-staff districts, or subjects or at-risk students be relevant factors?

We simply don’t know, and it is a very precarious position to be in. So, I am stressed out tonight, as teachers all over this nation are; frightened that I might someday lose a job I love and equally frightened as to what my job will look like if I am able to keep it.

Troubled times, with no idea what troubles lay ahead, and a very heavy heart.

Changes in Teaching, Funding Education, Teacher-World's Blog budget cuts, class size, collective bargaining, HB 153, SB 5, teacher cuts, teacher evaluations

Well, the anticipated glitch has now frozen any movement forward on Wisconsin’s new budget repair law even though it was signed into law by Governor Scott Walker two weeks ago. Of course, Walker said, according to a spokeswoman, that he was confident that the initiative would eventually prevail in the court system.

As threatened, after only a two hour notice was given by Republicans for a vote on this budget repair bill, Wisconsin Senate Democrats filed a complaint with the Dane County district attorney. In their complaint they claimed the Republicans in the Senate violated Wisconsin’s open meetings law by failing to give a 24-hour public notice of the meeting it held on March 9, in spite of state Representative Peter Barca’s objection.

The ruling on Friday, by Dane County Judge Maryann Sumi, called for a temporary restraining order which halted the budget repair law designed to diminish the union’s power of most public employees. Her order demanded that Secretary of State Douglas LaFollette was to refrain from publishing the new law “until further order of the court.”

In Judge Sumi’s written decision, she made the following analogy to help explain her ruling: “Those few of you who may have seen the Super Bowl know that there was a much-photographed guy with a cheesehead, and it said ‘owner’ on it. And of course, we all know what that refers to, the fact that the Green Bay Packers are publicly owned. It’s a heartwarming moment to see that, but in fact, it states that we in Wisconsin own our government. We own it. And we own it in three ways.

We own it by the vote. We own it by the duty to provide open and public access to records, so that the activities of government can be monitored. And we own it in that we are entitled by law to free and open access to government meetings, and especially governmental meetings that lead to the resolution of very highly conflicted and controversial matters.”

Secretary-treasurer of the Wisconsin AFL-CIO, Stephanie Bloomingdale, was pleased by the ruling. “In Wisconsin, we have a democracy, and rules need to be followed. No one is above the law, including Scott Walker,” Bloomingdale said. “This is definitely a move in the right direction for working people in Wisconsin to uphold worker rights and also to uphold democracy in Wisconsin and America.”

While Democrats are hopeful that this ruling might bring the demise of this new law, Democrat Senator Jon Erpenbach stated, “I would hope the Republicans would take this as an opportunity to sit down with Democrats and negotiate a proposal we could all get behind.”

Indeed, so many of us in other states, like Ohio, with similar controversial bills still to be decided would hope for the same thing, because Wisconsin is leading the way in this drama, which has us all watching and waiting to find out what will happen next. Although, I think most of us already assume that this latest decision will just slow the inevitable down a little bit.

Funding Education, Teacher's Unions, Teacher-World's Blog budget repair law, collective bargaining, Governor Scott Walker, Judge Maryann Sumi, Wisconsin

More news from Providence, Rhode Island where, only a week ago all of their 1,926 teachers received termination notices due to budget cuts. Things aren’t looking pretty, but is there a glimmer of hope?

On Friday, March 4, Mayor Taveras announced that about 10% of the teachers in Providence will need to be cut and about four to six schools will need to close next year. He made it clear that this was a “ballpark estimate.” In spite of this statement, which was meant to calm the fear that teachers in Providence are feeling, it must be remembered that because these teachers were fired, the school district can call back teachers with no regard to seniority. Additionally, those who lose their jobs will not receive unemployment or other benefits.

As if this isn’t bad enough, there is also talk of trying to cut the benefits of workers who are already retired since the city is facing an unfunded pension liability of $2.4 billion. Ernest Almonte of Providence’s Municipal Finances Review Panel said he wasn’t sure if it was legal to do this, but that it is an option being considered.

