teacher shortage

Top 10 Reasons You Can’t Fairly Evaluate Teachers on Student Test Scores

stevenmsinger Accountability, Arne Duncan, Betsy DeVos, Bill Gates, Budget, Civil Rights, Common Core, Corporate Education "Reform", Education, Junk science, Learning, Obama, Politics, Poverty, Prejudice, privatization, Propaganda, School Funding, school segregation, Schools, Standardized Testing, Students, Teachers, Value Added Measures, VAM , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Screen Shot 2018-08-02 at 12.49.24 AM

 

I’m a public school teacher.

 

Am I any good at my job?

 

There are many ways to find out. You could look at how hard I work, how many hours I put in. You could look at the kinds of things I do in my classroom and examine if I’m adhering to best practices. You could look at how well I know my students and their families, how well I’m attempting to meet their needs.

 

Or you could just look at my students’ test scores and give me a passing or failing grade based on whether they pass or fail their assessments.

 

It’s called Value-Added Measures (VAM) and at one time it was the coming fad in education. However, after numerous studies and lawsuits, the shine is fading from this particularly narrow-minded corporate policy.

 

Most states that evaluate their teachers using VAM do so because under President Barack Obama they were offered Race to the Top grants and/or waivers.

 

Now that the government isn’t offering cash incentives, seven states have stopped using VAM and many more have reduced the weight given to these assessments. The new federal K-12 education law – the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) – does not require states to have educator evaluation systems at all. And if a state chooses to enact one, it does not have to use VAM.

 

That’s a good thing because the evidence is mounting against this controversial policy. An evaluation released in June of 2018 found that a $575 million push by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to make teachers (and thereby students) better through the use of VAM was a complete waste of money.

 

Meanwhile a teacher fired from the Washington, DC, district because of low VAM scores just won a 9-year legal battle with the district and could be owed hundreds of thousands of dollars in back pay as well as getting his job back.

 

But putting aside the waste of public tax dollars and the threat of litigation, is VAM a good way to evaluate teachers?

 

Is it fair to judge educators on their students’ test scores?

 

Here are the top 10 reasons why the answer is unequivocally negative:

 

 

1) VAM was Invented to Assess Cows.

I’m not kidding. The process was created by William L. Sanders, a statistician in the college of business at the University of Knoxville, Tennessee. He thought the same kinds of statistics used to model genetic and reproductive trends among cattle could be used to measure growth among teachers and hold them accountable. You’ve heard of the Tennessee Value-Added Assessment System (TVAAS) or TxVAAS in Texas or PVAAS in Pennsylvania or more generically named EVAAS in states like Ohio, North Carolina, and South Carolina. That’s his work. The problem is that educating children is much more complex than feeding and growing cows. Not only is it insulting to assume otherwise, it’s incredibly naïve.

 

2) You can’t assess teachers on tests that were made to assess students.

This violates fundamental principles of both statistics and assessment. If you make a test to assess A, you can’t use it to assess B. That’s why many researchers have labeled the process “junk science” – most notably the American Statistical Association in 2014. Put simply, the standardized tests on which VAM estimates are based have always been, and continue to be, developed to assess student achievement and not growth in student achievement nor growth in teacher effectiveness. The tests on which VAM estimates are based were never designed to estimate teachers’ effects. Doing otherwise is like assuming all healthy people go to the best doctors and all sick people go to the bad ones. If I fail a dental screening because I have cavities, that doesn’t mean my dentist is bad at his job. It means I need to brush more and lay off the sugary snacks.

 

3) There’s No Consistency in the Scores.

Valid assessments produce consistent results. This is why doctors often run the same medical test more than once. If the first try comes up positive for cancer, let’s say, they’re hoping the second time will come up negative. However, if multiple runs of the same test produce the same result, that diagnosis gains credence. Unfortunately, VAM scores are notoriously inconsistent. When you evaluate teachers with the same test (but different students) over multiple years, you often get divergent results. And not just by a little. Teachers who do well one year may do terribly the next. This makes VAM estimates extremely unreliable. Teachers who should be (more or less) consistently effective are being classified in sometimes highly inconsistent ways over time. A teacher classified as “adding value” has a 25 to 50% chance of being classified as “subtracting value” the next year, and vice versa. This can make the probability of a teacher being identified as effective no different than the flip of a coin.

 

4) Changing the test can change the VAM score.

If you know how to add, it doesn’t matter if you’re asked to solve 2 +2 or 3+ 3. Changing the test shouldn’t have a major impact on the result. If both tests are evaluating the same learning and at the same level of difficulty, changing the test shouldn’t change the result. But when you change the tests used in VAM assessments, scores and rankings can change substantially. Using a different model or a different test often produces a different VAM score. This may indicate a problem with value added measures or with the standardized tests used in conjunction with it. Either way, it makes VAM scores invalid.

 

5) VAM measures correlation, not causation.

Sometimes A causes B. Sometimes A and B simply occur at the same time. For example, most people in wheelchairs have been in an accident. That doesn’t mean being in a wheelchair causes accidents. The same goes for education. Students who fail a test didn’t learn the material. But that doesn’t mean their teacher didn’t try to teach them. VAM does not measure teacher effectiveness. At best it measures student learning. Effects – positive or negative – attributed to a teacher may actually be caused by other factors that are not captured in the model. For instance, the student may have a learning disability, the student may have been chronically absent or the test, itself, may be an invalid measure of the learning that has taken place.

 

6) Vam Scores are Based on Flawed Standardized Tests.

When you base teacher evaluations on student tests, at very least the student tests have to be valid. Otherwise, you’ll have unfairly assessed BOTH students AND teachers. Unfortunately standardized tests are narrow, limited indicators of student learning. They leave out a wide range of important knowledge and skills leaving only the easiest-to-measure parts of math and English curriculum. Test scores are not universal, abstract measures of student learning. They greatly depend on a student’s class, race, disability status and knowledge of English. Researchers have been decrying this for decades – standardized tests often measure the life circumstances of the students not how well those students learn – and therefore by extension they cannot assess how well teachers teach.

