Survey Finds Teachers Don't Trust State Tests (And This is News?)

Earlier this week, USA Today published the results of a recent survey of 10,000 teachers in which only 16% believed that linking student performance and teacher pay was "absolutely essential" or "very important" in retaining good teachers, down from 28% in 2010. Barely half of the teachers felt like the policy would make any difference at all, down from 65% in 2010. Only 26% believed the tests were an “accurate reflection of student achievement.”

The survey was conducted by the educational publisher Scholastic, and was funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

What’s Worse: Being Exploited by Capitalism or Not Being Exploited by Capitalism?

Sadly, the number of teachers who thought that higher pay was necessary to retain good teachers also declined from 86% in 2010 to 75% in the recent survey. This does not necessarily mean that they have given up on decent wages. Rather, it probably reflects their own insecurity about the economy and the fact that most have taken pay cuts over the past three years, either actual or de facto through wage freezes, but nonetheless continued to teach because the job prospects elsewhere were so dismal.

Hawaii Teachers Reject Race To The Top

Hawaiian teachers recently rejected a contract calling for performance-based evaluations and compensation, a requirement by the Race to the Top (RttT) grant their state won from the Obama administration, according to Valerie Strauss.

67% of 9,000 teachers, counselors and others in the Hawaii State Teachers Association (HSTA) rejected the contract, the first time in the union’s 44-year history that its members rejected a contract already approved by the state board of education. As a result, Hawaii was warned by the U.S. Department of Education that its $75 million RttT grant was on “High-risk status,” something Hawaiian teachers should be proud of.

HSTA is the first state teachers’ union to reject the poisoned Koolaid from the Obama after it had already been granted administration. This rebuff, coming from Obama’s home state, is a particularly harsh blow to his signature RttT and portends increasing rejections by other state teachers’ unions.

In order for states to win RttT grants, they must expand charter schools, evaluate teachers based on students’ standardized test scores and implement other “reforms” that increase private investors’ opportunities to profit from public education. Because states have been starved of revenue due to years of corporate and personal income taxes cuts, most have been jumping on the bandwagon and accepting this nominal federal assistance in exchange for giving away their public education systems to private educational management organizations, for-profit charter operators and test publishers.

Calif. Performance Pay Bill Dies in Committee

A bill that would have allowed school districts to lay off teachers based on performance instead of seniority failed in a state Senate education committee this week, according to the LA Times. The measure was proposed by state Sen. Bob Huff (R-Diamond Bar) and called for school districts to create new teacher evaluations based partially on student test scores. It also would have allowed districts to fire teachers based on student performance.

This is the second year in a row that the bill has failed. The CTA lobbied heavily against the bill, taking advantage of its State of Emergency rally in Sacramento to get teachers to personally visit legislators to express their opposition to the bill.


Sen. Huff blamed the failure of his bill on union inflexibility and stubbornness, as if they had no reason to oppose the law other than to protect bad teachers. In reality, student test scores are influenced mostly by students’ socioeconomic background and tell us very little about teacher quality. Even laws like Huff’s, which was a value-added measure that compared individual students’ progress over time (rather than comparing them to other students), are still biased by familial wealth because affluence not only influences where students start, but how well equipped they are to succeed in school and benefit from the effects of good teaching.

According to the Times, Huff made the tired and incorrect complaint that the bill’s defeat “. . . means incompetent teachers are still given preference to better teachers because of the quality-blind approach we currently use." This delusion assumes that younger and less experienced teachers are necessarily better than experienced teachers. Aside from the fact that experience makes teachers better, as it does with most professions, there is no logical reason to assume that young, inexperienced teachers who are laid off due to seniority rules are necessarily good simply because they are new and eager. Furthermore, large numbers of teachers leave the profession within their first three years of teaching because of the high demands and stress. So even if good young teachers were protected, the chances are good that they would quit within a few years anyway, making it a questionable investment.

It's the Class, Stupid

The following is a letter I submitted to Insight Magazine in response to an opinion by Justin Van Zandt attacking teachers unions and seniority rules.

