Gov. Wolf Tries to Stop Charter Schools Gorging on Public School Funding

August 22, 2019August 22, 2019 stevenmsinger Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Education "Reform", Cyber Charter Schools, Democrat, Education, Local Control, Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Politics, Prejudice, privatization, Republican, School Choice, School Funding, Schools, Students, Teachers, Tom Wolf Accountability, charter schools, Cyber Charter Schools, education, fiscal responsability, Governor Tom Wolf, Harrisburg, legislature, PA Budget, PA House, PA Senate, Pennsylvania, Politics, school funding, teachers, teaching, Tom Wolf, transparency

Sooey! Here Pig Pig Pig!

No one minds that healthy call at the hog farm when it’s time to feed the sows.

But taxpayers do take issue with it when it’s the call of the state legislature gathering a different kind of swine around public tax dollars.

Pennsylvania’s 180 charter schools gobbled up $1.8 billion last year from the Commonwealth’s public schools.

And Gov. Tom Wolf is refusing to let them continue to gorge on public funding meant to nourish everyone.

Last week, he took executive action to hold these schools accountable and force them to be more transparent – even if the legislature won’t.

Charter schools are publicly financed but privately run. Unlike authentic public schools, charters are often administered by appointed boards. They don’t have to provide the same level of services for children, don’t have to accept all students, can make a profit and don’t even have to be transparent about how they spend their money.

Yet that money comes from taxpayers.

For years fiscal watchdogs have complained that the state’s 22-year-old charter school law needs revising. However, after lining lawmakers pockets with charter school cash, the legislature continually refuses to do anything about it.

A few Democrats have offered plans that would increase accountability, but they’ve gotten no traction. And Republican plans have almost exclusively offered to make matters worse by dumping more money in the trough and putting up a thicker curtain so we don’t see the school privatizers eat.

So finally Gov. Wolf, a Democrat, took action on his own.

He has directed his Department of Education to circumvent the legislature to develop regulations that he says, “will level the playing field for all taxpayer-funded public schools, strengthen the accountability and transparency of charter and cyber charter schools and better serve all students.”

His plan would:

•Allow districts to limit student enrollment in charter schools where students aren’t making academic gains.

•Require charter schools to stop turning away students based on race, ethnicity, gender, disability, intellectual deficits, lack of athletics or other student characteristics.

•Make charter schools as transparent as authentic public schools.

•Stop conflicts of interests for charter school board members and operating companies so that they can’t make decisions on behalf of the school that would enrich themselves, their families and/or friends.

•Make charters submit to financial audits to state regulators, make them publicly bid contracts for supplies and services and use fair contracting practices.

•Provide greater oversight of charter school management companies so they can’t profit off of the students enrolled in the schools they’re managing.

•Seek more information about how prospective charters will be run in a new model state application to be used when charters seek to open up shop or renew existing charters.

•Require charters to accurately document their costs.

•Prevent charters from overcharging for services they provide to students.

•Make charters pay to cover the state’s costs for implementing the charter school law.

•Recoup money from charter schools for the time and services the state provides when it reviews applications, distributes payments and provides legal and administrative support to them.

It’s a bold step for a governor, but apparently Wolf is tired of waiting on a dysfunctional legislature to actually legislate.

The problem is Wolf has to be more than a governor. He has to be a goalie.

The state House and state Senate are deeply gerrymandered and controlled by Republicans.

Every year, lawmakers pass mostly crap bills written by Koch Brothers proxies only to be vetoed by Wolf.

Occasionally, the GOP convinces enough right-leaning Democrats to go with them and Wolf can’t or won’t veto the bills.

And that’s pretty much how things work in Harrisburg.

However, this time Wolf wasn’t content to just guard the net. He actually took the puck down the ice, himself, and made a slap shot on the opposing team.

Can he do this? Is he still operating within the law?

Time will tell – though I’d argue that in the absence of legislative action, he is within his job description.

Moreover, this is only a first step.

Wolf, himself, has said that more needs to be done by the legislature. Even after his executive actions, much needs to be done to make charter schools function properly in the Commonwealth.

Specifically, Wolf asked the legislature to pass a moratorium on new cyber charter schools, cap enrollment in low-performing charter schools until they improve, subject charter management companies to the same transparency rules that districts must follow, and create a fair, predictable and equitable charter school funding formula.

I’d like them to go even further.

Frankly, I’d like to see charter schools ended as educational institutions.
Why should the public pay for schools that aren’t locally controlled? Why pay for privatized schools at all?

I suppose if there are some that are functioning well for students, they can be grandfathered in, but they should be funded separately. When two districts have to compete for the same funding, the students lose.

At least, we should not be opening up new charters. The public should not be in the business of funding privatized schools.

I am grateful to Gov. Wolf for finally having the guts to stand up to this powerful industry.

The state exists to further the public good – not enrich private corporations like those running many charter schools.

It’s time we admitted that charter schools are a failed experiment and shut them down.

It’s time to block these pigs from chowing down on public funding without public oversight.

See how much each charter school gets of Commonwealth tax dollars.

Like this post? I’ve written a book, “Gadfly on the Wall: A Public School Teacher Speaks Out on Racism and Reform,” now available from Garn Press. Ten percent of the proceeds go to the Badass Teachers Association. Check it out!

Who’s Trading Public School Funding for a Tax Credit?

August 18, 2019 stevenmsinger Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Budget, Campaign Donations, capitalism, church and state, Corporate Education "Reform", Democrat, Education, Harissburg, Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh Public Schools, Politics, Prejudice, private schools, privatization, Propaganda, School Choice, School Funding, school vouchers, Schools, Students, Taxation, Teachers, Tom Wolf, voting church and state, education, EITC, First Amendment, Pennsylvania, Politics, private schools, Privatize, public schools, religion, Rich, rich kids, school vouchers, schools, tax, Tax Credits, Taxation, teachers, wealth inequality, Wealthy

Ever wonder why our roads and public school buildings are crumbling?

Ever wonder why schools can’t afford books, buses and nurses?

Ever wonder why classroom teachers are forced to buy paper, pencils and supplies for their students out of pocket?

Because businesses like Giant Eagle, American Eagle Outfitters, and Eat’n Park aren’t paying their fair share.

It’s a simple concept – you belong to a society, you should help pay for the roads, bridges, schools, etc. that everyone needs to keep that society healthy.

After all, as a stockholder, CEO or business owner, you directly benefit from that society. If it didn’t exist, you wouldn’t have nearly as many customers – if any.

Many of us learned this kind of stuff in kindergarten or grade school.

But ironically programs that allow businesses to avoid paying their fair share are being used to short change many of those same kindergarten and grade schools.