 

7) VAM Ignores Too Many Factors.

When a student learns or fails to learn something, there is so much more going on than just a duality between student and teacher. Teachers cannot simply touch students’ heads and magically make learning take place. It is a complex process involving multiple factors some of which are poorly understood by human psychology and neuroscience. There are inordinate amounts of inaccurate or missing data that cannot be easily replaced or disregarded – variables that cannot be statistically controlled for such as: differential summer learning gains and losses, prior teachers’ residual effects, the impact of school policies such as grouping and tracking students, the impact of race and class segregation, etc. When so many variables cannot be accounted for, any measure returned by VAMs remains essentially incomplete.

 

8) VAM Has Never been Proven to Increase Student Learning or Produce Better Teachers.

That’s the whole purpose behind using VAM. It’s supposed to do these two things but there is zero research to suggest it can do them. You’d think we wouldn’t waste billions of dollars and generations of students on a policy that has never been proven effective. But there you have it. This is a faith-based initiative. It is the pet project of philanthrocapitalists, tech gurus and politicians. There is no research yet which suggests that VAM has ever improved teachers’ instruction or student learning and achievement. This means VAM estimates are typically of no informative, formative, or instructional value.

 

9) VAM Often Makes Things Worse.

Using these measures has many unintended consequences that adversely affect the learning environment. When you use VAMs for teacher evaluations, you often end up changing the way the tests are viewed and ultimately the school culture, itself. This is actually one of the intents of using VAMs. However, the changes are rarely positive. For example, this often leads to a greater emphasis on test preparation and specific tested content to the exclusion of content that may lead to better long-term learning gains or increasing student motivation. VAM incentivizes teachers to wish for the most advanced students in their classes and to push the struggling students onto someone else so as to maximize their own personal VAM score. Instead of a collaborative environment where everyone works together to help all students learn, VAM fosters a competitive environment where innovation is horded and not shared with the rest of the staff. It increases turnover and job dissatisfaction. Principals stack classes to make sure certain teachers are more likely to get better evaluations or vice versa. Finally, being unfairly evaluated disincentives new teachers to stay in the profession and it discourages the best and the brightest from ever entering the field in the first place. You’ve heard about that “teacher shortage” everyone’s talking about. VAM is a big part of it.

 

10) An emphasis on VAM overshadows real reforms that actually would help students learn.

Research shows the best way to improve education is system wide reforms – not targeting individual teachers. We need to equitably fund our schools. We can no longer segregate children by class and race and give the majority of the money to the rich white kids while withholding it from the poor brown ones. Students need help dealing with the effects of generational poverty – food security, psychological counseling, academic tutoring, safety initiatives, wide curriculum and anti-poverty programs. A narrow focus on teacher effectiveness dwarfs all these other factors and hides them under the rug. Researchers calculate teacher influence on student test scores at about 14%. Out-of-school factors are the most important. That doesn’t mean teachers are unimportant – they are the most important single factor inside the school building. But we need to realize that outside the school has a greater impact. We must learn to see the whole child and all her relationships –not just the student-teacher dynamic. Until we do so, we will continue to do these children a disservice with corporate privatization scams like VAM which demoralize and destroy the people who dedicate their lives to helping them learn – their teachers.

 

NOTE: Special thanks to the amazingly detailed research of Audrey Amrein-Beardsley whose Vamboozled Website is THE on-line resource for scholarship about VAM.

 

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!

WANT A SIGNED COPY?

Click here to order one directly from me to your door!

book-1

I Stand With Striking Teachers Because I Stand for Underprivileged Children

stevenmsinger Accountability, Budget, Charter Schools, Civil Rights, Corporate Education "Reform", edtech, Education, Labor, Pensions, Politics, Poverty, Prejudice, privatization, protest, Racism, School Funding, Schools, small class size, Social Justice, Standardized Testing, Students, Teachers, Unions , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

teacherstrike

 

America’s teachers are taking to the streets by the thousands.

 

In West Virginia, Oklahoma, Kentucky and soon to be Arizona and Puerto Rico, educators are leaving the classroom and storming their state capitals.

 

Why?

 

Not because they’re greedy. Not because they don’t want to do their job. But because this country doesn’t care enough to provide them the resources they need to do it.

 

America doesn’t care about black and brown children.

 

America doesn’t care about poor white children.

 

America only cares about middle class and wealthy kids, preferably if their skin has a melanin deficit.

 

Don’t believe me?

 

Just look at how much these states have cut education funding. Look at how the federal government has slashed financial assistance. Look at how districts are forced to increasingly rely on local tax revenues to pay for the kind of education their children receive.

 

This means poor kids get poor resources. This means minority kids have to do without.

 

For the dark and the destitute, this means larger class sizes, out of date text books, and narrowed curriculum. It means fewer tutors, reading specialists and librarians. It means being left to your own devices to deal with the effects of generational poverty which put them behind their wealthier, lighter peers before they even enter kindergarten. It means greater emotional disturbance, greater malnutrition, higher absences, more learning disabilities, and less help to deal with any of it.

 

On the other hand, for the economically privileged white kids, it means just the opposite – fewer social problems, and the best of everything to deal with whatever issues they have.

 

It’s an unfair system, and teachers aren’t having it. We’ve been sounding the alarm for years, but it has fallen on deaf ears.

 

We don’t want to strike, but lawmakers are giving us no choice.

 

We’re saying, Enough! We’ve had it with the excuses.

 

Society hires us to do a job – let us do it.

 

Don’t refuse us the money to get it done and then blame us for the results.

 

That’s why there was a 9-day teachers strike in West Virginia which won educators a 5% raise in February.

 

That’s why 30 districts closed in Kentucky this week after a statewide sick out inspired by the legislature’s plan to cut pension benefits.

