Policy Work and Advocacy

Occupy the US Department of Education

UCEA — Fri, 16 Mar 2012 15:01:26 +0000

Occupy the US Dept of Education is mobilizing in DC from Friday March 30 to Monday April 2, with events at the Department and Capitol Hill as well as workshops over the weekend.

United Opt Out National is one place you get get more information including a detailed schedule.

MN State Senate Strikes Down Teacher Tenure

UCEA — Thu, 01 Mar 2012 22:20:27 +0000

According to the StarTribune, a bill to end the tenure system in Minnesota was passed 36-26 by the Minnesota Senate on Monday, moving it a step closer to Gov. Mark Dayton's desk. A similar bill has already passed the House. Once differences in the two bills are resolved, it will go to Dayton for his signature or veto. Senate sponsor Pam Wolf, R-Spring Lake Park, herself a middle school teacher, said the change restores basic fairness. "In the event of a layoff, teachers would be laid off based on their effectiveness," Wolf said, noting that under the current system, a teacher could have decades of experience but still end up first in line for layoffs by transfering to another school and losing seniority.

The Senate bill differs from the House version passed earlier this month by protecting new, probationary teachers from being automatically targeted for layoffs. It also includes a provision that prohibits districts from basing layoffs on financial grounds -- an attempt to stop schools from targeting teachers with the most seniority and the highest salaries at layoff time.

Opponents say the legislation is an attack on unions and an attempt to strip teachers of what little job security they have. Some teachers wondered why, out of all the education priorities in the state, a worst-case scenario plan for budget crises is the one that made it all the way to a vote.

Education Minnesota President Tom Dooher called Monday's vote a wasted opportunity in a state where school districts already have the option of devising their own systems for dealing with layoffs -- and 40 percent have systems that are not based strictly on seniority."Instead of tackling the serious issues facing our schools, these bills will make it easier for school administrators to shed experienced teachers for their less-expensive colleagues," Dooher said in a statement. "These bills also confuse the layoff process with teacher effectiveness. Make no mistake, if there's a problem with a teacher, there's no reason for a principal to wait until a budget crisis to act."

The legislation would rely on a teacher evaluation system that is still being worked out and which would not go into effect until 2016-17 school year -- the same year the legislation would take effect.

NY Should Try a Pilot First

UCEA — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 11:20:32 +0000

A thoughtful blog from Aaron Pallas, this time on teacher evaluation systems, focusing on NY but of much wider interest. He discusses balancing efficiency with fairness, notes big holes in so-called 'value added,' asks whether an unfair system will decrease the numbers of people willing to go into teaching, wonders how NYC, for example, will train 1500 principals or other raters to reasonably provide classroom evaluation. He suggests pilot projects make more sense. And one commenter notes that efficiency can contradict effectiveness.

NYC Favors Eval Plan Making it Easier to Fire Teachers

UCEA — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 22:31:24 +0000

Mayor Bloomberg’s administration has declared its keenness to embrace Governor Andrew Cuomo’s teacher evaluation proposals, and replace the 2010 law with one that makes it easier to fire low-rated teachers and spells out how they can appeal a poor evaluation. The article is in EducationNews.org.

NGA Supports More State Control

UCEA — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 22:28:06 +0000

The National Governor's Association wants Congress to give states lots of running room when it comes to crafting their accountability plans, according to an interim proposal outlining NGA's priorities for reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (aka the No Child Left Behind Act.) The governors are asking lawmakers to reshape the federal role in K-12, focusing it on sharing information and research, and helping states collaborate on "innovations to better serve students." They like the idea of federal incentives, but not a lot of federal control. This excerpt is from a post in the Education Week Politics Blog.

Tomorrow, Thursday, February 9, House Briefing on Assessment by the Forum on Educational Accountability

UCEA — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 21:47:42 +0000

Assessment and accountability play central roles in the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, in both the current No Child Left Behind and in legislation for ESEA reauthorization. The Forum on Educational Accountability (FEA) calls for major changes in the law. The February 9th briefing will address how to use assessment to improve learning while providing accountability. Issues include:

growth measures,

performance assessments,

the use of classroom and school-based evidence of learning,

computer-based assessing,

universal design for assessment,

the use of student test data for evaluating teachers, and

FEA’s recommendations for ESEA reauthorization.