In Pennsylvania, one such program is called the Educational Improvement Tax Credit (EITC), and everyone from local banks to Duquesne Light to UPMC healthcare providers are using it to lower their taxes while stealing from the public school cookie jar.

Here’s how it works.

If you expect a tax bill of $X at the end of the year, you can donate that same amount to the state for the purpose of helping parents pay off enrollment at a private or religious school for their children. Then you get between 75-90% of that donation back.

So if your tax bill is $100 and you donate $100, you can get back $90 – reducing your total tax bill to a mere 10 bucks.

Heck! Since this money is classified as a “donation” you can even claim it on your taxes and get an additional refund – even to the point where you end up making money on the deal! Pennsylvania even allows a “triple dip” – so you get the EITC tax credit, a reduction in your taxable income, and a reduction in your federal taxable income. We actually pay you to shortchange us on your taxes!

Now I’m oversimplifying a bit since you can only use the EITC for up to $750,000 a year, but it’s still a sweet deal for businesses. It just really hurts nearly everyone else because it reduces the state’s general fund – by $124 million last year, alone.

When we give away hundreds of millions of dollars every year to religious and parochial schools, we have less money to spend on public schools, roads and all other services that benefit the majority of our citizens – especially the poor who rely more heavily on these services.

So why doesn’t the state just budget this amount of money directly to religious and private schools instead of ransacking the general fund after businesses donate it to the tax incentive program?

Because it’s illegal to give taxpayer dollars to religious and private schools. The establishment clause of the First Amendment forbids it.

The founders of our country didn’t want a state religion with schools teaching theological propaganda like we had in Great Britain. Moreover, they demanded tax dollars be spent with accountability to the whole public – something you cannot do in a private or religious school which isn’t set up for everyone but only those who choose and can afford to go there.

However, some smart ass thought of an alleged loophole. He said that if tax money is turned into a tax credit, it’s no longer tax money and it doesn’t violate the rules to spend it on religious and private schools.

So this is a fiscal sleight of hand meant to give businesses a tax break while boosting private schools.

Who’s guilty of hiding behind this loophole to bolster their bottom line while short changing ours?

Probably a lot of businesses you know.

Thankfully, their donations to the EITC Program are a matter of public record as is how much money returned to them as savings.

You can find a handy database of state businesses right HERE searchable by county compiled by Pennsylvania Capital-Star.

I happen to live in Allegheny County in the Pittsburgh region – the second highest area of the Commonwealth for these tax dodge…. I mean credits.

Across the county in 2017-18 (the most recent year for which data is available), Allegheny County businesses donated $15,741,544. They got back $14,180,261 in tax credits.

A quick search came up with these noteworthy businesses:

–Fatheads – the Southside sports bar along Carson Street in Pittsburgh
Contribution: $ 10,000
Tax Credit: $ 9,000

–AEO Management, Co.  (American Eagle Outfitters Corporate Office in the South Side, Pittsburgh)
Contribution: $ 350,000
Tax Credit: $ 315,000

–Apex Diamonds, Inc. (A Pittsburgh jeweler)
Contribution: $ 149,000
Tax Credit: $ 134,100

–Cochran Motors, Inc. (car dealership in Monroeville)
Donation: $ 100,000
Tax Credit: $ 90,000

–Deer Leasing Co. (freight and cargo business) THREE ENTRIES:
Donation: $ 444,444
Tax Credit: $ 400,000

Deer Leasing Co.
Donation: $ 221,111
Tax Credit: $ 200,000

Deer Leasing Co.
Donation: $ 388,888
Tax Credit: $ 349,999

-Dollar Bank – TWO ENTRIES
Donation: $ 225,000
Tax Credit: $ 202,500

Dollar Bank
Donation: $ 400,000
Tax Credit: $ 360,000

–Duquesne Light Company – THREE ENTRIES
Donation: $ 10,000
Tax Credit $ 10,000
(So 100% return on investment!?)

Duquesne Light Company
Donation: $ 50,000
Tax Credit: $ 45,000

Duquesne Light Company
Donation: $ 240,000
Tax Credit: $ 216,000

-Eat’n Park Hospitality Group, Inc. (Corporate headquarters in Homestead)
Donation: $ 25,000
Tax Credit: $ 23,500

-Federated Advisory Services Company (Asset management company) – THREE ENTRIES
Donation: $ 111,111
Tax Credit: $ 100,000

Federated Investment Counseling
Donation: $ 111,111
Tax Credit: $ 100,000

Federated Investment Counseling
Donation: $ 222,222
Tax Credit: $ 200,000

–Giant Eagle, Inc. – TWO ENTRIES
Donation: $ 833,333
Tax Credit: $ 750,000

Giant Eagle, Inc.
Donation: $ 221,111
Tax Credit: $ 200,000

–Glimcher Brokerage, Inc. (Real estate company) – TWO ENTRIES
Donation: $ 380,000
Tax Credit: $ 342,000

Glimcher Group, Inc.
Donation: $ 300,000
Tax Credit: $ 270,000

–HM Health Insurance Company (Camp Hill, Pa) – THREE ENTRIES
Donation: $ 50,000
Tax Credit: $ 45,000

HM Health Insurance Company
Donation: $ 243,333
Tax Credit: $ 219,000

HM Health Insurance Company
Donation: $ 165,556
Tax Credit: $ 150,000

–PNC Bank, N.A. – TWO ENTRIES
Donation: $ 685,000
Tax Credit: $ 616,500

PNC Bank, N.A.
Donation: $ 148,303
Tax Credit: $ 133,500

–Rohrich Imports, Inc. (Luxury Pittsburgh Car Dealership)
Donation: $ 60,000
Tax Credit: $ 54,000

–The Buncher Company (property management company) – THREE ENTRIES
Donation: $ 416,667
Tax Credit: $ 375,000

The Buncher Company
Donation: $ 416,667
Tax Credit: $ 375,000

The Buncher Company
Donation: $ 221,111
Tax Credit: $ 200,000

–The Huntington National Bank –TWO ENTRIES
Donation: $ 549,556
Tax Credit: $ 494,600

The Huntington National Bank
Donation: $ 111,111
Tax Credit: $ 100,000

–UnitedHealthcare of Pennsylvania, Inc.
Donation: $ 200,000
Tax Credit: $ 180,000

-UPMC Diversified Services, Inc. (Healthcare provider) – SIX ENTRIES
Donation: $ 200,000
Tax Credit: $ 180,000

UPMC Diversified Services, Inc.
Donation: $ 200,000
Tax Credit: $ 181,000

UPMC Diversified Services, Inc.
Donation: $ 190,000
Tax Credit: $ 171,000

UPMC Health Benefits, Inc.
Donation: $ 200,000
Tax Credit: $ 180,000

UPMC Health Benefits, Inc.
Donation: $ 200,000
Tax Credit: $ 181,000

UPMC Health Benefits, Inc.
Donation: $ 200,000
Tax Credit: $ 180,000

But this leaves out the largest and shadiest group donating to the EITC Program – Limited Liability Corporations (LLCs).

