- Posted by David on July 26, 2010
Education reformers were feeling optimistic. With President Obama’s Race to the Top competition, which offers financial rewards to states willing to hold teachers accountable for their students’ performance, they’ve made real progress in weeding out poor teachers.
But now the reformers have spotted a dark cloud on the horizon. State budgets, particularly in badly managed big states like California, New York, and New Jersey, are out of control. Although Congress managed to avoid massive teacher layoffs last year with federal aid, the stimulus money is running out, and congressmen do not appear to be in the mood for more deficit spending. That means teacher layoffs are coming—perhaps more than 100,000 nationwide. In most states, union contracts or state law requires they be done by seniority, so the newest teachers are pink-slipped, no matter how good they are. “ ‘Last in, first out’ virtually guarantees that all our great, young teachers will be out of a job, and some of the least effective will stay in the classroom,” says Tim Knowles, director of the Urban Education Institute at the University of Chicago.
Such layoffs disproportionately hurt students attending the lowest-performing schools, because they tend to have the highest proportion of new teachers. In some Los Angeles schools last year, such cuts wiped out 50 to 70 percent of the faculty.
One surprising solution may come from Knowles’s home city of Chicago. The state of Illinois is one of the worst-run in the country, rivaling even California for its unwillingness to take the steps necessary to stanch the flow of red ink. As a result, Chicago is facing pressure to cut 900 teacher jobs. Under the usual union contract, the last hired were to be the first fired, competent or not.
But the Chicago School Board, handpicked by the Windy City’s tough-minded Mayor Richard M. Daley, has interpreted a new state law as giving it the power to fire the city’s 200 most incompetent teachers first.
While this might seem like common sense, it’s heresy to Karen Lewis, the newly elected head of the Chicago teachers’ union, who is considering going to court to fight the attack on seniority. “I admit, this is a great PR tool. Why not lay off the bad teachers first?” she conceded in an interview with NEWSWEEK. But on closer inspection, she says, there is no way of doing it fairly. In Chicago’s troubled urban school district, 99 percent of the 23,000 or so teachers are rated “excellent” or “superior,” while less than 0.1 percent are rated “unsatisfactory.” Employing some creative logic, Lewis asks: “Why are the worst evaluations believable, but the best are not?”
Reformers scoff at the union boss’s arguments. “While principals may not be consistently evaluating their teachers to the extent that they should, they certainly know who the worst teachers are in their buildings and have been using all sorts of tricks of the trade over the years to get these teachers to move to other schools,” says Kate Walsh of the National Council on Teacher Quality, a reform advocacy group.
Largely because of the carrots dangled by Race to the Top, a growing number of states, including Colorado, Tennessee, Delaware, and Oklahoma, have changed their laws to make teacher performance a factor in tenure and firing decisions, but very few can use it to make layoff decisions. The District of Columbia’s public-school system is one place that can. Arizona has gone the furthest, making it illegal to consider seniority in layoff, tenure, and even rehiring decisions. But defying the unions is hard going. In New York, Mayor Michael Bloomberg had to back away from layoffs based on performance and shoot for an across-the-board pay freeze.
Analysts say that states’ money troubles will continue to shrink budgets over the next year, and school districts that have already cut to the bone will have to find new ways to make less go further. Weeding out the weakest teachers and keeping the most effective “is the only policy that makes sense for districts to implement in tough times,” says Walsh. After all, when student needs bump up against adult needs, is there any question whose should come first?
http://www.newsweek.com/2010/07/17/chicago-s-lesson-in-layoffs.print.html
- Posted by David on July 14, 2010
http://www.educationnews.org/ed_reports/edu_assoc_articles/95465.html
Center on Reinventing Public Education on 13/07/2010 22:01:00
“Improvement in productivity in other [labor-intensive service] economic
sectors may hold important lessons for understanding how the education system
can become more efficient and effective,” state Professors Paul Hill and
Marguerite Roza, at the UW’s Center on Reinventing Public Education.
In their new white paper, Curing Baumol’s Disease: In Search of Productivity
Gains in K–12 Schooling, Hill and Roza site the successes of other
labor-intensive service organizations that have raised productivity in the face
of competition for workers and rising costs.[1]
Public schools in most areas of the United States are caught in the vise of
declining funding—as states and school districts must deal with depressed
revenues—and rising costs: contractual pay increases for teachers and staff,
and in some places pressures to reduce class sizes.
Hill and Roza discuss several areas in which labor-intensive businesses have
improved productivity: information technology, deregulation, redefinition of the
product, increased efficiency in the supply chain, investments by key
beneficiaries, production process innovations, carefully defined workforce
policies, and organizational change.
