american

Teacher of year not a fan of corporate ed reform

The new teacher of the year is Jeff Charbonneau,from Zillah, Washington, a high school science teacher and co-president of the Zillah Education Association. Much like the last teacher of the year, isn't a big fan of corporate education reform

Charbonneau said that it is not even clear if the standardized tests themselves are “completely valid or show what students know.”

“At this point I don’t think you can tie those test scores [to teacher evaluations] as it currently being done,” he said. “Could they have relevance in the future if the tests are better? Yes.”

Charbonneau also said that he disagrees with school reformers and others who say that American public education is in a crisis.

“The concept that we are a nation of failing schools I believe is false,” he said. “We are a nation of succeeding schools. I think our schools are succeeding far more and at higher levels than given credit for…. I agree that there are areas that need improvement, but at the same time, there are many things we are doing right that are not celebrated.”

Amen.

Stop blaming teachers

The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines scapegoat as one that bears the blame for others, or one that is the object of irrational hostility. Those of us in the education profession would define scapegoat this way: teacher.

Scapegoating teachers has become so popular with policymakers and politicians, the media, and even members of the public that it has blurred the reality of what’s really happening in education. What’s more, it’s eroding a noble profession and wreaking havoc on student learning, says Kevin Kumashiro, author of Bad Teacher!: How Blaming Teachers Distorts the Bigger Picture.

In his book, Kumashiro, president of the National Association for Multicultural Education and professor of Asian American Studies and Education at the University of Illinois at Chicago, explains how scapegoating public-school teachers, teacher unions, and teacher education masks the real, systemic problems in education. He also demonstrates how trends like market-based reforms and fast-track teacher certification programs create obstacles to an equitable education for all children.

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Why the ‘market theory’ of education reform doesn’t work

Modern education reform is being driven by people who believe that competition, privatization and other elements of a market economy will improve public schools. In this post, Mark Tucker, president of the non-profit National Center on Education and the Economy and an internationally known expert on reform, explains why this approach is actually harming rather than helping schools.

Years ago, Milton Friedman and others opined that the best possible education reform would be one based on good old market theory. Public education, the analysis went, was a government monopoly, and, teachers and school administrators, freed from the discipline of the market, as in all government monopolies, had no incentive to control costs or deliver high quality. That left them free to feather their own nest. Obviously, the solution was to subject public education to the rigors of the market. Put the money the public collected for the schools into the hands of the parents. Let them choose the best schools for their children. Given a genuine choice among schools, parents would have a strong incentive to choose the ones that were able to produce the highest achievement at the lowest possible cost, driving achievement up and costs down.

At first, there was little appetite among the public for this approach. But, in time, many people, both Republicans and Democrats, seeing the cost of public education steadily rise with no corresponding improvement in student performance, began to blame the school bureaucracy and the teachers’ unions. They saw charter schools as a way to get away from both. All of these people, both those driven by ideology in the form of market theory and those driven by anger at the “educrats” and the teachers unions, found that they could agree on charter schools. A coalition of Silicon Valley entrepreneurs and Wall Street investors put their money behind the cause and the die was cast. The U.S. Department of Education then jumped in with both feet. Choice and markets, in the form of the charter movement, began to drive the American education reform agenda in a big way.

The theory is neat as pin and as American as apple pie. But what if it is not true? What if it does not predict what actually happens when it is put into practice?

For the theory to work, parents would have to make their decisions largely on the basis of information about student performance at the schools from which they can choose. But it turns out that they don’t do that. American parents seem to care most about their children’s safety. Wouldn’t you? Then they prefer a school that is close to home. At the secondary school level, many appear to care a lot more about which schools have the most successful competitive sports programs, rather than which of them produce the most successful scholars. How many trophies in the lobby of the entrances to our schools are for academic contests? If the theory was working the way it is supposed to, you would expect that the first schools to be in trouble would be the worst schools, the ones with the worst academic performance. But any school superintendent will tell you that the most difficult task a superintendent faces is shutting down a school — any school — even if its academic performance is in the basement. How could this be? Does it mean that parents don’t care at all about academic performance? I don’t think so.