These “special purpose entities” are set up to represent individual donors so they can more easily divert tax dollars to private and parochial schools.

LLCs represent hundreds of individuals who allow the LLC to donate on their behalf and then they get the tax credits passed back to them. It’s a way to encourage the wealthy to get the tax cut and support school privatization without all the hassle of doing the paperwork themselves.

And most (if not all) of these LLCs are set up by religious organizations to boost their own parochial schools.

For instance, Business Leadership Organized for Catholic Schools is perhaps the largest LLC receiving EITC funds.

Across the state, these organization made $15.6 million in donations and claimed $14 million in tax credits.

In Allegheny County, the largest are CASTA-SOS LLC and Pittsburgh Jewish Scholarship LLC.

CASTA was set up by the Catholic Diocese of Pittsburgh. Pittsburgh Jewish Scholarship benefits Jewish schools in the city.

Here’s how much they took from the state general fund last year:

–CASTA-SOS I LLC
Donation: $ 509,500
Tax Credit: $ 458,550

CASTA-SOS II LLC
Donation: $ 460,890
Tax Credit: $ 414,801

–Pittsburgh Jewish Scholarship I LLC
Donation: $ 675,250
Tax Credit: $ 607,725

Pittsburgh Jewish Scholarship II LLC
Donation: $ 750,000
Tax Credit: $ 675,000

EITC money went to almost 1,170 different organizations across the state. A fraction were YMCA’s, the Salvation Army and preschools. But the vast majority were private and religious schools.

Defenders of the project claim this money goes to fund “scholarships” for poor children to help defray the costs of enrollment at these schools.

However, a family making as much as $100,608 per year can qualify for an EITC scholarship for their child. A family with two children could make up to $116,216 and still qualify.

Consider this: one of the largest single recipients of this money in Allegheny County was the exclusive Shady Side Academy in Pittsburgh. The private secular school took in almost $1 million last year so that its wealthy students didn’t have to spend as much on enrollment.

Why are we subsidizing the rich?

Why are we robbing the poor to do so?

Why are we using public money to fund the teaching of climate denial, creationism, indoctrination in religious and political ideologies?

The short answer – our politicians are spineless and indebted to the people this benefits.

Just this summer, the Pennsylvania legislature AGAIN increased the limit for the program by an additional $25 million.

That’s the pattern. Every year, the Republican-controlled (and heavily gerrymandered) legislature can’t get their regressive policies passed Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf. They need some Democrats to support their spending priorities. So they entice right-leaning Democrats with increases to these tax incentive programs in order to reach compromises.

The result – every year we allow more tax dollars to fly away to private and religious schools while further undermining funding for public schools.

But it could have been worse. Earlier in the year, the legislature passed a measure to increase the EITC Program by $100 million. Thankfully it was vetoed by Gov. Wolf. Unfortunately, he let the $25 million increase get through.

This is a problem that is not going away.

We need to let our lawmakers know in no uncertain terms that we do NOT support these programs. And this isn’t just Republican lawmakers. We especially need to pressure Democrats and even run challengers to those who are not progressive enough in the primaries.

And we need to let businesses who partake of the smorgasbord of tax credits that doing so will lose them our business.

If we want to stop theft disguised as “tax credits,” we have to start hitting these businesses where it hurts – in the pocketbook.

Because they certainly don’t feel it in their hearts.

Six Problems with a Growth Mindset in Education

August 12, 2019 stevenmsinger Accountability, Budget, Child Safety, Civil Rights, Compassion, Corporate Education "Reform", Data, Data Driven Instruction, Education, Grit, growth mindset, Learning, Philosophy, Politics, Poverty, Prejudice, School Funding, Schools, Standardized Testing, Students, Teachers classroom, education, Grit, growth, growth mindset, high stakes testing, motivation, pedagogy, Politics, problems, Psychology, schools, standardized testing, teachers

Sometimes the truth is not enough.

Especially if you misunderstand its meaning.

That seems to be the main problem with a growth mindset.

It’s one of the trendiest concepts in education today, and – though it’s based on an authentic insight into how kids learn – it’s been shackled and monetized into an excuse to support a sterile status quo.

The basic idea goes like this: academic ability isn’t something students have or do not have. It’s a skill that gets better depending on how hard they work at it.

And up to that point, it’s correct and valuable.

But when we try to take that insight and weave it into current education policies, it becomes a shadow of itself.

As a middle school language arts teacher, I’m confronted with this most often in the context of standardized test scores.

I am constantly being told not to pay attention to the scores. Instead, I’m told to pay attention to growth – how much this year’s scores have improved from last year’s scores. And the best way to do this, I’m told, is by paradoxically examining the scores in the most minute detail and using them to drive all instruction in the classroom.

To me that seems to misunderstand the essential psychological truth behind a growth mindset.

Instead of focusing on the individuality of real human students, we’re zeroing in on the relics of a fixed mindset – test scores – and relegating the growth mindset to happy talk and platitudes.

B leads to A, and if we really want A, we just need to emphasize B.

To be clear, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with the idea that learning is a skill that can be strengthened with hard work. I do, however, take issue with how that observation has been used to support the status quo of test-and-punish and strategic disinvestment in public schools. I take issue with the idea that growth is the ONLY factor in student learning and how we are ignoring the multitudinous ways the human mind works and what that means for education.

In short, I think making the growth mindset a magic bullet has ended up shooting us in the foot.

Here are six problems I have with the growth mindset model:

1) It Has Not Been Proven to Make an Appreciable Difference in Student Academic Achievement.

How exactly do you use growth to drive achievement?

You make the concept of growth explicit by teaching it. You actively teach kids this idea that anyone can learn with hard work, and the theory goes that they’ll achieve more.

Does it actually work?

The results have been pretty inconclusive.

It’s been tested numerous times in various ways – some showing success, some showing nothing or even that it hurts learning.

The best success has come from Carol Dweck, a Stanford education professor who’s made a name for herself promoting the growth mindset model in books and TED talks.

Just this month, she co-authored the largest nationwide study concluding that a growth mindset can improve student results.

About 12,500 ninth grade students from 65 public and private schools were given an online training in the concept during the 2015-16 school year.

The study published in the journal Nature concluded that on average lower-achieving students who took the training earned statistically significant higher grades than those who did not.

However, results were “muted” when students were less encouraged to seek challenges – such as when they had fewer resources and support.