 

That’s why thousands of teachers in Oklahoma walked out this week demanding higher wages and better school funding.

 

And it’s why educators in Arizona, Puerto Rico and other states and territories may be next.

 

When you deny teachers the basics necessary to do their jobs, you’re refusing your responsibilities toward children.

 

When you deny educators a fair wage, you’re discouraging young people from entering the profession and encouraging those already there to seek work elsewhere.

 

And that is what we’re talking about here – a fair wage. We’re not talking about teachers getting rich off the taxpayers dole. You’re asking us to get an advanced education and do a hard job – that requires a middle class income so we can pay off our student loans and support our families.

 

The same goes for pensions. When teachers took their jobs, a fair pension was part of the contract. You promised that after 30-some years, educators could retire and you’d take care of them. You can’t renege on that. And if you plan to offer less for those coming in to the field, you’re going to get fewer high quality teachers willing to take the job.

 

When you attack unions and union benefits, you’re really attacking students. A teacher who can be fired at the whim of an administrator or school director is not as affective at her job. She has less autonomy and freedom to do what is right for her given students. And she has less reason to take a chance on the profession in the first place.

 

This doesn’t mean that after three years teachers should have a job for life. They don’t. It just means that if you’re going to fire a teacher for negligence, you should have to prove she’s negligent first.

 

This is why there’s a so-called teacher shortage in most states. As a society, we’ve become less-and-less willing to pay for teachers to do their jobs. We’ve become less-and-less willing to offer them the independence and respect necessary to get things done.

 

Why?

 

Because we’ve swallowed a pack of lies from the business community.

 

Many of them look at our public schools and see an opportunity for financial gain.

 

School funding may not be enough to give every one of the 50.7 million students in public school a first class education, but it’s more than enough to make a cabal of entrepreneurs and corporate officers rich.

 

That’s why they’re pushing charter schools and voucher schools and standardized tests and edtech software scams.

 

They want to get rid of democratic rule, get rid of teacher-based assessments and – ultimately – get rid of teachers. They want to replace us with minimum wage temps and leave the work of educating to computers that can provide test prep and standardized assessments.

 

But only for the poor and minorities. The affluent and middle class white kids will still get the best money can buy. It’s only those other kids they’re willing to feed to the wolves of edu-profit.

 

THAT is what educators are fighting.

 

THAT is why teachers across the nation are striking.

 

We’re demanding this nation does right by its public school students.

 

And that begins by supporting their teachers.

636581911709771782-AP-Teacher-Walkout-Taxes

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!

book-3

Testing Corporations Rake in Cash while Teachers Sell Plasma to Survive

stevenmsinger Accountability, Charter Schools, Common Core, Corporate Education "Reform", Education, Politics, Poverty, Prejudice, privatization, School Choice, School Funding, school vouchers, Schools, Standardized Testing, Students, Teachers , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Screen Shot 2018-03-26 at 3.34.02 PM

 

If you want to get rich in education, don’t become a teacher.

 

Open a charter school or take a job at a testing corporation.

 

Sure, charter schools are elaborate scams to make money off children while providing fewer services.

 

Sure, standardized tests are just corporate welfare that labels poor and minority kids failures and pretends that’s their fault.

 

And teachers? They’re just the people who do all the actual work of educating children. Yet there’s never enough money, never enough resources for the job they do.

 

 

According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the average salary of public school teachers in Pennsylvania is between $53,000 and $59,000 per year.

 

Compare that with the salaries of the people who make and distribute the state’s federally mandated standardized tests – employees at Data Recognition Corporation (DRC).

 

DRC publishes numerous assessments in various states. However, in the Keystone state, the corporation makes everything from the Pennsylvania System of School Assessments (PSSA) to the Keystone Exams in Algebra, Literature and Biology.

 

At its 14 locations across the country, the company has more than 750 full time employees and 5,000 seasonal ones used mainly to help grade the tests.

 

Screen Shot 2018-03-26 at 7.41.50 AM

 

According to glassdoor.com, a site that showcases job listings, here are some openings at DRC and their associated salaries:

 

Test Development Specialist – $68K-$86K

 

Quality Assurance Analyst – $77K-$83K

 

Technology Manager – $77K-$84K

 

Business Analyst – $81,856

 

Software Developer – $83,199

 

Psychometrician – $95,870

 

Senior Software Developer – $96,363

 

So teachers spend 180 days in overcrowded classrooms with fewer resources than they need – often forced to buy school supplies for their students out of pocket – to get their students ready to take the high stakes tests.

 

Meanwhile, the test makers sit in luxury office buildings taking home tens of thousands of dollars more just to make the tests that students take over the course of a few weeks.

 

And these corporate test employees DO work in luxury.

 

Here are some of the benefits they receive listed on DRC’s own Website:

 

 

“DRC offers a comprehensive benefits program that allows employees to make choices that best meet their current and future needs.

Key Benefits

  • Choice of medical plans
  • Choice of dental plans
  • Flexible spending accounts
  • HSA account
  • 401K savings plan
  • Profit sharing
  • Short- and long-term disability plans

Wellbeing Benefits

  • Paid vacation
  • Paid holidays
  • Personal time off
  • Workout facilities/locker rooms at select locations
  • Tuition reimbursement
  • Community service hours
  • Discount programs
  • Adoption assistance
  • Fitness classes
  • On-site massage
  • Walking paths

Convenience Benefits

  • Business casual attire

  • On-site subsidized cafeterias

  • Dry cleaning pick-up and delivery

  • Company store”

 

It’s funny. Some folks get all in a lather about the much less extravagant benefits given to teachers, but I’ve never heard anyone in a rage about these benefits being paid to corporate test makers.

 

And keep in mind, both teachers and test makers are being paid with public tax dollars. YOU are funding the test makers on-the-job massage break just as you’re funding the public school teachers trip to the doctor for anti-anxiety meds.