But it does mean that, if they have met teachers at that school that seem to really care about their children, take a personal interest in them and seem to be decent people, they are likely to place more value on those things than on district league tables of academic performance based on standardized tests of basic skills, especially if they perceive that school to be safe and it is close to home.

The theory doesn’t work. It doesn’t work in theory (because most parents don’t place academic performance at the top of their list of things they are looking for in a school) and it doesn’t work in practice, either. How do we know that? Because, when we look at large-scale studies of the academic performance of charter schools versus regular public schools, taking into account the background of the students served, the results come out within a few points of each other, conferring a decisive advantage on neither. It is certainly true that some charter schools greatly outperform the average regular public school, but it is also true that some regular public schools greatly outperform the average charter school.

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The Educational Path of Our Nation

Education plays a fundamental role in American society. Here we take a look at school enrollment, costs and educational outcomes. How does school enrollment today compare with 1970, when the baby boom generation was in its prime years of school attendance (age 6 to 24) and made up 90 pecent of all student enrolled in schools? The American Community and other Census Bureau survey provide us with information to answer these other valuable questions. Education statistics are vital to communities in determining funding allocations and guiding program planning.

education infographic image [Source: U.S. Census Bureau]

Lessons from the teachers strike

When an article concludes with this line, we're going to recommend you read the entire piece.

As both policy and politics, the demonization of teachers unions is a dead end for improving American education. Working with, not against, teachers is the more sensible way to better our schools.

Romney - too many teachers

“He says we need more firemen, more policemen, more teachers. Did he not get the message in Wisconsin? The American people did. It’s time for us to cut back on government and help the American people.” ~ Mitt Romney, Friday, June 8th 2012.

Does Mitt Romney truly believe that firemen, police and teachers are not Americans too? Does Mitt Romney really believe we'd all be better off with a lot less teachers? Less firefighter? Less police?

Based upon he previous policy choices while Governor of Massachusetts that very well might be what he believes

UPDATE - NEA Responds

GOP presidential hopeful Mitt Romney’s disdainful comments on Friday about needing fewer teachers, police officers and firefighters showed how out of touch he is with middle class America. Appearing today on "Fox News Sunday" with Chris Wallace, Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels, a high-profile Romney campaign supporter and potential candidate for vice president, continued the attack on working families when he called for the elimination of unions for teachers, police officers and firefighters.

"Mitch Daniels is wrong. America isn’t better off when teachers can’t advocate for their students or first-responders can’t negotiate for better training and more safety equipment—which could mean the difference between life and death," said NEA President Van Roekel, who also appeared on the morning news program. "These divisive and politically motivated tactics Gov. Daniels is pushing to help the Romney campaign are disrespectful and demeaning to the people who teach our children, protect our communities and run into burning buildings to save lives."

Under Daniels’ leadership, Indiana’s poverty rate ballooned to 16.3 percent in 2010—a three-decade high that is more than a full percentage point above the national average. In 2008, before Obama took office and a full three years into Daniels’ first term as governor, five Indiana cities had poverty rates of at least 20 percent. Indeed, Daniels’ criticism of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act ignores the 64,000 Indiana jobs it had saved as of March 2010.

"Once again, we see how Daniels is putting politics above people, and these comments counter the needs of middle class America," added Van Roekel. "We call on Romney to condemn the disdainful comments made by Daniels, a Romney supporter, about our hardworking public servants. Instead of attacking teachers, police officers and firefighters, we should respect them."

Taking a page out of Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker’s playbook of "divide and conquer" politics, Daniels said he wants to get rid of unions for public employee like teachers, police officers and firefighters.

"As we saw in Wisconsin, it was never about the money. The reason they went after public sector unions and left some private sector alone is to try to drive a wedge between people," said Van Roekel. "We need to turn the page of these divisive tactics and instead look for ways to work together to get the economy moving again and lift up middle class families."