FEA bases its work on the Joint Organizational Statement on NCLB, now signed by 156 national education, civil rights, religious, disability, parent and civic groups. FEA has published reports and provided recommendations for overhauling ESEA regarding assessment, accountability, school improvement and opportunity to learn. Registration and all materials are on the FEA website at http://www.edaccountability.org.

Funding for K-12 Education May Improve

UCEA — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 21:43:34 +0000

After cutting K-12 education spending substantially during the recession, states generally expect to increase funding this year, according to a report released today by the non-partisan Center on Education Policy. Already, a number of governors, including Republicans Rick Scott of Florida and Gary Herbert of Utah, have made increasing funding to education a top priority. Scott called for an increase of $1 billion for schools, while Herbert called for $118 million, part of which would go to a modest raise for teachers.

New Report From Center for American Progress on Teacher Evaluations

UCEA — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 21:41:36 +0000

A new report from the Center for American Progress considers how teacher evaluations should be used in order to increase teacher effectiveness. The author suggests that a professional development program that will help current teachers improve should be in place alongside any strategies to remove ineffective teachers from the classroom.

Trio of bills push for new teacher evaluation system in New Mexico

UCEA — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 21:39:42 +0000

Teachers in New Mexico may be evaluated under a new system within a few years, if any of three legislative bills making their way through the Roundhouse this session are signed into law.

The House Education Committee will likely hear at least one of these bills -- two of which are companion bills -- enacting a new teacher and principal evaluation system by 2013/2014, sometime early next week.

Both House Bill 249, introduced by Rep. Dennis Roch, R-Tucumcari, and Senate Bill 293, introduced by Rep. Vernon Asbill, R-Carlsbad, make identical calls for educators to be evaluated annually via a series of multiple measures, including a reliance on Standard Based Assessment scores (35 percent), classroom observations (25 percent) and other state-approved options put together by individual school districts (25 percent).

House Bill 251, introduced by Rep. Rick Miera, D-Albuquerque, contrasts those two bills. It would create a council to develop and implement a teacher-evaluation system based on student-learning objectives (30 percent), observations (40 percent) and student surveys (20 percent), among other measures. This system would not rely on test scores. Read More from the Santa Fe New Mexican

"This bill [249] is a product of a lot of compromise and conversation," Roch said Thursday morning. "The original bill was much more closely aligned with the teacher task-force recommendations."

The Morning After in SC

Janie C Lindle — Sun, 22 Jan 2012 12:57:17 +0000

There’s a telling and education issues-related distribution on the voter turnout map of SC. To interpret the map, the key is that the lighter the color of the county, the higher the participation rate. Deep red is a less than 10% rate, and the pale oranges are between 20% and 30%. The state’s average voter turnout for the primary is 21%. More map detail is available at this link:

http://www.enr-scvotes.org/SC/36831/64075/en/vt.html

The swath of light voter participation (the darker colors on the map) corresponds to areas of higher poverty and more rural counties. The string of counties connecting the extremely low voter turnout on a diagonal from the northeast to the southwest is a chain of educationally low-performing counties lining Interstate 95. This chain is known as the Corridor of Shame. Despite an extensively long litigation of South Carolina school finance law and practice, the SC Supreme Court finding was that the sole deprivation in these counties’ schools was access to preschool education. Although the SC Legislature responded with pilot programs in these areas, the current State Superintendent has expressed his belief that early childhood education shouldn’t be funded by the state.

As noted in prior editions of this occasional blog, there’s a lot to discuss about education in South Carolina, but the GOP contest did not engage in this issue, even though it’s clearly tied to concerns about jobs and SC’s 9.9% unemployment rate. Some might view the congruence between SC Presidential Primary participation and the documented issues of educational performance on this map as mere coincidence, but the pattern also shows a strategic decision by all campaigns to concentrate their appearances to the upstate, Charleston, and Myrtle Beach. Charleston is the lone light-colored county in the southern tip of the state map. Myrtle Beach is located in the costal upper, light-colored county. The other higher-turnout county, next to it, is Georgetown, scene of one of Bain Capital’s takeover companies. Food for thought as we now turn to the campaign in Florida.