On March 21, Justin Van Zandt made several incorrect claims about teachers unions. He placed responsibility for seniority entirely on unions when, in reality, seniority rules are negotiated with and agreed to by school districts. Therefore, either school districts also support seniority or they find it to be insignificant compared to other contractual issues.

Van Zandt says unions accept nothing but seniority as the sole criterion for making layoff decisions. This is also untrue. The first priority is curricular need. For example, if too few students sign up for biology at a school, they may need to let a biology teacher go. Because biology teachers generally do not have English or history credentials, the teacher cannot bump a less senior English or history teacher. She could bump a less senior biology teacher at another school or, if she had a second science credential, she might be able to bump a less senior chemistry or physics teachers. As a consequence of these complexities, teachers with seniority are often laid off in favor of less experienced teachers.

Van Zandt also falsely accuses unions of blocking performance from being used as a criterion in hiring. Unions have very little to do with hiring. Indeed, until someone is hired, the union does not even represent them. Hiring is done by administrators and is based on a host of factors such as interviews, references and past performance. A candidate with lousy references or poor past performance is unlikely to be hired and there is nothing the union can do about that.

He also incorrectly asserts that unions block teacher performance from being used as a criterion for promotions. Most districts use teacher performance as the primary, if not the only, factor in making promotion decisions. California has very clear and sensible standards for the teaching profession which teachers must master and demonstrate in order to earn tenure and in order to keep their jobs. These standards are developed with the collaboration of the teachers unions. The unions support their usage in evaluating teachers as they promote sound pedagogy and create an objective way to assess teachers.

Like Mr. Van Zandt, I am also a father concerned about getting the best quality of education for my son. However, the notion that unions protect bad teachers and block reform is a red herring. I am much more concerned with the obsessive and wasteful abuse of standardized testing that is forcing some schools to drop science and arts to make room for test prep and to impose homework on kindergartners. I am much more concerned with the $20 billion that has been cut from public education over the last three years and the likely additional cuts that will come next year when Gov. Brown’s tax extensions fail to be approved (or make it onto the ballot). I am much more concerned with the continued refusal of the state’s 80 billionaires to pay their share of the taxes, by far the biggest cause of the state’s continued budget problems.

Most of all, I am concerned with the declining standard of living for most Californians, as familial wealth, more than any other factor, influences academic success. Poor children are much more likely to have low birth weight, iron deficiency anemia and lead poisoning, each of which can impair cognitive development. Lower income parents read less to their children contributing to a vocabulary and pre-literacy achievement gap before kids have even started kindergarten (see “Inequality at the Starting Gate,” by Burkam and Lee, or “Meaningful Differences in the Everyday Experience of Young American Children,” by Hart and Risely). Financial insecurity increases stress and the overproduction of cortisol, which can impair memory and learning.

As a father, teacher and union member, I not only want the best for my child, I want better living standards for all working people. I want increased funding for all schools. I’d like to see decreased class sizes and increased course offerings. We should be hiring more librarians and nurses, not firing them. We should not only be paying teachers more so we can attract and retain the best, but we should be paying all working people more so that everyone has a decent life, good quality food and healthcare, and the time to enjoy it.

Performance Evaluations: Inherently Biased and Not Good for Students

Among the favorite attacks on teachers lately is the claim that union protections such as tenure and seniority protect bad teachers. As with most occupations, we want the best quality possible. Seniority-based layoffs seem to undermine this goal. However, performance is in fact the primary criterion used for determining who gets tenure AND who gets hired in the first place. Student test scores can only tell us what students know and possibly how much they have improved. Contrary to common belief, they cannot tell us why the students improved, although we do know there is a much stronger correlation between test scores and students’ socioeconomic background than to the quality of their teachers and schools. Therefore, using test scores to evaluate teachers is unlikely to lead to any significant improvements in educational outcomes, while it is very likely to cause the demotion or firing of many excellent teachers.