Observing that public education largely has been resistant to improving
productivity and that reform efforts have focused upon improving student
performance with little attention paid to costs, Hill and Roza offer a five-step
agenda for finding the cure for Baumol’s disease-afflicted public schools:
*Systematically consider strategies employed by other labor-intensive industries for their relevance to education.
*Zero in on learning systems outside schools to surface alternative production processes that may yield greater productivity.
*Understand the key cost drivers in the current schooling model, and examine the impact on each of proposed alternatives.
*Prototype test new models.
*Create a policy agenda for identifying and reproducing the most promising ways to increase productivity.
To those who might object that such a research and development project seems
frivolous in this time of tight budgets, Hill and Roza say, “If depressed
revenues are instead used as a rallying cry for innovation, the current fiscal
crisis could ultimately strengthen public education by opening the door to
improved processes that have the potential to do more with less.”
Curing Baumol's Disease: In Search of Productivity Gains in K-12 Schooling can
be downloaded at www.crpe.org.
Paul Hill is the John and Marguerite Corbally Professor at the University of
Washington Bothell and the director of the Center on Reinventing Public
Education. Hill is a distinguished visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution and
a member of the Koret Task Force on K–12 Education.
Marguerite Roza is currently on leave from her positions as senior scholar at
the Center on Reinventing Public Education and research associate professor at
the University of Washington’s College of Education.
The Center on Reinventing Public Education at the University of Washington
engages in independent research and policy analysis on a range of K-12 public
education reform issues, including choice & charters, finance & productivity,
teachers, urban district reform, leadership, and state & federal reform.
- Posted by David on July 6, 2010
If I had my preference, this is the way that schools should be organized, as much as is possible at least.
Some schools grouping students by skill, not grade level
7.6.10 - KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) — Forget about students spending one year in each grade, with the entire class learning the same skills at the same time. Districts from Alaska to Maine are taking a different route. Instead of simply moving kids from one grade to the next as they get older, schools are grouping students by ability. Once they master a subject, they move up a level. This practice has been around for decades, but was generally used on a smaller scale, in individual grades, subjects or schools.
Now, in the latest effort to transform the bedraggled Kansas City, Mo. schools, the district is about to become what reform experts say is the largest one to try the approach. Starting this fall officials will begin switching 17,000 students to the new system to turnaround trailing schools and increase abysmal tests scores.
"The current system of public education in this country is not working" said Superintendent John Covington. "It's an outdated, industrial, agrarian kind of model that lends itself to still allowing students to progress through school based on the amount of time they sit in a chair rather than whether or not they have truly mastered the competencies and skills."
Here's how the reform works:
Students — often of varying ages — work at their own pace, meeting with teachers to decide what part of the curriculum to tackle. Teachers still instruct students as a group if it's needed, but often students are working individually or in small groups on projects that are tailored to their skill level.
For instance, in a classroom learning about currency, one group could draw pictures of pennies and nickels. A student who has mastered that skill might use pretend money to practice making change.
Students who progress quickly can finish high school material early and move forward with college coursework. Alternatively, in some districts, high-schoolers who need extra time can stick around for another year.
Advocates say the approach cuts down on discipline problems because advanced students aren't bored and struggling students aren't frustrated.
But backers acknowledge implementation is tricky, and the change is so drastic it can take time to explain to parents, teachers and students. If the community isn't sold on the effort, it will bomb, said Richard DeLorenzo, co-founder of the Re-Inventing Schools Coalition, which coaches schools on implementing the reform.
Kansas City officials hope the new system will help the district that's been beset with failure. A $2 billion desegregation case failed to boost test scores or stem the exodus of students to the suburbs and private and charter schools. The district has lost half its students and will close about 40% of its schools by the fall to avoid bankruptcy.
Covington wants to start the system in five elementary schools in hopes of spreading it through the upper grades once the bugs are worked out.
"This system precludes us from labeling children failures," Covington said. "It's not that you've failed, it's just that at this point you haven't mastered the competencies yet and when you do, you will move to the next level."
As it plans for the change, Kansas City teachers and administrators have visited and sought advice from a Denver area school district that uses the reform.
Adams County School District 50 has about 10,000 students this past school year its elementary and middle students made the shift. The reform will be phased into the high schools starting in the fall.
Count 11-year-old Alex Rodriguez as a convert to the new approach. He used to get bored after plowing through his assignments. He had to bring books from home or the library if he wanted a challenge because the ones at his old school were one or two grade levels too easy.
http://www.usatoday.com/news/education/2010-07-05-grade-held-back_N.htm
- Posted by David on July 1, 2010
District says it will keep the best teachers, regardless of seniority
The Battle of Chicago has heated up, with the school board taking aim at one of the teachers unions' most treasured traditions - tenure and the seniority system.