Mayor Taveras and his financial advisers are proposing other cuts in the face of a $110 million structural deficit next year: major slashing in spending and in city worker pensions and the possible selling of the Roger Williams Park Zoo, the city’s major tourist attraction.

And yet, economists and policy experts agree that these kinds of spending cuts are not the solution for struggling cities and states. According to an editorial from the New York Times in December, “More experienced economists say it is better to raise taxes on the rich than to lay off workers and cut spending.”

The economics commentator for People’s World magazine says, “Deficits are not caused by ‘runaway spending.’ When states cut spending, they lose jobs, local businesses lose customers, and towns lose tax revenue. This makes the economic crisis worse.”

In 2006, Rhode Island introduced a “flat tax” measure which reduced taxes for the upper class from 9.9% to 5.99% like everyone else. While this move was supposed to make the state more competitive, according to a Providence Journal report in 2009, it amounted to “a break for the state’s wealthiest taxpayers, and slashes in state aid for “cash-strapped cities and towns.’”

Democratic state Representative Scott Guthrie of Rhode Island has introduced two bills that could help boost the economy and avoid damaging cuts in his state. “One bill would restore the 9.9 percent rate for that tiny group of rich people, and,” says Guthrie, “would bring in an additional $190 million in tax revenue next year, and about $134 million the following year. The second bill would raise the rate to 7.9 percent, bringing in $88.5 million in new tax revenue next year and about $62 million the following year.”

“We often hear talk about the structural deficit in Rhode Island, but what these proposals do is address the structural injustice in our recent budgets. The slogan of ‘shared sacrifice’ has been used to cut taxes for the rich, while cutting services for the needy and forcing classroom teachers, first responders, and other public servants to take pay cuts and layoffs in order to balance the budget. So much for shared sacrifice,” Guthrie said in a statement.

Guthrie’s proposal has a lot of support, but it will require the residents of Rhode Island to work together to get the measure passed.

He said, “We are lamenting the poor economy and looking for ways to make cuts and imposing most of the cuts on those residents of our state who can least afford to go without certain services or who can least afford to pay more for them. We are looking to make cuts in schools and in services, or looking at more hikes in property taxes.  The way the wealthiest can help society is to pay a little more, which they are much more able to afford than the rest of us. If digging out of our current economy misery is about shared sacrifice, I think those making over a half-million dollars can share a little more.”

The nation is watching what happens in Rhode Island because this is a simple solution that makes sense. My concern is that politics will muddy this up, as the wealthiest in Rhode Island are probably also the biggest contributors to political campaigns. This is a time for real solutions to our nation’s economic woes as opposed to solutions which only break the backs of the very people who can least afford to fix our nation’s debt.

Get this done Rhode Island! For your sakes and for the country’s sake as well.

Funding Education, Teacher-World's Blog budget cuts, Providence, Rhode Island, state Rep. Scott Guthrie, taxes, teachers fired

I have written to you about Diane Ravitch before; a powerful woman well-grounded in education and one-time staunch supporter of No Child Left Behind but now just as staunchly opposed to all that No Child Left Behind stands for. Well, my respect for this woman has grown as she has now spoken out about what is happening in Wisconsin. Here are some of her salient points.

First, she accuses conservative Republican governors like Chris Christie of New Jersey, John Kasich of Ohio, Mitch Daniels of Indiana, Rick Scott of Florida, and Scott Walker of Wisconsin of wanting “to sap the power of public employee unions, especially the teachers’ union, since public education is the single biggest expenditure for every state.”

Thousands of public sector workers have camped out in Wisconsin protesting Walker’s plan to reduce their take-home pay by increasing the amount they will have to contribute to their pension plan and their health care benefits at the same time that they plan to restrict their collective bargaining rights. Walker claims these cutbacks had to be imposed because the state is broke, but, Ravitch claims, “Teachers noticed that he offered generous tax breaks to businesses that were equivalent to the value of their givebacks.”