In contrast to student test scores, which are objective, but only a proxy, and therefore an unreliable measure of teacher performance, evaluations by administrators are entirely subjective, even when informed by state standards and rubrics, and are therefore subject to bias and manipulation. The Shanker Blog had an interesting post on this topic on Friday: In Performance Evaluations, Subjectivity Is Not Random.

They argue that employment protections like tenure are still necessary since discrimination is still a problem at work, despite federal laws, and because “performance-based” evaluations often assess things that have little or nothing to do with performance. They point out that biases are not simply the product of individual idiosyncrasies. Rather, systemic stereotypes and biases become internalized by entire social groups. For example, teachers are often stereotyped as being whiners and complainers, a generalization that allows administrators and policy makers to discount their concerns and criticisms as being unfounded or trivial when in fact they are in the best position, both through their professional training and their day to day interactions with students, to understand if a particular reform is likely to work. Such a stereotype could have profound implications during a standards-based evaluation by an administrator. For example, a teacher who is seen as a complainer for questioning the efficacy of a particular reform during a faculty meeting could be given a poor evaluation and be accused of being a bad collaborator, when in reality they were simply advocating for their students’ best interests. Likewise, internalized racial and gender biases are quite common and can influence subjective evaluations.

The Shanker blog also correctly points out that tenure and seniority systems have been very effective at minimizing differences in pay and benefits based on gender, race, and sexual orientation. Contrary to the common misperception that seniority and tenure place teachers’ interests above the needs of children, they argue that minimizing discrimination in the workplace actually helps students by creating an environment in which teachers can perform at their best, without the uncertainty and distraction created under prejudicial working conditions.

Many administrators support performance reviews because they provide a framework for professional development. However, according to Samuel Culbert (see Why Your Boss Is Wrong About You, NY Times), evaluations are an intimidating process in which the employee’s future is at stake. Consequently, many employees are afraid to speak openly and honestly, thus reducing the chances for any meaningful feedback or professional development. Culbert argues that performance reviews corrupt the system by encouraging employees to focus on pleasing the boss instead of personal growth. “Under such a system, in which one’s livelihood can be destroyed by a self-serving boss trying to meet a budget or please the higher-ups, what employee would ever speak his mind?”

Culbert has a solution he calls the Performance Preview in which both bosses and subordinates are held accountable for goals and results. Under this system, the boss supposedly learns how to manage by acknowledging and listening to the employee’s concerns and by being responsible for ensuring that all employees earn A’s. Unfortunately, as long as bosses have the monopoly on hiring and firing, there is still an intimidating and adversarial relationship, and if employees cannot fire or discipline their bosses, where is the pressure for the boss to listen to them?

Culbert provides Wisconsin as an example, suggesting that its public sector unions’ willingness to impose pay and benefits cuts on their members in exchange for maintaining collective bargaining rights is somehow indicative of workers’ desire to collaborate with bosses on other things, too, like performance reviews. Culbert is wrong on several levels. The union bosses made these concessions without consulting their members and there is considerable evidence that their members are not willing to give up pay and benefits OR collective bargaining. More to the point, even if there was a consensus that this was a good trade off, it says nothing about the potential for effective performance review collaboration. Simply agreeing to or desiring such a setup does not protect workers or ensure that the collaboration will be mutually respectful and beneficial.

NEA Sells Out in Wisconsin

The American Federation of Teachers (AFT) has already negotiated sellout contracts in D.C., Detroit, Pittsburgh, Colorado and Baltimore. Now the National Education Association (NEA) is following suit in Wisconsin. The NEA, under pressure from Gov. Scott Walker, has proposed accepting teacher evaluations tied to student test scores as well as some form of Value-Added assessment of teachers.

As soon as unions start making compromises like this, it becomes very difficult for them to stop. Other districts see an opening and start pushing for the same. The union bosses think that by making these deals they will seem reasonable, fair and concerned about the students, and hopefully quell the media and corporate attacks against them. (And perhaps leverage themselves for a cushy corporate job once they term out of office).The district bosses and Ed Deformers, however, see these sell-outs as a sign of union weakness and an opportunity to demand more concessions, while the pundits and CEOs, rather than congratulating the unions, continue to demonize them because their ultimate goal is to completely crush them.