 

The Pennsylvania legislature has entered into three contracts with DRC through 6/30/21 for services related to standardized testing for a total of $741,158,039.60, according to State Sen. Andrew Dinniman (D-West Chester).

 

That is your money funding the test makers workout facilities and flexible spending accounts. You pay for their walking trails, fitness classes, dry cleaning services and subsidized cafeterias.

 

Meanwhile, public school teachers – who do the bulk of the work educating children – are left struggling to make ends meet.

 

According to estimates by the National Education Association (NEA), teaching salaries from Pittsburgh to Philadelphia have stagnated by 2.3% in the past 15 years.

 

But that’s way better than in most parts of the country.

 

In West Virginia, teachers across the state went on a 9-day strike to get a 5% pay raise.

 

Teachers in Arizona and Oklahoma are planning their own strike due to even worse neglect.

 

In Oklahoma, some educators have actually had to resort to selling plasma in order to survive.

 

KOCO News 5, in the Sooner State, reported on a fifth grade teacher at Newcastle Elementary school, Jay Thomas, who sells blood to supplement his income.

 

“I’ve got a permanent scar doing that. Just did it yesterday,” Thomas said.

 

“I’ve been doing it for a couple of years. I’ve given over 100 times. It’s twice a week.”

 

Though Thomas has been an Oklahoma teacher for 16 years, he makes less than $40,000 a year after taxes.

 

Selling plasma nets him about $65 a week.

 

And if you think Thomas is the anomaly, when this story was spread on Twitter, other teachers responded that they do the same, some even including pictures of themselves at the blood bank.

 

Screen Shot 2018-03-23 at 9.57.25 AM

 

This is why there is a teacher shortage in many states. This is why fewer college students are entering the field. And it is why many of those educators who have stayed in the classroom are considering strikes.

 

We take teachers for granted. We value the work they do but not the people who do that work.

 

 

Meanwhile, we give extravagant rewards to the corporate vultures who provide very little for children but divert funding that should be going to educate students – the standardized testing corporations and the privatized school operators.

 

If we really want to improve our education system in this country, the first step is to value those who work in it.

 

We need to turn the money hose off for unnecessary expenses like standardized testing and allowing charter and voucher operators to pocket tax money as profit.

 

And we need to spend more on the people in the trenches day-in-day-out making sure our children get the quality education they deserve.

 

We need to give teachers the resources and respect they need to succeed and end the scams of high stakes testing and school privatization.

 

3f7ccd898a1d7e2ad178656da70f58b7--teaching-quotes-teaching-ideas

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!

book-3

Rampant Ignorance of What a School Should Be

stevenmsinger #BlackLivesMatter, Accountability, Betsy DeVos, capitalism, Civil Rights, Common Core, Corporate Education "Reform", Donald Trump, Education, Gun Control, Guns, Labor, Politics, Prejudice, Propaganda, protest, Racism, Republican, Schools, Shooting, Students, Teachers, Unions , , , , , , , , , ,

635880071969781625796021747_Ignorance

 

From politicians confusing a living wage with a handout—

 

To a white supremacist teacher podcast.

 

From a tone deaf government flunky using tragedy to do anything to stop gun violence except regulate firearms—

 

To a Bronx principal barring a black history lesson during Black History Month.

 

All-in-all, it’s been a crazy news cycle.

 

If one thing was made clear during the last seven plus days, it’s this:

 

Many people have no idea what a school should be.

 

Take West Virginia, the site of a recently resolved statewide teacher strike.

 

After years of watching the cost of living rise while wages remained stagnant, educators took to the streets to demand enough money that they wouldn’t have to quit their teaching jobs and look for work elsewhere.

 

It’s a reasonable request.

 

Imagine if we didn’t pay doctors enough to afford to practice medicine. Imagine if we didn’t pay lawyers enough to afford to practice law.

 

Teachers just wanted enough money so they could focus on educating the next generation and still get perks like food and shelter.

 

However, West Virginia is a self-confessed conservative state where self-identifying conservatives unashamedly explain that a full-throated expression of their conservative values includes the idea that you shouldn’t have to pay people a living wage for a hard day’s work.

 

Or as state Senator Lynne Arvone (R-Raleigh) put it:

 

“The teachers have to understand that West Virginia is a red state, and the free handouts are over.”

 

What, Sen. Arvone? Are you high?

 

A salary is not a “free handout.”

 

That’s redundant – there is no such thing as a free handout. Handouts are by definition free. That’s something you would have known had you paid more attention to your third grade language arts teacher. But, whatever.

 

Moreover, a salary is neither free nor a handout.

 

It is a fixed regular payment – often weekly or biweekly – made by an employer to an employee in exchange for doing a job.

 

West Virginia teachers are doing their job. State representatives like Arvone aren’t doing theirs.

 

They aren’t making teaching an attractive career and thus encouraging the best and brightest to become teachers. When you’ve already got a shortage of people willing to become educators, you have to invest. That’s economics 101! Basic supply and demand.

 

Admittedly, after 8 days of a state-wide strike, the legislature caved and gave teachers a 5% raise, but only moments before introducing a bill to reduce the requirements to become a West Virginia teacher in the future.

 

Boom.

 

It’s like lawmakers are saying: Oh. So you want your raise? Here you go. But the next generation of teachers hired in the state will be more ignorant, less experienced, more unskilled and less professional. In short, they won’t expect to be paid a living wage because we’ve made teaching right up there with being a WalMart greeter!

 

So there!

 

If passed, the academic quality of education provided by West Virginia will drop.

 

But so will the cost. And that seems to be the only thing lawmakers like Arvone and her “conservative” colleagues seem to care about.

 

You know, I don’t think they know what conservative means, either.

 

It’s certainly not what a public school should be.

 

Want another example?

 

Take Dayanna Volitich, a 25-year-old Florida teacher who allegedly ran a white supremacist podcast until non-Aryans heard it, put two-and-two together and removed her from class.

