Corruption at CTC Placed Kids at Risk, Denied Teachers Credentials

A recent lawsuit against the California Commission on Teacher Credentialing (CTC), filed in November by former government lawyer and CTC whistleblower Kathleen Carroll, alleges that CTC lawyers and administrators engaged in numerous illegal acts that prevented qualified teachers from obtaining or maintaining their credentials. The charges against the attorneys include tampering with case outcomes, acting outside their legal jurisdictions, nepotism, cronyism, and conflict of interest.

According to Steve Zeltzer, writing for Daily Censored, the suit’s allegations imply that the CTC may have been used as a tool for preventing qualified teachers from receiving their credentials so they would be unable to get hired at traditional district schools and be forced to seek jobs at alternative schools with less stringent credentialing requirements, like charter schools, which are often nonunionized.  Consequently, Zeltzer argues, thousands of teachers may have been illegally or inappropriately denied their credentials, thus creating a small army of well-trained teachers willing to accept low-paying jobs with poor working conditions at private charter schools.

The CTC is responsible for licensing California teachers, administrators and other education personnel; investigating charges of misconduct against credentialed teachers and applicants; and approving teacher training programs. The agency has been involved in the development of curriculum, tests for teachers, and teacher evaluation policies, often by outsourcing to private testing and publishing companies like NCS Pearson (which is currently being sued by the state of New York (among others) for illegal kickbacks to officials involved in deciding whether or not to use their tests. Pearson is also a big player in the design of Common Core Standards (CCS) which will require a whole new series of high stakes exams from which Pearson hopes to profit.

Zeltzer reports that several CTC Commissioners have had personal or financial ties with private charter schools and would thus benefit from having a large pool of teachers desperate for jobs, but unable to acquire them at traditional public schools. Ting Sun, for example, was chair of the CTC at the same time she worked at the Natomas charter school—which she founded with her husband—and was being paid by the California Charter Association. She is also on the board of the corrupt Gulen charter school chain Magnolia Public Schools (for more on Gulen, see here, here and here). According to Zeltzer, Sun failed to report these conflicts of interests, as required by CTC commissioners, since they vote on contracts paid for with public funds.

Carroll had been an attorney at the CTC for four years until she was fired for whistleblowing in the middle of the audit of the commission that she helped initiate. One of her allegations was that the CTC had a long backlog of misconduct reports, many of which were specious. The CTC admitted there was a backlog of more than 12,000 reports. The actual number was never verified. Regardless, this is a serious safety concern for parents and students (as some potential abusers may have remained in the classroom) and a serious due process violation for accused teachers (many of whom may be innocent, especially since many of the reports were trumped up).

Carroll told Ting Sun that the Director of Professional Practices at the CTC, Mary Armstrong, had lied about the backlog. She told CTC Director Dale Janssen that the misconduct reports were not being processed quickly enough, including those involving sexual misconduct, thus placing students at risk. According to the suit, Janssen responded by hiring a private investigator to discredit Carroll, including the release of her private medical records.

There may also be evidence of tampering by the office of California Senate Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg, which initiated the audit at Carroll’s request. Steinberg’s office made changes in the audit request and failed to investigate some of Carroll’s allegations. Steinberg’s office, like many in the CTC, had its own conflicts of interest. His education advisor, Susanna Cooper, is married to Eric Douglas, who owns Leading Resources Inc., which represents the Bureau of State Audits, which was doing the CTC audit. Cooper is also on the board of West Ed, which receives funding from Pearson and numerous other public and private education profiteers, and has a vested interest in many of the CTC’s projects, including testing and credentialing, thus further drawing into question the objectivity of the audit.

State Auditor Elaine Howle said the commission was “one of the worst run” organizations she had ever investigated. Janssen and Armstrong resigned not long after the auditor’s report came back (June 2011), but the backlog of unprocessed complaints continues and questions remain about the agency’s integrity. Sun remained as chair until her term ended in November. Janssen and Armstrong were replaced by Gov. Brown appointees, Nancy Ramirez, from the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund, and Michael Cooney.

Will Bar Exam Turn Teachers Into Shysters?

The American Federation of Teachers (AFT) has launched a new initiative to raise entry standards for teacher-preparation programs, calling it a “bar exam” for teachers. My first thought on hearing the news was that they were trying to turn us into shysters, but then I remembered that we are already considered disreputable and unscrupulous by much of the public.

What's black and tan and looks good around a teacher's neck? A doberman!

So how will the bar exam change matters?

The AFT and its bigger sister, the National Education Association (NEA) have both been tripping over each other to prove to the public that they accept and intend to remedy every criticism made against teachers and their unions. This has included a tacit acceptance of No Child Left Behind (NCLB) and its testing mania, as well as evaluation reform and Value-Added models for assessing teachers.

So when the free market “reformists” insisted that there were too many incompetent teachers out there, it was only natural that the teachers’ two largest unions should jump to defend their members by conceding that it has just been too damned easy to become a teacher up until now, and new, more stringent entry requirements were necessary to protect our precious children.

Of course there are significant differences between lawyers and teachers which make this metaphor just plain silly.