Ravitch goes on to enumerate the cause of the “simmering rage” felt by the nation’s teachers. “They have grown angry and demoralized over the past two years as attacks on their profession escalated. The much-publicized film Waiting for ‘Superman made the specious claim that ‘bad teachers’ caused low student test scores. A Newsweek cover last year proposed that the key to saving American education was firing bad teachers.”

Following this was the outrage felt by teachers everywhere when the leaders of the Central Falls School District in Rhode Island threatened to fire the whole staff of the town’s only high school due to poor performance on test scores. She points out that what really concerned teachers when they heard this news was the positive way it was received by both the Secretary of Education Arne Duncan and President Obama, who both felt it was a fine idea, even though there had been no evaluations of anyone at the high school.

Ravitch points to the Race to the Top program as another way that teachers have felt under attack. “The Obama administration’s Race to the Top program intensified the demonizing of teachers, because it encouraged states to evaluate teachers in relation to student scores. There are many reasons why students do well or poorly on tests, and teachers felt they were being unfairly blamed when students got low scores, while the crucial role of families and the students themselves was overlooked,” wrote Ravitch.

Finally, she points to the despair teachers felt in August when we read about the outrageous report in the Los Angeles Times in which this paper rated 6,000 teachers in Los Angeles as either effective or ineffective using the Value Added Model and students’ test scores. As you recall, the publishing of these ratings online led to the apparent suicide of one of these teachers who was rated ineffective, in spite of his consistently good evaluations. But as Ravitch points out, “Testing experts warn that such ratings are likely to be both inaccurate and unstable, but the Times stood by its analysis.”

Now, teachers are facing the latest and most demoralizing attack of all, the plan to abolish our right to due process, our seniority, and, in some states, the loss of collective bargaining rights. Ironically, Ravitch points out, “Actually, the states with the highest performance on national tests are Massachusetts, Connecticut, New Jersey, Vermont, and New Hampshire, where teachers belong to unions that bargain collectively for their members.”

She points out that the reason conservative governors want to reduce the power of the unions is because they actively lobby to increase funding for education while reducing class size. If they can shut down teachers unions they also shut down the biggest opposition to making cuts in education.

Ravitch eloquently and masterfully summarizes what those of us in public education are feeling when she concludes: “There has recently been a national furor about school reform. One must wonder how it is possible to talk of improving schools while cutting funding, demoralizing teachers, cutting scholarships to college, and increasing class sizes. The real story in Madison is not just about unions trying to protect their members’ hard-won rights. It is about teachers who are fed up with attacks on their profession. As the attacks on teachers increase and as layoffs grow, there are likely to be more protests like the one that has mobilized teachers and their allies and immobilized the Wisconsin Legislature. “

Educational Reform, Funding Education, teacher evaluations, Teacher-World's Blog Central Falls Rhode Island, collective bargaining, Diane Ravitch, Race to the Top, Value Added Model, Wisconsin protests

In March of last year, I blogged about the Central Falls School District located in Rhode Island. You will remember that this is the school district which fired all of its high school teachers as a result of their poor performance record. In case you’ve forgotten, let me refresh your memory.

On February 24th, the Central Falls School Board of Trustees voted 5-2 to fire every teacher on their high school staff. All 93 names were read aloud including 74 classroom teachers, along with reading specialists, guidance counselors, PE teachers, the school psychologist, assistant principals, and the principal. Teachers from schools all over came to support these devastated staff members. It was a heart-wrenching scene, one which could not help but fill teachers everywhere with a true sense of fear. That fear was deepened when both Arne Duncan and President Barack Obama supported the firings. Obama expressed his strong opinion that when schools were not showing improvement, drastic action would need to be taken.