 

On a recent episode she bragged about spreading racist and prejudiced ideas to her students.

 

According to an article in the Huffington Post describing her latest podcast:

 

Volitich also agreed with her guest’s assertion that more white supremacists need to infiltrate public schools and become teachers. “They don’t have to be vocal about their views, but get in there!” her guest said. “Be more covert and just start taking over those places.”

 

“Right,” Volitich said. “I’m absolutely one of them.”

 

Great. Just what we need. An army of undercover white supremacists being encouraged to enter the teaching profession – taking those newly minted minimum wage jobs vacated by more expensive but less biased educators.

 

As a more than 15-year veteran of the public school classroom, I have some advice for white supremacists thinking about becoming teachers: Don’t.

 

We don’t want you here.

 

No one has the time for your warmed over master race lullabies.

 

We don’t need another generation of privileged white people who think the world owes them something just because of the color of their skin.

 

We need an America made up of people of all colors and creeds who believe in a meritocracy. You get what you work for, what you earn.

 

And we need lawmakers to actually create a system that supports this ideal.

 

We need political parties and grassroots movements to push for such an America.

 

Nazi propaganda belongs in one place only – the history books. It is not part of our future.

 

And on a personal note, let me just say that becoming a teacher often makes you more progressive than you were when you started.

 

I know it did me.

 

Especially if you work at a high poverty, high minority district like I do.

 

Your job is to serve students’ needs. You push them to think, you don’t tell them what to think.

 

If that’s not what you’re up for, you’re not up for being an educator.

 

Indoctrination is not what school should be.

 

And that brings me to Betsy DeVos, our billionaire Education Secretary who bought her government position with campaign contributions and political connections.

 

She went to Parkland, Florida, this week to visit with students, teachers and administrators who survived a school shooting a couple weeks ago.

 

Or at least that’s what it probably said on the press release.

 

It was really just a publicity stunt to push for arming teachers instead of sensible gun control.

 

Parkland students have been rocking it holding demonstrations and speaking truth to power demanding that we keep them safe from future violence by banning assault rifles, mandatory background checks on all gun sales and other common sense measures favored by almost 70% of the nation.

 

DeVos took about five questions before walking out of her own press conference.

 

She didn’t meet with students – didn’t even try.

 

She was just there for a photo op.

 

Well, time’s up, Betsy.

 

The next generation isn’t putting up with your tone deaf water carrying. With your own family ties to mercenary soldiers for hire, it’s no surprise you’d be against gun control and in favor of firearms to chase away all the Grizzlies attacking our public schools.

 

It won’t stop the bloodshed but an increase in gun sales will boost your portfolio.

 

Arming teachers is one of the dumbest things on an agenda full of real whoppers from this absurd Presidential administration.

 

Teachers touting guns, shooting it out with armed terrorists – no. That’s not what a school should be, either.

 

So finally we get to the Bronx, where some dimwit who somehow became a principal told an English teacher not to teach a unit on the Harlem Renaissance.

 

You know, the Harlem Renaissance – Langston Hughes, W.E.B. Du Bois, Louis Armstrong, Zora Neale Hurston, Duke Ellington… Nobodies like them.

 

And if that’s not bad enough, she did it in February during Black History Month.

 

This number crunching pedant thought it was inappropriate because the teacher wasn’t in the social studies department.

 

This is what happens when you try to put education in a box with things like Common Core. Don’t teach background information, just look at every text divorced from everything else around it – the author’s personal history, what was happening in the world at the time or even how the reader responds to it.

 

Administrators like this need to take a seat and get out of teachers ways.

 

This kind of subtly racist micromanaging isn’t a part of what schools should be either.

 

Schools should be places where dedicated professionals are prized and valued. They’re given the autonomy to teach what they know is important and they make these decisions informed by the empiricism of what their students need.

 

Schools should be places without prejudice or racism. They should be cultural melting pots free from segregation and preconceived notions. They should be about academic freedom and the joy of learning.

 

I wish more people understood it.

 

Maybe then we could work to make our schools and our country more like the ideals of the overwhelming majority of the people living here.

 

Instead of continually letting the rich and privileged set the agenda.

When You Mistreat Teachers, Beware the Unintended Lessons for Students

stevenmsinger Accountability, Budget, capitalism, Charter Schools, Civil Rights, Corporate Education "Reform", Education, Local Control, Parents, Police, Politics, Poverty, privatization, protest, School Funding, school violence, school vouchers, Schools, small class size, Teachers, Violence Against Children , , , , , , , , , , ,

5a552b35785e6.image

 

We’ve all seen the shocking video from Vermillion Parish in Louisiana this week where a teacher is tackled to the ground and arrested because she asked a question to the school board.

 

 

 

It’s a gross abuse of power that brings up many issues:

 

  • Public servants responding to the public with violence.

 

  • Elected representatives refusing to hear from their constituents and – in fact – taking action to silence them.

 

  • Leaders who are supposed to oversee children’s educations unconcerned with the lesson local kids will be taking home from the actions of adults who are supposed to set a better example.

 

The case is simple.

 

The eight-member board had been deadlocked 4-4 on whether or not to give Superintendent Jerome Puyau a raise. Then one of the members died. Instead of his wife filling in until a new election could be held, board president Anthony Fontana , who was in favor of the raise, appointed a like-minded replacement and tried to force a vote.

 

So Deyshia Hargrave, a district teacher and parent, asked why the superintendent should get a raise while the teachers haven’t had one in several years.

 

It was a reasonable question, asked at the proper time, in a respectful tone, when comments were directed specifically at her.

 

However, Reggie Hilts, the Abbeville city marshal who also serves as a school resource officer, told her she was being disruptive and asked her to leave – which she did. When she got out in the hall, he forced her to the ground, put her in handcuffs and pushed her out of the building.