For one, lawyers stand to make anywhere from two to several hundred times more than teachers, thus providing the incentive to spend thousands of dollars on tutoring and training courses to help them pass their tough bar exam. With teacher pay abysmally low and working conditions deteriorating daily, why should anyone want to invest the time and money into a professional teaching degree, as well as training for the tougher new test, when it could cost them years of debt and all the stress and anxiety that accompany the job?

Another consideration is that it costs society little if an aspiring law student fails the bar exam. Even if s/he retakes the exam and repeatedly fails it, it simply means one less lawyer. Last I heard, there was no shortage of lawyers, particularly if one has the money to hire one. But a “bar exam” for teachers implies lots of failure, which could easily translate into a significant teacher shortage. The number of students will not magically decline in unison, so class sizes will necessarily rise, while many students will find themselves being taught by non-credentialed, long-term substitutes. Thus, rather than improving the quality of teachers for greater numbers of students, a “bar exam” for teachers could wind up causing more students to have mediocre or lousy teachers and greater competition for help from the good teachers.

Of course, my criticisms are only valid if the AFT’s new exams truly are as difficult as actual state bar exams, which can have failure rates as high as 30-50% (see here and here). While it remains to be seen how challenging these exams will be, the AFT is also calling for teaching candidates to have 3.0 GPAs and higher scores on college entrance exams, in order to get into teaching programs in the first place. This could significantly reduce the number of people eligible for credential programs, or encourage them to get their undergraduate degrees from degree mills and less rigorous universities. This would further reduce the number of high quality entry level teachers.

AFT President Randi Weingarten, a woman who earns over $600,000 year NOT working the classroom, said, "It's time to do away with a common rite of passage into the teaching profession—whereby newly minted teachers are tossed the keys to their classrooms, expected to figure things out, and left to see if they and their students sink or swim.” (From Ed Week)

Her comments show a great deal of ignorance and disdain for teachers who act as mentors and master teachers to help novice teachers find their feet and grow professionally. Indeed, there is only so much a teaching candidate can gain from a university classroom—the rest must be learned in front of a K-12 classroom, through student teaching, peer observations and actual practice. It is absurd to think that any teaching program or high stakes test can produce a cadre of perfectly molded teacher droids.

Could more stringent requirements work in the favor of existing teachers? If the AFT’s proposed reforms are adopted, it would almost certainly create a teacher shortage. Theoretically, this could drive demands for higher wages, as districts compete more aggressively for fewer qualified applicants. In reality, however, it seems unlikely that districts, states or the federal government will pony up the money to pay teachers enough to make the new requirements worth their trouble. If budgets continue to be anemic, teachers’ salaries are most likely to remain stagnant, regardless of any future shortage.

The AFT’s proposal is yet another lousy solution to an imaginary problem. Sure, beginning teachers say they feel unprepared to start teaching. However, this is not because they didn’t have to pass a tough test. It is because keeping a bunch of kids focused, motivated and interested in the subject matter is no easy task. Getting them to behave and show respect for you and themselves is equally challenging. No exam can prepare a teacher adequately for this.

On the other hand, one might wonder why a union is focusing on making it tougher to become a member. Isn’t the job of unions to protect the interests of their members? Does the AFT believe that teachers who have jumped all these new hurdles and made it as teachers will somehow win the respect of Bill Gates and Michelle Rhee, not to mention comfortable salaries and better funding and support for the classroom needs?

No amount of obsequiousness and self-blame will get the free market education reformers to back off, give up their privatization schemes, or cease their union busting.

Ohio To Retest Teachers for Low Student Performance

The Beatings Will Continue Until Test Scores Improve

In yet another idiotic attempt to force teachers to make poor kids excel on their exams, Ohio will start requiring teachers of core subjects at the lowest scoring 10% of schools to retake their licensing exams, according to Cincinnati.com. The move seems to be purely punitive, as the licensing exams provide almost useful no data on how well a teacher will perform on the job.

Scores on standardized tests are most strongly influenced by students’ socioeconomic backgrounds, with teachers accounting for as little as 7.5-30% of student achievement. (See here, here and here) Indeed, virtually every one of the schools in questions is located in a low income community.

Yet even if we ignore the socioeconomic factors influencing student achievement, as most politicians, pundits and administrators have done, and focus only on what the teachers contribute, forcing them to retake their licensing tests is still a waste of time and money. If a teacher truly isn’t any good at their job, it is most likely due to weaknesses in classroom management and discipline, developing positive relationships with students, designing good curriculum, or the ability to modify teaching to meet unique student needs, rather than a deficiency in content knowledge.

The teachers’ union has estimated that the testing will cost the state $2.1 million a year, money that would be much more effectively spent on professional development and peer mentoring.

Gov. John Kasich argues that retesting teachers will hold them more accountable and give districts and charter schools the ability to get rid of the ineffective ones. Yet if only teachers at the bottom 10% of schools are tested, then ineffective teachers at the other 90% of schools will remain. More importantly, most low performing schools are also low income, which means that teachers who happen to be at these schools will be much more likely to lose their jobs or face punitive and burdensome testing than their colleagues fortunate enough to work at more affluent schools.