Despite this success, Dweck’s peers haven’t been able to reproduce her results.

A large-scale study of 36 schools in the United Kingdom published in July by the Education Endowment Foundation concluded that the impact on students directly receiving this kind of training did not have statistical significance. And when teachers were given the training, there were no gains at all.

In a 2017 study, researchers gave the training to university applicants in the Czech Republic and then compared their results on a scholastic aptitude test. They found that applicants who got the training did slightly worse than those who hadn’t received it at all.

In 2018, two meta-analyses conducted in the US found that claims for the growth mindset may have been overstated, and that there was “little to no effect of mindset interventions on academic achievement for typical students.”

A 2012 review looking at students attitudes toward education in the UK found “no clear evidence of association or sequence between pupils’ attitudes in general and educational outcomes, although there were several studies attempting to provide explanations for the link (if it exists)”.

In short, there is little evidence that any current approaches to turning the growth mindset into a series of practices that increase learning at scale has succeeded.

2) It Doesn’t Fit with Current Education Policies

We live in a fixed mindset world.

That’s how we define academic achievement – test scores, grades, projects, etc.

We tabulate data, compile numbers and information and pretend that draws an accurate picture of students.

It doesn’t.

But the concept that student achievement isn’t one of these things – is, in fact, something changeable with enough effort – runs counter to everything else in this world view.

If data points don’t tell us something essential about students but only their effort, connecting them with high stakes is incredibly unfair.

Moreover, it’s incoherent.

How can you convince a student that test scores, for example, don’t tell us something essential about her when we put so much emphasis on them?

It’s almost impossible for students in today’s schools to keep a belief in a growth mindset when test scores and our attitude toward them confirm their belief in a fixed mindset.

In a world of constant summative testing, analysis and ranking of students, it is nearly impossible to believe in a growth mindset. It’s merely a platitude between the fixed academic targets we demand students hit.

This doesn’t exactly take anything away from the concept, but it shows that it cannot be implemented within our current educational framework.

If we really believed in it, we’d throw away the testing and data-centricity and focus on the students, themselves.

3) It Ignores Student Needs and Resources

When we try to force the growth mindset onto our test-obsessed world, we end up with something very much like grit.

After all, if the only factor students need to succeed is effort, then those who don’t succeed must be responsible for their own failures because they didn’t try hard enough.

And while this is true in some instances, it is not true in all of them.

Effort may be a necessary component of academic success but it is not in itself sufficient. There are other factors that need to be present, too, such as the presence of proper resources and support.

And most – if not all – of these factors are outside of students’ control. They have no say whether they are well fed, live in safe homes, have their emotional needs met. Nor have they any say whether they go to a well-resourced school with a wide curriculum, extracurricular activities, school nurses, tutors, mentors, psychologists and a host of other services.

Putting everything on growth is extremely cruel to students – much like the phenomenon of grit.

Education policy should help raise up struggling students, not continue to support their marginalization through poverty, racism and/or socioeconomic disadvantages.

4) It Can Make Kids Feel Disrespected and Disparaged

No child wants to be remediated.

It makes them feel small, inadequate and broken. And if they’re already feeling that way, it reinforces that helplessness instead of helping.

Context is everything. Well-meaning educators may gather all the students with low test scores in one place to tell them the good news about how they can finally achieve if they put in enough effort. But students may recognize this for what it is and instinctively turn away.

The best way to teach someone is often not to lecture, not to even let on that you’re teaching at all.

David Yeager and Gregory Walton at Stanford claimed in 2011:

“…if adolescents perceive a teacher’s reinforcement of a psychological idea as conveying that they are seen as in need of help, teacher training or an extended workshop could undo the effects of the intervention, not increase its benefits.”

Teachers cannot set themselves up as saviors because that reinforces the idea that students are broken and thus need saved.

I don’t think this is an insurmountable goal, but many growth mindset interventions are planned and conceived by non-teachers. As such, they often walk right into this trap.

5) It is Not Suitable For All Kids

Everyone’s minds don’t work alike.

When you tell some kids that anyone can achieve with enough hard work, it makes them discouraged because they thought that their academic successes marked them as special.

According to a 2017 study published by the American Psychological Association, growth mindset training can backfire especially with high achieving students for exactly this reason.

Hard work just isn’t enough for some students. Their self-esteem relies on the idea that they are good at school because of fixed qualities about themselves.

When we take that belief away, we can damage their self esteem and thus their motivation to do well in school.

The point isn’t that a growth mindset is wrong, but that as an intervention it is not appropriate for all students. In fact, perhaps we shouldn’t be using it as an intervention at all.

6) It Should Not be a Student Intervention. It Should Be a Pedagogical Underpinning for Educators

We’ve got this growth mindset thing all wrong.

It’s not a tool to help students learn. It’s a tool for teachers to better understand their students and thus better help them learn. It’s a tool for administrators, parents and policymakers to better understand what grades and test scores mean.

If you want to teach a student any skill, let’s call it X, you shouldn’t begin by telling them that anyone can learn it with enough effort.

Just teach X. And when you succeed, that will become all the motivation students need to learn the next thing.

Education is an incremental process. Success breeds success just as failure breeds failure.

As every teacher knows, you start small, scaffold your lessons from point A to B to C and make whatever changes you need along the way.

If we really want to help students in this process, we can start by ridding ourselves of the fixed mindset that current education policy is rooted in.

Growth mindset is a psychological observation about how human minds work. It’s not pedagogy. It’s empiricism.

We can use it to help design policy, lessons and assessment. But it has limited value – if any – being taught directly to students.

The growth mindset model has value, but not in the way it has typically been used in our school system.

Instead of providing justification for equitable resources and tearing down the testocracy, it’s been used to gaslight educators into obeying the party line.

It is not a magic cure all, but one factor among many that provides insight into learning.

If we can disentangle it from the profit-driven mire of corporate education, perhaps it can help us achieve an authentic pedagogy that treats every student as an individual and not an economic incentive for billionaires to pocket more tax money.

Pennsylvania Law Meant to Forbid Arming Teachers May Have Done Just the Opposite

August 8, 2019 stevenmsinger Accountability, Budget, Child Safety, Civil Rights, Democrat, Education, Gun Control, Guns, Harissburg, Labor, Local Control, Mass Shooting, Parents, Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Police, Politics, Republican, school violence, Schools, Shooting, Students, Teachers, Tom Wolf, Unions, Violence Against Children child safety, education, Gun Control, gun sense, Gun Violence, Guns, Guns in Schools, Harrisburg, law enforcement, legislature, Mass Shooting, Pennsylvania, police, Politics, public schools, safe schools, school shootings, schools, security guards, teachers, Tom Wolf

Pennsylvania teachers, don’t forget to pack your Glock when returning to school this year.