 The details of the sellout plan are described below, from Dana Goldstein’s blog:

Wisconsin Teachers' Union Prepares for Battle with GOP Gov

A number of American Federation of Teachers affiliates across the country--D.C., Pittsburgh, Colorado, Baltimore--have embraced contracts or state laws that tie teacher tenure and performance ratings to student test scores. To date, the National Education Association, however--the larger union--has been reluctant to do so. 

That's why the news out of Wisconsin this morning is interesting. The state's NEA affiliate, under pressure from Republican Gov. Scott Walker, has released a proposal of what it terms "bold reforms." The union is willing to make two significant compromises:

• Support the creation of a state-wide teacher evaluation system that takes student test score data into account

• Support some use of value-added analysis, a controversial statistical equation used to estimate the effect of a teacher on his or students' academic "growth"

There are many other elements of the proposal that will disappoint reformers looking to make it easier to remove bad teachers from the classroom. Some reformers prefer to evaluate all teachers, even tenured ones, every single year; the Wisconsin union plan would evaluate tenured teachers only once every three years. A bad evaluation would trigger a second evaluation the next year; a second bad score would lead to the teacher either entering a three-year peer assistance program or losing their job. Those are two very different outcomes, and the union wants the crucial details to remain subject to locally-negotiated contracts. 

The proposal could be compared to Colorado's "Great Teachers and Leaders Bill," SB191, which passed with the support of that state's small AFT affiliate. After implementation, Colorado will evaluate all teachers annually and effectively strip tenured teachers of due process protections if they earn two bad evaluations in a row, leaving it up to principals and superintendents whether to remediate or fire the teacher in question. 

While we're on the subject of Wisconsin, I find Scott Walker sort of terrifyingly simple-minded but charismatic. His education platform is basically Race to the Top plus vouchers while somehow massively cutting education budgets. (Huh?) He is especially heinous, though, on another one of my pet issues, mass transit. Here's one of his campaign season ads.

California’s Education Hall of Shame

Huck/Konopacki Labor Cartoons

California is quickly becoming the new front line in corporate Ed Deform. Many of the usual suspects have quietly begun to focus their efforts on State-wide and local efforts in California, while several lesser known accomplices have joined their ranks. Here is just a partial list:

Eli Broad needs no introduction for anyone following education issues and he is certainly not a new player in Ed Deform. He spends millions to train school-board members and principals how to govern school districts like large corporations. His Superintendents Academy trains CEOs to lead urban school districts, while his Residency in Urban Education program places recent business graduates into educational management positions. He promotes performance pay schemes and heavily funds charter schools, like Aspire and Green Dot, the latter receiving $10.5 million from Broad to run several charter schools in L.A. He was also a major funder of Waiting for Superman. He recently pledged $25 million to make Teach For America a permanent low quality teacher-training program and $500,000 to prop up ICEF Public Schools, one of the nation’s largest charter school companies, which was facing insolvency.

Michelle Rhee also needs no introduction after her reign of terror as head of D.C. schools. However, she has recently relocated her StudentsFirst organization to Sacramento after marrying Kevin Johnson, mayor of Sacramento. Rhee plans to raise $1 billion and has already won a pledge from billionaire Eli Broad. Much of this money will be used to support school board members sympathetic to her agenda of charter schools, value-added teacher evaluations and the elimination of tenure, and to counter the influence of teachers unions.

Gloria Romero, anti-union and pro-privatization former state senator, is now head of Democrats for Education Reform (DFER) in California, an organization funded by hedge fund managers from NYC whose goal is to privatize and profit from public schools. Romero made the big-time of Ed Deform when she was invited to Obama’s Super Bowl Party this week, a major coup for the woman who lost a bid to become the California Superintendent, despite backing by charter school companies and nearly $800,000 in donations by EdVoice.  While Romero feigned surprise at the invitation to the president’s party, she did say she was “there to cheer on the reform team in education.” As a state senator, Romero had pushed hard to expand charter schools and to win Race To the Top funds from the Obama administration and was a strong supporter of the Parent Trigger law. Her presence at the party should be seen as a signal that she plans to work closely with Obama and Duncan to push through their Ed Deform agenda.