Last week the school board announced that it would start laying off the worst-rated teachers first, regardless of seniority. Officials say the new policy could affect up to 200 teachers who have recently been rated "unsatisfactory" by building principals.
Chicago teachers are annually rated as superior, excellent, satisfactory or unsatisfactory. Those who rate the lowest are generally given an opportunity to improve, but that luxury may no longer be possible during tough economic times.
When it comes to layoffs, district officials say they have a responsibility to keep the best and the brightest in front of the chalkboard and move lesser teachers out the door.
The policy will be invoked if the district follows through with plans for massive layoffs and to increase maximum class sizes from 32 to 35 students, according to officials. The district may also invoke the policy during future periods of layoff due to shrinking enrollment, they said.
The move by the Chicago board is the latest in a series of high-profile attacks on tenure throughout the nation. Lawmakers in Arizona and Colorado paved the way earlier this year by passing tough tenure reform laws, while Florida barely missed out when the governor vetoed strong reform legislation that was passed by the legislature with bipartisan support.
Lawmakers in California and Louisiana have also been debating tenure reform.
Karen Lewis, president-elect of the Chicago Teachers Union, told the Chicago Sun-Times that the new policy is "belligerent" and "confrontational," and quite possibly illegal. She said union attorneys would be investigating the situation in short order.
Chicago School CEO Ron Huberman quoted the state school code, which lists "performance ratings or evaluations" as criteria to consider when layoffs occur.
State law also gives the Chicago school district the right to overturn an arbitrators' decision and fire a tenured teacher following the regular appeals process, according to sources.
But others argue that the current teachers collective bargaining agreement, which calls for traditional layoff rules, takes precedent.
Regardless of the legal outcome, it's clear where both parties' priorities lie: The school board wants the best possible teachers for students, while the veteran teachers are mostly concerned about themselves.
"We think it would be wrong to lay off teachers who are performing for students when we know there are teachers who are not," Huberman told the Sun-Times. "We're trying to do what’s right for kids."
We hope the Chicago school board sticks to its guns and makes sure student needs take precedent over the self-serving demands of organized labor.
Push necessarily comes to shove
It's difficult to understand how the Chicago Teachers Union could be surprised by the board's attack on tenure. The two sides have been at odds for months, because the union refuses to make the slightest concession to help the district overcome a huge budget deficit.
Earlier this year Huberman and Mayor Richard Daley asked the union for a series of contract concessions to avoid massive teacher layoffs. The union said no and called for higher taxes instead.
Then the school board voted to increase the maximum class size from 32 to 35 students, to make way for the layoff of a great number of teachers. The union responded by filing suit to block the new policy.
Now push has necessarily come to shove.
The Chicago school district is in a great deal of financial trouble, and the board has to do whatever is necessary to improve the financial picture and academic opportunities for students. It would be wise, and morally correct, for the union to be a cooperative partner in this effort. But its leaders have continued to play an obstructionist role, leaving the school board no choice but to get tough.
Perhaps tenure wouldn't have become a target if the union had displayed some interest in compromise months ago.
But it's probably all for the best. Tenure is a huge problem that’s waiting to be tackled, in Chicago and throughout the nation. While it’s a bit dated, a 2005 investigation by Illinois journalist Scott Reeder illustrated how the current system is not effective in moving bad teachers out of that state’s classrooms.
According to Reeder's investigation, "The Hidden Costs of Tenure," only 61 of the Illinois' 876 school districts attempted to fire a tenured teacher since the law was changed in the 80s. Of those 61 districts only 38 were successful in firing a tenured teacher.
At the time the article was written, state arbitrators only approved an average of seven teacher firings per year.
Why is termination so rare? Because the law mandates a lengthy appeals process which often costs schools hundreds of thousands of dollars. School officials are often loathe to spend that kind of money on an uncertain outcome, particularly when state arbitrators are notorious for siding with teachers.
Reeder's article pointed out that between 2000 and 2005, only one non-Chicago teacher was successfully fired in Illinois for poor performance. The case was in the appeals process for several years and the school district spent more than $400,000 to get rid of him.
It would be far better to get rid of the tenure system altogether, so school boards won't be afraid to remove bad teachers from our classrooms.
"There is one word for why school boards aren't doing something about problem teachers - unions," one reformer was quoted as saying in Reeder’s study. "For a school board to do anything about a problem teacher, it often will cost hundreds of thousands of dollars."
An educator quoted in Reeder's study put it simply and accurately when he said, "Tenure is bad public policy because it breeds mediocrity."