A new law meant to close the door on arming teachers may have cracked it open.

Despite warnings from gun safety activists, the bill, SB 621, was approved by the legislature and signed into law by Gov. Tom Wolf this summer.

The legislation explicitly allows security guards – independent contractors who are not members of law enforcement – to carry guns in schools if they go through special training.

And that’s bad enough.

Why you’d want glorified rent-a-cops with guns strapped to their hips running around schools full of children is beyond me.

That’s not going to make anyone safer. It’s going to do just the opposite.

But that’s not even the worst of it.

Commonwealth law already allowed for armed police and school resource officers in school buildings.

The new bill just adds security guards to the accepted list – so long as they go through special training.

So some observers are asking what happens if teachers and administrators go through the same training? Wouldn’t they then qualify as “security personnel” and thus be eligible to be armed as part of their jobs?

Some say yes.

But others go even farther.

The bill only says who may be armed in schools. It doesn’t say anything about who may not be armed.

So if a district were to arm teachers – even without that special security guard training – it wouldn’t be specifically breaking the law. It would be operating in a huge loophole left open by the legislature and Gov. Wolf.

In fact, the original version of the bill would have covered just such an ambiguity. It included language saying that ONLY the people specifically mentioned in the law (police, resource officers and security guards) were allowed to be armed. However, Wolf could not get legislators to agree on it, so this language was stripped from the bill that was eventually passed.

This isn’t just theoretical.

Several school administrators have already taken advantage of it.

A handful of superintendents in rural parts of the state have already gotten permission from country law enforcement officials and are now carrying guns to school, according to a lawyer representing 50 Commonwealth districts.

Attorney Ronald Repak, of Altoona-based Beard Legal Group, gave a presentation at a school safety conference saying that his firm had secured permission from local district attorneys for administrators to carry firearms as part of their jobs. They cited ambiguity in the law that allowed for different interpretations.

Repak said that fewer than six superintendents had been approved, but he would not say which ones or which districts employed them.

Meanwhile, a district in the eastern part of the state between Hershey and Allentown has already passed a policy to arm teachers and staff.

Tamaqua Area School District in Schuylkill County, approved the policy last year but suspended it following litigation from the teachers association and a parent group.

Since Harrisburg passed this new measure, school board members and administration have been going back and forth about how it pertains to their policy and whether they can legally reinstate it even with pending litigation.

SB 621 was supposed to fix the ambiguity of previous statutes on the matter.

Title 18, Section 912 of the Pa. Crimes Code says that no one except recognized security personnel may bring a weapon onto school grounds, unless it is for a supervised school activity or “other lawful purpose.”

But again that leaves a huge loophole.

Secretary of Education Pedro Rivera wrote in 2016 that the Pennsylvania Department of Education considers “the scope of ‘lawful purpose’…unclear and unsettled.”

That’s what originally prompted Tamaqua school directors to pass their policy to arm teachers – the first of its kind in the state.

The Republican majority in the legislature has been trying to pass a law explicitly allowing teachers to be armed for years.

In June of 2017, the state Senate even passed just such a bill but it got nowhere in the House. Moreover, Gov. Wolf threatened to veto it.

And that has been the pattern in Harrisburg on most matters – a gerrymandered GOP-controlled legislature narrowly passing far right legislation checked by a popularly elected Democratic governor.

However, Republicans may have gotten one passed the goal with SB 621.

Wolf had hoped the bill would end the matter once and for all. When he signed it into law, he released a statement saying:

“The students, parents, and educators in this commonwealth can now be secure in the knowledge that teachers can dedicate themselves to teaching our children, and that the security of school facilities rests in the hands of trained, professional security personnel.”

Ceasefire Pennsylvania, a statewide gun safety organization, saw the danger and warned against it. The organization urged the legislature not to pass the bill and the governor not to sign it.

In a letter sent to lawmakers, the group wrote:

“…adding security personnel who do not have the same law enforcement background, training and experience of those personnel already authorized to serve as school security in the School Code is misguided.

[In addition] …although we understand that the legislation initially was intended only to address security personnel, we believe SB 621 could be manipulated by school districts intent on arming teachers as a ‘security’ measure… We hope you will Vote No on SB 621.”

The matter is bound to wind up in the courts where it will ultimately be decided.

Concerned citizens should probably go to their local school board and let directors know they don’t want school personnel – security guards or others – packing heat.

To be clear, the new bill doesn’t require security guards to be armed, but it does allow districts to arm them if they go through the necessary training.

The instruction outlined in the law required before guards can be armed costs less than $500 per person.

It includes lessons on developing relationships with diverse students, understanding special needs students, how to deal with violence, victimization, threat response and the prevention of violence in schools. It also includes Act 235 lethal weapons training on specifically how to carry and use lethal weapons.

Some legislators wanted security guards to have to go through the same training as police officers – a 900-hour municipal course. However, since this would include instruction school security officers would not need such as lessons on traffic laws and the vehicle code – not to mention its hefty cost of $9,000 per person – it was scrapped.

Don’t get me wrong. I have nothing against security guards. There are several good ones at my district.

However, putting guns in their hands doesn’t make me feel any safer.

A few years ago, a security guard at my school lost his job because he slammed one of my students into a lunch table.

The child in question was certainly difficult and could be defiant. But he was a middle school age child. He didn’t deserve to have his head slammed into a table – nor would I want someone with so little impulse control to have to police his trigger finger during tense confrontations with students.

Arming security guards is just plain dumb. Heck! So is arming teachers and administrators!

This isn’t the wild west. It’s a classroom.

In real-world shootings, police officers miss their targets about 4-in-5 shots, according to Dr. Peter Langman, a psychologist who’s studied school shootings. Do you really expect rent-a-cops and teachers to be more accurate?

Even armed police don’t do much to stop school shootings.

The four high-profile school shootings in 2018 — including the one in Parkland, Florida and Santa Fe, Texas — had armed guards. All failed to stop the gunmen.

But research consistently shows that increasing the number of guns in schools increases the likelihood that students will get hold of them.

What we need are sensible gun regulations to limit the number of people who have access to firearms. We need mandatory background checks and a ban on assault weapons – the murder instrument of choice for mass shooters. We need buy back programs to reduce the ridiculous numbers of guns available.

This new law does none of that. It was a Faustian bargain at best – and like always happens when you try to best the Devil, you end up losing.

Only this time, the losers are our teachers and school children.