 

It was completely unjustified, a horrific violation of Hargrave’s rights and goes counter to the very purpose of public school.

 

Local control is the great strength of our education system.

 

It is the idea that district wide decisions about our children’s learning should be made by duly-elected members of the community in the full light of day. Except where doing so would violate an individual’s personal rights, all school documents are public. They are voted on in public. And they are subject to question and comment by the public.

 

If the taxpayers – the people who foot the bill for the majority of the district costs – don’t approve of what their representatives are doing, they can take steps to replace them.

 

These are the very foundation of public schooling and one of the major reasons the public school system is superior to charter or voucher schools, which typically do not have them. Even when privatized systems retain the vestiges of democratic rule, they are optional and can be stripped away at the whim of the businesses and/or corporations that run them.

 

Vermillion Parish School Board would do well to remember this.

screen-shot-2018-01-09-at-9-38-24-am

The actions taken by City Marshall Hilts were either done at the behest of the board or certainly without any public dissent among the members.

 

They stomped on Hargrave’s First Amendment rights and ignored their responsibility to the community they serve.

 

If my description of how a public school is supposed to work sounds like a lecture, that’s intentional. These representatives could do with a lesson in how democracy works.

 

Our actions have consequences and those consequences only become more consequential when we become public servants. The board, the superintendent and certainly Hilts may very well have opened themselves up to legal action.

 

But beyond putting themselves in danger from having to pay punitive damages to Hargrave – that I hope they pay out of the superintendent’s bloated salary – they have betrayed a dangerous attitude toward the very concept of self-rule.

 

Whether they meant to or not, they have given the children of Vermillion Parish a lesson in government and community values.

 

Make no mistake. The children are watching. They get the TV news and status updates on Facebook and Twitter. They have access to YouTube. Doubtless, they have seen this video countless times. They have probably played it over and over again.

 

They saw their teacher brutally manhandled by a supposed law enforcement officer. And they heard the deafening silence from the school board about it.

 

They know now that this kind of behavior is deemed acceptable in Vermillion Parish. Beware the kind of behavior adults can expect from children who are given such a disgraceful example!

 

Moreover, these children are well aware of the matter in dispute.

 

The board is fighting to give the superintendent a $38,000 raise. Yet they refuse to give another penny to teachers – all while class sizes have jumped from 21 to 29 students, according to Hargrave.

 

That is not what leaders do who care about the well-being of students. It is a result of backroom deals and the good ol’ boys network.

 

 

The lesson is that hard work doesn’t matter. The only thing you should worry about is making a deal no matter whom it hurts. Just look out for numero uno.

 

After all, the board could give the teachers something – some token of appreciation to show that they value their continued commitment to the children of the community. But they don’t. Yet they fight tooth and nail to do so for one individual who has in no way proven himself indispensable.

 

It is the teachers who come in every day and give their all to help students learn. Not a superintendent who demands they jump through an increasingly complex set of irrelevant hoops.

 

But there’s always money for the person at the top. Never anything for the people who do the real work.

 

Critics complain that teachers don’t deserve a raise because they already earn more money than the majority of the people who live in the community. (An argument which – by the way – would also apply to the superintendent.)

 

But even beyond basic logic, it’s a bogus line of reasoning!

 

Doctors attend patients in poor communities. They still earn high salaries – maybe not as high as they would serving the wealthy, but they have to be able to survive, to pay back the loans they took out to go through medical school, etc. So do lawyers, accountants and specialists of all kinds. That’s just capitalism. If you want someone to provide a good or service, you have to pay them a competitive wage. Otherwise, they’ll move on to greener pastures.

 

The kids see you pinching pennies. They know what that means – you don’t think they’re worth the investment.

 

The lessons of Vermillion Parish go far beyond Louisiana.

 

Anytime people mistreat teachers, they’re really mistreating the children those educators serve.

 

An attack on teachers is an attack on students.

 

When Hilt wrestled a woman half his size to the ground and placed her under arrest for the crime of exercising her rights, he put the entire community in jail.

 

When the board directed him to act – or at very least neglected to stop him – they made themselves culpable in the crime.

 

It is something we have been guilty of in nearly every state of the union. We have neglected our children, abused our teachers and injured the democratic principles on which our country was founded.

 

Class dismissed.

 

hqdefault

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!

book-3

The Completely Avoidable Teacher Shortage and What To Do About It

stevenmsinger Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Budget, capitalism, Charter Schools, Civil Rights, Competency Based Education, Corporate Education "Reform", Donald Trump, Education, Healthcare, Labor, Media, Politics, Poverty, Prejudice, Propaganda, protest, Racism, School Choice, school closings, School Funding, school vouchers, Schools, Seniority, small class size, Social Justice, Standardized Testing, Students, Teacher Tenure, Teachers, Unions , , , , , , , , , ,

teachers-wanted_slide-f490f6ba4043bb11d14c641c5fd6a253f638a74b-s900-c85

Hello?

Lo-lo-lo-lo…

Is anybody here?

Ere-ere-ere-ere…

Is anyone else left? Am I the only one still employed here?

Somedays it feels like it.

Somedays teaching in a public school is kind of like trying to run a resort hotel – ALL BY YOURSELF.

 
You’ve got to teach the classes and watch the lunch periods and cover the absences and monitor the halls and buy the pencils and tissues and fill out the lesson plans and conduct the staff meetings and…

Wouldn’t it be better if there were more people here?

I mean seriously. Why do we put the entire responsibility for everything – almost everything – involved in public education and put it all on the shoulders of school teachers?

And since we’re asking questions, why do we ALSO challenge their right to a fair wage, decent healthcare, benefits, reasonable hours, overtime, sick leave, training, collective bargaining… just about ANYTHING to encourage them to stay in the profession and to get the next generation interested in replacing them when they retire?

Why?

Well, that’s part of the design.