Philip Anschutz, right wing evangelical billionaire and media mogul, has donated at least $100,000 to the Coalition for School Reform in Los Angeles, a slush fund to elect privatization friendly school board members. Anschutz helped fund Waiting for Superman. (See Kenneth Libby’s Philip Anschutz and Walden Media: What Kind of Agenda?) The Anshutz Foundation donates to the Cato, Hoover, American Enterprise and Freedom Works Institutes as well as other right wing think tanks and foundations. They also fund Evangelical organizations, as well as school privatization favorites like KIPP. Anschutz was a big funder of proposition 8 in California, the anti-gay marriage law. He also funds the Discovery Institute, the main backer of Intelligent Design and young Earth lunacy.

Donald Fisher, billionaire founder and president of Gap (Old Navy and Banana Republic), was a big investor in Edison Schools (a for-profit Educational Management Organization (EMO). He donated heavily into the campaigns of pro-Edison school board members in San Francisco. He was also a major contributor to KIPP and was the chairman of the board of trustees for their foundation. He also contributed to Teach For America, GreatSchools.net, and EdVoice. Fisher died in 2009, however, his family and foundation continue to support his Ed Deform agenda.

Reed Hastings is the founder and CEO of Netflix. He also owns DreamBox Learning, an online education startup that makes math games for K-3 graders. He advocates for charter schools and has served as president of the California State Board of Education. He has been a KIPP board member and fought to lift the state cap on charter schools, citing a goal of getting 20% of California children enrolled in charter schools. He is also a founding member of NewSchools.org, Aspire Public Schools and EdVoice.net.

Kevin Johnson is a former basketball star, current mayor of Sacramento, hubby of Michelle Rhee and accused serial pedophile. (They should be an interesting family, considering Rhee’s history as a child abuser). Johnson is also president and CEO of the Kevin Johnson Corporation, which founded the St. HOPE Public Schools charter system. In 1995, he apologized to a 16-year old girl who has accused him of fondling her (though he never admitted guilt) and even proposed a settlement with the girl’s family. Similar accusations were made against Johnson by a student at one of his charter schools in 2008. The teacher to whom the student brought the complaint eventually resigned, claiming that she and the student had been intimidated and asked to change their story. The girl eventually recanted. St. HOPE also agreed to pay $423,836 in a settlement for misuse of AmeriCorp funds.

Democrats For Education Reform (DFER)

DFER plans to open two offices in California, one in Los Angeles, and one in the Bay Area. They are raising $1 million to support these two offices. DFER’s initial focus will be on large urban districts like LAUSD, SFUSD, Oakland and San Diego, and pushing pro-privatization candidates onto their school boards. A major goal of DFER is to provide a financial opposition to the teachers unions in local and state-wide elections. They will also fight for more parental choice, mayoral control, performance pay, and weakening of tenure and seniority rights. With these goals, Romero is certainly a good match. DFER has spent $17 million in the last three years in California, backing candidates like U.S. Rep. George Miller, of Martinez, a proponent of NCLB, and Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson. According to John Fensterwald, DFER has many venture capitalists and fund managers on their board of directors and are likely to shake down Eli Broad and Reed Hastings, as well as EdVoice, for additional funding.

Ed Voice

Ed Voice is an Ed Deform advocacy group funded by wealthy California philanthropists and is closely allied with Eli Broad. They spent $100,000 to get Marty Block elected in San Diego. They raised nearly $1 million in 2007, including $94,400 each from Eli Broad, Gap chairman Don Fisher, Carrie Walton Penner (Wal-Mart heiress) and R.B. Buzz Woolley Jr., La Jolla investor and president of the Voice of San Diego.