America’s New School Lunch Policy: Punishing Hungry Students for Their Parents’ Poverty

July 24, 2019 stevenmsinger Accountability, Bernie Sanders, capitalism, Civil Rights, Compassion, Democrat, Donald Trump, Education, Harissburg, Learning, Parents, Pennsylvania, Politics, Poverty, Prejudice, Republican, School Funding, School Lunches, Schools, Social Justice, Students child hunger, children, education, free school lunches, hunger, lunch shaming, Pennsylvania, policy, Politics, Poverty, schools, Students

There are few things as bad as a hungry child.

Hunched over an aching stomach as the school day creeps toward its end, one in six children go hungry in America today.

It’s harder to learn when you’re malnourished and in pain – especially for children.

It should be harder for adults to let them go hungry.

Yet for many policymakers, nothing is as bad as feeding children and letting their parents avoid the bill.

About 75% of US school districts report students who end the year owing large sums for lunches, according to the School Nutrition Association. And of those districts, 40.2% said the number of students without adequate funds increased last school year.

In fact, that has become the central issue – not child hunger but lunch debt.

Policymakers at the federal, state and school district level are finding new ways to force impoverished parents to pay for their children’s meals even if doing so means penalizing the children.

Just yesterday the Trump administration announced a plan to tighten eligibility requirements for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) that could result in hundreds of thousands of the poorest children losing automatic eligibility for free school lunches.

In my home state of Pennsylvania, a district made headlines by threatening to send kids to foster care if their parents didn’t pay up.

The state legislature even voted in June to reinstate lunch shaming – the practice of denying lunch or providing low-cost meals to students with unpaid lunch bills.

That is how America treats its children.

Progressive Approaches and Challenges

Throughout the country, students whose families meet federal income guidelines can receive free or discounted lunches. However, many families don’t know how to apply to the program or that they can do so at any point in the school year. Moreover, districts can minimize debt if they help families enroll.

Unfortunately, too many school administrators are opting on coercion and threats instead of help.

In the poorest districts, a federal program called community eligibility has been providing relief.

When 40 percent of children in a district or school qualify for free or reduced meals, the federal government steps in to provide free breakfasts and lunches to all students in the district or school regardless of parental income.

It’s an enormously successful program that avoids the pitfalls of penalizing or shaming students for their economic circumstances.

But it’s exactly what’s come under fire by the Trump administration.

The Department of Agriculture’s new proposed limits on which students should qualify for free meals could change the status of 265,000 children. This would cause a chain reaction at many districts making them unqualified for community eligibility.

It would literally take away free meals from whole neighborhoods of youngsters.

The Agriculture Department will accept public comments on the proposed rule, called revision of categorical eligibility in the SNAP, for 60 days.

This measure is exactly the opposite of what’s being proposed by the most progressive Democratic challenger to Trump – Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders.

Instead of reducing the numbers of children who can get free meals, Sanders wants to increase the numbers to include everyone.

As part of his Thurgood Marshall Plan, the lawmaker seeking the Democratic nomination for President promises to enact a federal program to feed all students year-round.

This means free breakfast, lunch and even snacks. The program would be open to every child, regardless of parental wealth.

No one would be shamed because they are the only ones eligible for these free meals, and we wouldn’t be stuck wondering why needy kids have difficulty learning on an empty stomach.

Providing school meals, even at cost, is a losing proposition. The price of unpaid lunches and the cost to complete mountains of paperwork involved in collecting the money is put on the backs of local taxpayers.

Sanders is offering a truly humane approach to the problem that would eliminate administrative threats and even bolster district budgets.

This is how good government responds to the needs of its citizens – not by terrifying and degrading parents and children due to economic hardships.

And it flies in the face of nearly every other measure offered to deal with the problem.

Regressive Policies

One of the worst offenders is Wyoming Valley West School District in Pennsylvania.

Though one of the poorest in the state as measured by per-pupil spending, administrators sent letters to dozens of families demanding they pay their children’s school lunch debt or their kids could be taken away on the basis of neglect.

The former coal mining community fed poor children but felt bad about it. School administrators were so incensed that these kids parents didn’t pay, they resorted to fear and intimidation to get the money owed.

Children can’t control whether their parents can pay their bills. But that didn’t stop administrators from taking out their disdain for impoverished parents on these youngsters.

In the Valley district, parents had run up approximately $22,000 in breakfast and lunch debt. This is a fraction of the school district’s $80 million annual budget and could have been reduced had administrators concentrated on helping parents navigate the system.

Instead they simply demanded parents pay – or else.

After sending mailers, robocalls, personal calls and letters to families, administrators took more drastic measures.

About 40 families whose children owed $10 or more were sent a letter signed by Joseph Muth, director of federal programs for the district, which said:

“Your child has been sent to school every day without money and without a breakfast and/or lunch. This is a failure to provide your child with proper nutrition and you can be sent to Dependency Court for neglecting your child’s right to food. If you are taken to Dependency court, the result may be your child being removed from your home and placed in foster care.”

When the story hit the national media, experts from across the country weighed in that this was a bogus claim. Parents cannot have their children taken away because they can’t pay for school lunches.

And district officials have apologized and vowed not to make these kinds of threats in the future.

Perhaps the best news is that the district’s increasing poverty has qualified it to take part in community eligibility in the Fall.

All students would get free meals regardless of their parents income – unless, of course, the Trump administration’s new SNAP eligibility goes into place.

In that case, the district could continue to twist parents arms in a futile attempt to get blood from a stone.

State Dysfunction

But don’t look for help from Harrisburg.

In June the state legislature voted on annual revisions to its school code which brought back lunch shaming.

Now districts that aren’t poor enough for community eligibility will be able to deny lunches to students who can’t pay or provide them a lower quality meal until parents settle any lunch debts.

It’s a surprising about-face from a legislature who only two years ago voted to end this policy. Now lawmakers are going back to it.

Why?

Republicans are claiming this is a solution to districts racking up thousands of dollars in lunch debt. Democrats are claiming ignorance.

Many state representatives and state senators are saying they didn’t read the full bill before voting on it.

Lawmakers are actually saying they were surprised that lunch shaming was back. Yet it was many of these same lawmakers who voted for the omnibus bill that reinstates it.

The only difference between the old lunch shaming bill and the new one is the threshold for inclusion. The old measure allowed schools to provide “alternative meals” to children with $25 or more in unpaid lunch bills. The new measure inserted into the school code allows alternative meals for students who owe $50 or more. Students could be fed these lower quality meals until the balance is paid or until their parents agree to a repayment plan.

The Shame of a Nation

Stories about student lunch debt have been all over the news.

Yogurt company Chobani paid off a large chunk of a Rhode Island districts $77,000 lunch debt in May after administrators threatened to feed kids sunflower seed butter and jelly sandwiches until their debt was paid.

The same month a New Hampshire lunchroom employee was fired for letting a student take food without paying. The employee said the student owed $8 and she was confident the child would eventually pay her back.