You see today’s public schools employ 250,000 fewer people than they did before the recession of 2008–09. Meanwhile enrollment has increased by 800,000 students.

So if we wanted today’s children to have the same quality of service kids received in this country only a decade ago, we’d need to hire almost 400,000 more teachers!

Instead, our children are packed into classes of 25, 30 even 40 students!

There’s no way a single teacher can give all those children her undivided attention at all times. There’s no way she can provide them with the kind of individualized instruction we know kids need in order to fulfill their potentials.

So why did we let this happen? Why do we continue to let this happen?

First, you have to understand that there are two very different kinds of public school experience. There is the kind provided by the rich schools where the local tax base has enough money to give kids everything they need including small class sizes and hiring enough teachers to get things done efficiently. And there’s the poor schools where the majority of our kids get educated by the most dedicated put upon teachers who give 110% everyday but somehow can’t manage to keep all those plates spinning in the air at the same time so the media swoops in, wags its finger and proclaims them a “failure.”

Bull.

It’s not teachers who are failing. It’s a system that stacks the deck against them and anxiously anticipates them being unable to meet unfair and impossible expectations.

Why do we let THAT happen?

Mainly because the people with money don’t care about poor and middle class children.

But also because they see the supposed failure of public schools as a business opportunity.

This is a chance to open a new market and scoop up buckets of juicy profit all for themselves and their donors.

It’s called privatized education. You know – charter schools and vouchers schools. Educational institutions not run by the public, not beholden to elected officials, but instead by bureaucrats who have the freedom to act in the shadows, cut student services and pocket the savings.

THAT’S why there’s a teacher shortage.

They want to deprofessionalize the job of teaching.

They don’t want it to be a lifelong career for highly trained, creative and caring individuals.

Why?

Those are people they have to pay a living wage. Those are people who know a thing or two and might complain about how the corporate scheme adversely affects the children in their care.

That’s why!

So these business people would rather teaching become a minimum wage stepping stone for young adults before they move on to something that pays them enough to actually support themselves and their families.

And to do that, the powers that be need to get rid of professional teachers.

People like me – folks with national board certification and a masters degree – they need to go.

THAT’S why class sizes are so large. That’s why so few young people are picking teaching as a major in college.

It’s exactly what the super-rich want.

And it doesn’t have to be some half mad Mr. Burns who makes the decisions. In my own district, the school board just decided to save money by cutting middle school math and language arts teachers – the core educators who teach the most important subjects on the standardized tests they pretend to value so much!

I’m under no illusions that my neighborhood school directors are in bed with the privatization industry. Some are clueless and some know the score. But the decision was prompted mostly by need. We’re losing too many kids to the local charter school despite its terrible academic track record, despite that an army of kids slowly trickle back to us each year after they get the boot from the privatizers, our district coffers are suffering because marketing is winning over common sense.

So number crunching administrators had a choice – straighten their backbones and fight, or suggest cutting flesh and bone to make the budget.

They chose the easier path.

As a result, middle school classes are noticeably larger, teachers have been moved to areas where they aren’t necessarily most prepared to teach and administrators actually have the gall to hold out their clipboards, show us the state test scores and cluck their tongues.

I actually heard an administrator this week claim that my subject, language arts, counts for double points on the state achievement rubric. I responded that this information should be presented to the school board as a reason to hire another language arts teacher, reduce class sizes and increase the chances of boosting test scores!

That went over like a lead balloon.

But it demonstrates why we’ve lost so much ground.

Everyone knows larger class sizes are bad – especially in core subjects, especially for younger students, especially for struggling students. Yet no one wants to do anything to cut class sizes.

If the state and federal government were really committed to increasing test scores, that’s the reform they would mandate when scores drop. Your kids aren’t doing as well in math and reading. Here’s some money to hire more teachers.

But NO.

Instead we’re warned that if we don’t somehow pull ourselves up by our bootstraps, they’ll close our school and give it to a private company to run – as if there were any evidence at all that this would help.

But, the school privatization cheerleader rebuts, why should we reward failing schools with more money?

The same reason you reward a starving stomach with more food. So the hungry person will survive!

Right now you’re doing the same thing with the testing corporations. They make the tests and grade the tests. So if students fail, the testing corporations get more money because then students have to take — MORE TESTS! And they are forced to take testing remediation classes that have to buy testing remediation materials produced by – wait for it – the same companies that make and grade the tests!

It’s a scam, ladies and gentlemen! And anyone who looks can see it.

But when you bring this up to administrators, they usually just nod and say that there’s nothing we can do about it. All we can do is keep trying to win the game – a game that’s rigged against us.

That’s exactly the attitude that’s gotten us where we are.

We can’t just keep doing it, keep appeasing the testing and privatization industry and their patsies in the media and government.

We must fight the system, itself, not go along with it.

We need to get on a bus and go to the state capital and Washington, DC, as a staff and protest. We need our school boards to pass resolutions against the unfair system. We need class action lawsuits. We need to tell everyone in the media what we know and repeat it again and again until it becomes a refrain.

And when we get these unfair evaluations of our under-resourced impoverished and multicultural districts, we need to cry foul. “Oh look! Pearson’s tests failed another group of mostly brown and black kids! I wonder what they have against children of color!”

Force them to change. Provide adequate, equitable and sustainable funding so we can hire the number of teachers necessary to actually get the job done. Make the profession attractive to the next generation by increasing teacher pay, autonomy, resources and respect. And stop evaluating educators with unproven, disproven and debunked evaluation schemes like value-added measures and standardized test scores. Judge them on what they do and not a trussed up series of expected outcomes designed by people who either have no idea what they’re talking about or actively work to stack the deck against students and teachers.

But most of all — No more going along.

No more taking the path most traveled.

Because we’ve seen where it leads.

It leads to our destruction.