So, almost a year later, what’s the news in Central Falls, Rhode Island? The fired teachers made a deal that allowed them to get their jobs back, but it has not been smooth sailing. Apparently many of them have been either calling in sick or quitting. I imagine morale is exceptionally low. Wouldn’t yours be if you had been publicly accused of not doing your job and publicly fired as well?

In the meantime, the U.S. Department of Education has awarded the high school $1.3 million to continue its reform process. The money comes from a fund set up to transform 5,000 low-performing schools around the U.S.

According to reports, the money is to be used to purchase computers, pay professional staff, and develop a performance management system. It will be interesting to see if the money makes a difference. If it helps turn around this low-performing school then one would have to ask was the lack of progress  a result of teacher incompetence or was it poor funding? Or, at this point, has morale been so battered that the money is only a Band-Aid, when the school system is in need of a tourniquet? We will have to wait and see…

Educational Reform, Funding Education, low-performing schools, Teacher-World's Blog Arne Duncan, Barack Obama, Central Falls School District, poor-performing schools, school funding, U.S. Department of Education

At a time when schools everywhere are facing financial difficulty, the city of Detroit has raised the possibility of closing down almost half of their public schools in the next two years, according to their newspaper, The Blade. Unreal, right? The paper also revealed the necessity of increasing class size at the high school level jumping the average class size to 62 students by next year.

Detroit Public Schools considered filing for bankruptcy two years ago but changed their minds. In the past year, the district’s debt increased by more than $100 million, leaving them with a total debt of $327 million! What has lead to such a huge deficit?  A “mix of revenue declines in property taxes, reduced state aid, declining enrollment and an unplanned staffing surge this past fall.”

Now, here is the ridiculous irony in all of this. As class sizes increase, hurting those students who must compete for attention from their teachers, the teachers actually benefit from the larger numbers. According to the district’s contract, the Detroit Federation of Teachers requires that the school systems pay teachers additional money when their class sizes exceed the maximum limit. So the very measure which is supposed to save money is estimated to cost the district an additional $10 million to cover teachers’ pay for oversized classrooms over the next four years!

I don’t think I would be alone in suggesting that Detroit schools need to go back to their accountants and find a way to drive down the budget that really makes sense, or should I say “cents”?

Funding Education, Teacher's Unions, Teacher-World's Blog class size, Detroit Federation of Teachers, Detroit schools, state budget cuts

We hear it all the time now; public schools are hurting financially. Teachers are losing their jobs. Our nation’s schools are facing tough times, and there is no end in sight. We hear it, we know it, but it hits home when we hear the words echoing down our own hallways.

In a recent staff meeting, we heard the depressing news for ourselves. Our superintendent bravely came to tell us the news himself; unless we pass a levy this spring, we are facing a financial nightmare. And here is why:

* Due to the loss of stimulus money and the economy, Ohio is facing an $8,000,000,000 deficit.
* Due to this deficit, it is projected that our school system’s funding will be cut by at least 10 percent and maybe as much as 20 or 30 percent.
* Additionally, it is predicted that we will lose almost $800,000 in State Fiscal Stabilization Funds (Federal Stimulus) and Ed Jobs Grant.
* It is estimated that if our new levy fails in the spring, our deficit will be over $2,000,000 next year and huge cuts will have to be made to balance our budget.

In response to the need to make cuts this year, when teachers retired, those positions were not filled, which has affected class size. Now we face the prospect of losing more. Paraprofessionals will likely be cut, programs will be cut, teachers will probably be cut, and class sizes will continue to increase. And we are not alone.

Yet, in spite of all the issues we are facing in public education, we will still be expected to pass the state achievement tests, to get our IEP students to pass these tests, to show yearly progress, and to be schools of excellence. We will be expected to feed them better lunches due to the Healthy, Hungry-Free Kids Act. All of this with significantly reduced resources, severely reduced programs, and severely reduced staff. Is this reasonable or fair? How can the very government which has contributed to the problems we face in this economy have the same expectations of crippled schools it had when times were better?