A Minnesota high school even tried to stop students with lunch debt from attending graduation.

Will America continue to prioritize late-stage capitalism over ethical treatment of children?

Or will we rise up to the level of our ideals?

That has been the challenge for this country since its founding.

And the answer is far from assured.

eBackpack Bankruptcy May Put Student & Teacher Data in Peril

July 20, 2019 stevenmsinger Accountability, capitalism, Child Safety, Civil Rights, computers, Corporate Education "Reform", Data, Data Mining, edtech, Education, Homework, Local Control, Politics, privatization, School Funding, Schools, Special Education, STEM, student privacy, Students, teacher autonomy, Teachers, Technology bankruptcy, Chapter 7, Data, Data Mining, eBackpack, ed-tech, edtech, education, Politics, Profit, student data, student privacy, Students, teachers, technology

Teachers put their assignments into an on-line data base.

Students access them on their computers, iPads or other devices and then submit their work via the Internet.

What could go wrong?

Plenty. Especially when the company that provides this service goes bankrupt.

And that’s exactly what’s happened with Texas-based educational technology company eBackpack.

All those teacher assignments and student works are still there in computer servers somewhere. And now that eBackpack has filed Chapter 7 bankruptcy, all of it has become assets the company could decide to sell off to pay its debts.

The company explicitly reserves the right to do so according to its own Privacy Statement:

“The information we collect is used to improve the content of our Web pages and the quality of our service, and is not shared with or sold to other organizations for commercial purposes, except to provide products or services you’ve requested, when we have your permission, or under the following circumstances:

-We transfer information about you if eBackpack or part of it is acquired by or merged with another company. In this event, eBackpack will notify you before information about you is transferred and becomes subject to a different privacy policy.” [Emphasis mine]

Well that’s comforting. I wonder how a company that will no longer exist will have staff to notify former customers about what’s happening to the mountains of data we put in its hands.

Even under the best of circumstances, who will it notify? Teachers? Students? Parents? Or just the administrators or school boards who managed the over all accounts for individual districts?

eBackpack’s Terms of Service Agreement contains several red flags that someone should have noticed before students’ privacy was jeopardized:

“-eBackpack may assign its rights and obligations under these Terms to a third party without your consent.

“-You agree to use the Service at your own risk, without any liability whatsoever to eBackpack.

-1.1. Your use of the Service is at your sole risk. The Service is provided on an “as is,” “as available” and “with all faults” basis. The Service is owned and copyrighted by eBackpack and offered through a subscription, not sold, to you.

-10.1. eBackpack reserves the right at any time and from time to time to modify or discontinue, temporarily or permanently, the Service (or any part thereof) with or without notice.

-By submitting Content to eBackpack, you grant eBackpack a perpetual, worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free right to copy, display, modify, transmit, make derivative works of, and distribute your Content for the purpose of providing or developing the Service.

-14.2. You consent to eBackpack’s use and/or references to your name, directly or indirectly, in eBackpack’s marketing and training materials. You consent to eBackpack’s use of your communication with eBackpack for marketing and training materials. You may not use eBackpack’s name or trademark without eBackpack’s prior written consent.”

It’s not like schools weren’t warned.

Less than a year ago, the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) issued a strong statement cautioning consumers that edtech companies put student data at risk.

The bureau advised parents, teachers and administrators to take several steps to safeguard children’s privacy. The organization also pushed for the federal government to revise privacy laws to better protect kids from this industry.

In addition, commonsense.org – a nonprofit studying education issues – conducted a three-year review of 100 edtech companies. It concluded that 74% of these businesses hold the right to transfer any personal information they collect if the company is acquired, merged, or files for bankruptcy.

The authors wrote that there is “a widespread lack of transparency, as well as inconsistent privacy and security practices” in how student information is collected, used, and disclosed.

Why would any company want such student data?

It helps market products and, itself, can be a very marketable product.

For instance, imagine how much more effective the hiring process would be if businesses had access to applicants school attendance records. Imagine if businesses had an applicant’s entire academic record.

Employers could buy vast amounts of data and use algorithms to sort through it looking for red flags without fully comprehending what was being compiled. Imagine an applicant being turned down for a job because of low middle school attendance but not being able to explain that this was due to a legitimate illness.

There are reasons we protect people’s privacy. You shouldn’t have to explain your score on a 3rd grade spelling test the rest of your life or have the need for special education services become a liability on your credit record.

Yet all of these things are possible when student data is up for grabs as it may be in this instance.

This is personal to me.

My district uses eBackpack.

Yet it was for these exact reasons that I never jumped on the bandwagon with my own students in my classroom.

I experimented somewhat with the platform, myself, to see what it offered and to weigh whether the advantages canceled out the disadvantages.

If I had decided to move forward, I would have asked parent permission first, but in the end, I decided it wasn’t worth the risk – and boy am I glad!

Yet having interacted with the platform at all, I received the following email from the company yesterday:

“Dear User,

We regret to inform you that this 2018-2019 school year is the last year eBackpack will be operating. We will not be accepting any renewals going forward and we will not be providing any services past July 31, 2019. All services will be terminated on that date. Please download and save to your own devices any data prior to July 31, 2019. Once the services for eBackpack are turned off, your files and data will no longer be accessible, and we will not have staff available to respond to any customer inquiries. We appreciate your support over the past years and we will truly miss working with you all!

If you have any questions or concerns, please feel free to send an email to edison@ebackpack.com or billing@ebackpck.com.
Again, we appreciate your time with us and all of your support.

Thank you,  eBackpack Team”

I haven’t tried to contact the company, but I’m seeing on Reddit that others have been unable to do so.

One customer wrote:

“We use eBackpack and we are unable to pay our bill as no one answers their number or responds to emails. A quick Google search shows recent bankruptcy procedure. Anyone know anything? Am I the only one still using them?”

EBACKPACK, LLC did in fact file a chapter 7 bankruptcy case on Feb 8, according to docket information on-line.

Chapter 7 is sometimes called straight bankruptcy or liquidation bankruptcy. In general, the court appoints a trustee to oversee the case, take the company’s assets, sell them and distribute the money to the creditors who file claims. However, the trustee doesn’t take every last bit of company property. Owners are allowed to keep enough “exempt” property to get a “fresh start.”

This is big business. Venture capitalists have invested more than $1.8 billion in the edtech industry in 2015, alone.

At this time, it is still unclear exactly how many students and teachers have been put at risk.

I can’t find information anywhere about how many student or teacher accounts are in jeopardy or how many districts used the platform.

Hopefully this will be a wakeup call that the edtech industry needs to be more closely monitored and regulated.

We cannot continue to put convenience and profit ahead of student and teacher safety.