The One Reform We Never Try: Increase Teacher Salary

stevenmsinger Accountability, Budget, Charter Schools, Common Core, Corporate Education "Reform", Data, Education, Labor, Politics, Poverty, privatization, School Choice, School Funding, school vouchers, Schools, Standardized Testing, Teachers, Unions, Value Added Measures, VAM , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

 

Screen Shot 2017-07-20 at 4.10.21 PM

 

There are many suggestions for improving America’s public schools:

 

More standardized tests.

 

New academic standards.

 

Increase charter schools and/or allow kids to attend private schools with public money.

 

But one reform you hardly ever hear about is this: pay teachers more.

 

Isn’t that funny?

 

We’re willing to try almost everything else but that.

 

Sure, some folks want to tie teachers’ salaries to test scores, but that’s not increasing pay. That’s just doubling down on standardized testing.

 

Isn’t it shocking that no one is willing to invest more money into the actual act of educating children?

 

Consider this: full-time employees making minimum wage earn between $15,000-$20,000 a year. (Some states have voluntarily raised the minimum wage above the federally mandated $7.25 to as much as $10 an hour.)

 

Compare that to a teacher’s starting salary.

 

According to the National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE), the low end for teachers entering the field is around $30,000. That’s a mere $10,000 above the most generous minimum wage.

 

There are places in this country where going into debt earning a four year degree in education, serving an (often unpaid) internship in the classroom and agreeing to teach the next generation gets you a few notches above fry chefs and WalMart greeters.

 

This isn’t to disparage burger cooks or grocery clerks. I, too, love a crispy French fried potato and a sincere greeting. But which profession is more important to our future as a nation? The quality of our service industries or the education of every single child in the country – all our future doctors, lawyers, politicians and… well… EVERYTHING!

 

Average starting salary for teachers nationwide is only $37,000, according to NACE.

 

Compare that to other professions.

 

Computer programmers start at $65,000. Engineers start at $61,000. Accountants (mathematics and statistics majors) start at $54,000. Even philosophers and priests (philosophy and religious studies majors) start at $45,000.

 

Are they more important than teachers? Do they provide more value for society?

 

I humbly suggest that they do not.

 

Who taught the programmers how to program? Who taught the engineers and accountants how to add and subtract? Who taught the philosophers how to think logically? Who taught the priests how to write their sermons?

 

TEACHERS. That’s who.

 

Yet if we judge purely by starting salary, we certainly don’t value their services much.

 

To be specific, they make 14 percent less than those from professions that require similar levels of education, according to the Economic Policy Institute.

 

Sadly, it only gets worse as time goes on.

 

Teacher salary starts low, and grows even more slowly.

 

original

 

According to a report by the Center for American Progress, the average base salary for a teacher with 10 years of experience and a bachelor’s degree is $45,000. That’s a mere $800 annual raise. No wonder more than 16 percent of teachers have a second or third job outside of the school system. They simply can’t survive on the salary.

 

They can’t buy a home or even rent an apartment in most metropolitan areas. They can’t afford to marry, raise children, or eke out a middle class existence.

 

What effect does this have on students?

 

Well, for one, it often leaves them with inexperienced or exhausted teachers.

 

Nationwide, 46 percent of educators quit before reaching the five year mark. And it’s worse in urban districts, where 20 percent quit every single year!

 

That translates to more students learning from educators who are, themselves, just learning how to teach. If we took pains to keep them in the profession, think of what a positive impact that would have on the quality of education the nation’s students  receive – Teachers learning from experience and improving their practice every year instead of a continual flux of novices just trying to figure out the basics and survive!

 

But it’s not all intangibles. It costs bookoo bucks to constantly find and train new teachers – roughly $7.34 billion a year, to be exact. Imagine if we could invest that money into salaries instead.

 

This is exactly what they do in many other countries.

 

We’re always comparing ourselves with nations in Europe and Asia where students average higher standardized test scores. Yet we rarely enact the policies that got them these results.

 

Many of these countries recruit the top graduates to become teachers. How? By offering sweeteners and incentives to become a life-long educator.

 

In Singapore and Finland, for example, they actually cover the cost of the college coursework needed to become a teacher. And when it comes to salary, they leave us in the dust. In South Korea, they pay educators an average of 250 percent more than we do!

 

For many people, education is a calling. You feel drawn toward the job because it holds meaning to you. But how many people ignore that calling because of simple economics? There are plenty of things you can do with your life; If you can’t earn a living doing one thing, you may opt for something else.

 

How many more excellent teachers would we have in this country if we prized and rewarded those practitioners we already have?

 

It doesn’t take a deep dive into the news to see how teachers are treated in American society far beyond the low pay.

 

Everything that goes wrong in our public schools is laid at their feet whether they have any control over it or not. Child poverty, inequitable and inadequate resources, regressive and nepotistic policy, backward education legislation – it’s all somehow the teacher’s fault.

 

Imagine if we saw teachers as part of the solution! What effect would that have on teacher turnover?

 

Look no further than our foreign counterparts. In South Korea, turnover is only 1 percent per year. In Finland, it’s 2 percent. In Singapore, it’s 3 percent.

 

It’s certainly worth a try.

 

As reforms go, this is one with more evidence behind it than 90 percent of the garbage that comes floating out of partisan think tanks.

 

Pay teachers more.

 

Starting salary should be at least $65,000. End pay after 30 years should be at least $150,000.

 

THAT would boost educational outcomes.

 

And, please, don’t give me any nonsense about summer break, teacher tenure, the power of unions or whatever else you heard on talk radio or the corporate news media. Teachers average 53 hours a week August through June – making up for any downtime in the summer, tenure doesn’t mean a job for life – it means due process, and unions aren’t evil – they just ensure workers more rights than the bosses would like.

 

Moreover, don’t tell me we can’t afford it. We spend more on the military than the next 8 nations combined.

 

Imagine if we put a priority on raising our own children instead of guns and missiles. Imagine if we spent more on life than death.

 

Imagine if we tried the one reform left in the box – increase teacher pay.