The cuts which will have to be made in our school system will be those which most radically save our district money, and it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that that means reducing staff. It’s happening all around us, and this will do nothing to strengthen our public schools and will most definitely impact our test scores negatively as well. Maybe it’s time to take a moratorium on state achievement tests until our government can find a way to turn this economy around and to make schools financially stable again.

For God’s sake, don’t strip us to the bones and still expect us to perform for you!

American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, Funding Education, state achievement tests, Teacher-World's Blog class size, Ohio's budget deficit, state achievement tests, State Fiscal Stabilization Funds, stimulus money

The latest release on the U.S. Department of Education’s website from October 5, states that the Department of Education has awarded $38.8 million in grants to eleven states “to measure school safety at the building level and to help intervene in those schools with the greatest safety needs. The goal of the grants is to create and support safe and drug-free learning environments and to increase academic success for students in these high-risk schools.” The Safe and Supportive School grant is managed by the Department’s Office of Safe and Drug-Free Schools:
 
*         which supports efforts to create safe schools
*         ensures the health and well being of students
*         teaches students good citizenship and character
*         responds to crisis
*         prevents drug and alcohol abuse
 
Now, I have always said that in order to turn around low-performing schools you need to first turn around the neighborhoods which is the cause of poor academic performance. I am not sure how such a feat would be accomplished, and I am aware it would be an expensive venture. But this freaks me out! We are all limping around in this severely crippled economy, tightening our belts, shopping for bargains, putting off what we’d like to have for what we need to have. We are all making sacrifices and impatiently waiting for this economy to improve. Yet, almost every time I log onto the U.S. Department of Education website, I read about more money being awarded to this state or that state for this or that. Isn’t anyone worried? Isn’t anyone else asking who is footing the bill for all of this?
 
Is it any wonder that our economy is such a mess? Who is going to pay for all of this spending? You and I? Our children? Our grandchildren? Enough, please! It’s a great cause, but enough!

Funding Education, Teacher-World's Blog grants, low-performing schools, Safe and Supportive School grant, safe schools, turnaround schools, U.S. Department of Education

In the September 2010 edition of the Ohio Teacher: Official Publication of the Ohio Federation of Teachers newspaper, they ran a very interesting article regarding charter schools in Ohio. In the current atmosphere when all we hear about is how public schools are failing students and parents should have the option to choose charter schools over public schools for their children’s education, I felt that some real facts might help parents make the best decision. Here are the facts, stated directly from this article, which I found extremely interesting:

* Recently released report card data shows that overall Ohio’s traditional public schools continue their decade-long outperformance of most charter schools.
* Report card data shows that many charter schools still are not providing quality education for Ohio’s children.
* Even as a handful of Ohio’s 319 charters begin to make small gains, huge gaps remain between the mostly high ratings of public school districts and the vastly failed performance of charter schools.
* Of the 283 charter schools that received report card ratings, 44.5 percent earned failed ratings, according to report card data from the Ohio Department of Education.
* Yet Ohio has spent some $4 billion public dollars on charters over the last decade, including those failing charter schools.

Furthermore, the article went on to explain that due to improvements in accountability, provisions have been made to close some of these poor performing charter schools. Ten failing charter schools in Ohio were closed this summer, and it is anticipated that nine more will be closed at the end of this year. As the article stated, “This higher level of accountability shows the wasteful flow of public taxpayer money to some of Ohio’s most chronically low-performing charters.”

For proponents of charter schools in Ohio, these facts are pretty dismal, but for those of us in public schools it is news worth celebrating. I am so tired of hearing how public education is failing and how it needs major reform. Yet, many of us are working in public schools which have been awarded the title Schools of Excellence and Distinction based on test scores. It’s time to start supporting the positive progress being made in public schools, and to become more critical of ineffective charter schools and curtail the public funding of such schools.

Funding Education, Teacher's Unions, Teacher-World's Blog charter schools, neatoday, public funding, public schools, report card data