Student Test Scores May Play a Smaller Role in Future PA Teacher Evaluations

July 19, 2019July 19, 2019 stevenmsinger Accountability, Civil Rights, Corporate Education "Reform", Data, Democrat, Education, Labor, Learning, Pennsylvania, Philadelphia Schools, Pittsburgh Public Schools, Politics, Poverty, Republican, Schools, Standardized Testing, Students, teacher autonomy, Teachers, Tom Wolf, Unions, Value Added Measures, VAM education, Harrisburg, legislature, Pennsylvania, Pennsylvania Value Added Assessment System, Politics, public schools, schools, Teacher Evaluation, teacher shortage, teachers

Pennsylvania lawmakers may have finally realized that treating teachers like crap isn’t a good way to improve public schools.

Across the country it’s getting harder to fill teaching positions with qualified educators. And that’s because of the way we treat the people who volunteer to educate the next generation.

You can’t raise expectations while taking away resources, union protections, and fair ways to evaluate their work.

And to his credit, state Sen. Ryan Aument seems to have finally seen the light.

In 2012, the Republican from Lancaster County was one of the leading proponents of the Commonwealth’s new teacher evaluation system which drastically increased the amount student test scores are used to assess educators.

But now Aument and other Republicans are proposing new legislation to cut back on these same measures.

Under the current system, only 50 percent of state teachers annual evaluations come from observations of what they actually do in the classroom. The rest comes from student test scores and other factors that are out of their control.

The proposed legislation would increase teacher observations to 70 percent of their evaluations and try to account for student poverty – in addition to student test scores – in the remaining 30 percent.

If passed, the new evaluation system would begin in the 2021-22 school year.

Screen Shot 2019-07-19 at 12.17.23 AM — Source: PSEA

The proposed legislation – Senate Bill 751– passed in the Senate by a vote of 38-11.

However, the identical House Bill 1607 proposed by Rep. Jesse Topper (R-Bedford County) was not considered in time before the legislative session ended. It is expected to come up for a vote in the fall.

J.J. Abbott, a spokesperson for Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf, said that the governor generally supports the proposal. It has also been endorsed by the Pennsylvania State Education Association (PSEA) and the Pennsylvania Association of School Administrators (PASA).

Each year teachers are judged either Distinguished, Proficient, Needs Improvement or Failing. The first two are passing scores. The last two are not and require teachers to be more closely monitored, more frequently evaluated, complete a performance improvement plan and if improvements are not made, they can be fired.

If approved, the new bill would shorten the window when teachers are penalized for bad evaluations.

Under the current system, teachers who get two “Needs Improvement” ratings in 10 years can be sacked. The new bill shortens that period to four years. This incentivizes improvement and doesn’t hold a bad evaluation over a teacher’s head for a decade.

Moreover, the current law only allows principals to judge a very small percentage of their staff as Distinguished – the top of the scale. The proposed law puts no cap on this allowing them to give more honest and accurate evaluations.

Finally, there’s the issue of Student Learning Outcomes or SLOs. These are cumbersome and time consuming evaluations teachers are currently required to create and submit to their administrators for approval before conducting complicated performance measures of their classes that must be reviewed a second time by administrators as part of the annual evaluation.

I can’t find anywhere in either bill that spells out that these SLOs would be discontinued, but that does appear to be the case. There is no mention of them whatsoever in the new proposals where in the current law they make up 20% of the total evaluation.

The only thing I see that’s even close to the SLO is the requirement under Section 1138.7. Overall performance rating. Part II:

“A classroom teacher shall provide documented input to an evaluator on the development of teacher-specific data measures and annual results of data. The documented input shall be included with documentation of the classroom teacher’s overall annual rating.”

However, I don’t think this is the same thing.

Despite bipartisan support, there are important groups calling for caution on the proposal.

Teachers in the Philadelphia and Pittsburgh districts – the areas of the state with the highest percentage of impoverished students – say that they weren’t consulted on the bill and have not had time to fully consider it. Both groups belong to the American Federation of Teachers (AFT).

They worry that the poverty index included in the bill may not accurately account for economic disparities and whether the proposal really reduces the influence of standardized testing on teacher evaluations. After all, test scores are part of the teacher specific evaluation which under the proposal would go from 15-20 percent of educator’s evaluations. It may be the elimination of the SLOs which rely on student performance that ultimately reduce student outcomes from the evaluation while slightly increasing standardized test scores.

In any case, educators and advocates should scour the proposed legislation in the summer months to ensure that legislators know the full impact of what they’ll be asked to vote on as early as September.

The proposal may have been initiated in part to deal with the nationwide plague of teachers walking off the job due to unfair legislative practices and the demonization of educators. Since 1996, the number of undergraduate education majors has declined by 55 percent. And, according to the Pennsylvania Department of Education, the number of newly issued instructional teaching certificates in the Commonwealth has dropped by 71 percent since 2009. The state used to issue more than 14,000 new teachers licenses annually. In 2016-17, the state only gave out 4,412.

Perhaps offering educators more equitable evaluations may help stem the tide – otherwise we’ll soon find our classrooms filled with students that no one is willing to teach.

Another reason behind the new proposal may be a reaction to previous bad legislation in Harrisburg.

It seems to be an attempt to numb some of the sting from a 2017 bill that ended seniority-based teacher layoffs in the Commonwealth and instead tied those decisions to these teacher evaluations.

Now teachers who receive Unsatisfactory evaluations – even if that only means they need improvement – are the first to go. It allows administrators to stack the deck against teachers they don’t like, teachers at the top of the pay scale or who advocate for policies different than those favored by the bosses.

Frankly, it’s a lawsuit waiting to happen.

That bill was passed mostly by the Republican majority and though Wolf could have vetoed it, he chose to let it become law without his signature.

As bad as it is, it set a fire under legislators to at least create a better system for teacher evaluation which they seem to have actually taken seriously.

One concern lawmakers have with the current system is that it tends to penalize the best teachers and buoy the worst ones.

The best teachers get their evaluations dragged down if they work in low performing districts just as struggling teachers get theirs pushed up if they work in high performing ones.

It’s hoped that judging teachers more on what they actually do and trying to account for the poverty level of the students they teach will avoid this trap.

In truth, it’s unfair to judge teachers on student test scores at all. Mountains of research have concluded that such so-called Value-Added Measures (VAM) are inaccurate and discriminatory.

Relying on these measures even to a lessor degree opens the state and individual districts up to legal challenges as has happened in other states.

But at least this new suggestion improves over the present system in many ways.

We’ll have to see if Philadelphia and Pittsburgh teachers end up endorsing the plan and whether the House finally passes the measure and Wolf signs it.

Stay tuned.

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"To sting people and whip them into a fury, all in the service of truth."

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