Value Added & Performance Pay Scams Weaken Teacher Pay and Autonomy

Stephen Krashen, from Schools Matter, has an excellent posting on the idiocy of Value Added teacher assessments and performance pay: Seniority and Teacher Layoffs: A Red Herring

Like so much of Ed Deform: It's all about money. Senior teachers are higher on the pay scale and cost districts more money than younger inexperienced teachers. Krashen argues that this is the only rational argument for dumping experience over youth since veteran teachers generally do a better job. They have more years of on the job practice. They have more experience from workshops, professional development, and collaboration with peers.

However, there is one more reason to dump older teachers: Control.

Experienced teachers are less likely to go along with every hare-brained ed deform plan concocted by their administrators. This is one reason why charter schools like KIPP are able to get their teachers to work weekends and summers and be on call well into the night.

Education for the People is Now on Facebook

Check out Education for the People on Facebook

SF Superintendent and Board Complicit in Embezzlement Scheme?

Artwork Borrowed from Fred Klonsky's Blo

S.F. school officials, including Superintendent Carlos Garcia, received warnings that senior administrators in charge of after school programs might be mishandling millions of dollars in district money. The warnings started as early as five years ago, calling into question whether the scandal could have been averted, as well as the possibility that the superintendent and school board were complicit.

Former Deputy Superintendent, Trish Bascom, had been in charge of the Student Support Services Department, and is the main suspect in the scandal. Her department was responsible for contracting with Community Based Organizations (CBOs) that provide after school support for students and had an annual budget of $20 million. She is accused of diverting money earmarked for CBOs to her cronies. For example, money that had been allocated to the YMCA was reallocated to a front group, Bay Area Community Resources, which made thousands of dollars in payments to S.F. Unified administrators. The San Francisco District Attorney has opened a criminal investigation.

Deputy Superintendent Richard Carranza said that the district acted immediately upon hearing of the allegations. However, executives of several CBOs that contract with the district say they had complained for years about never receiving federal and state money they were owed by the district and that they were suspicious of corruption in Bascom’s department. Bascom’s attorney, Stuart Hanlon, holds Superintendent Garcia and the school board responsible for giving Bascom too much autonomy and looking the other way because they liked Bascom’s ability to secure grants and fund her programs without dipping into the general fund.

Garcia and School Board have tried to deflect blame entirely on Bascom and her accomplices. However, Bascom should have been investigated five years ago, when rumors of her corruption first surfaced. In times of economic hardship, administrators should look first at their own bloated bureaucracies for corruption, mismanagement and waste, before slashing programs and firing teachers. Ultimately, the boss (in this case, the superintendent and board) is responsible for everything that happens in an organization and they were clearly asleep at the wheel.

Holiday Cheer: L.A. Unified Slashes 1000 Jobs

LA Unified Laid Off 1000 Classified Workers--Happy Holidays!

Schools Fail to Provide Physical Education—Parents Can Sue

A California appellate court ruled last week that parents can sue if their children’s schools do not provide sufficient time for physical education. In California, that means a minimum of 200 minutes of PE every ten days for k-5 children and 400 minutes each ten days for middle and high school age children. That translates to a meager 20 minutes per day for young children and 40 minutes per day for teens. Keep in mind that the courts do not even require physical activity: the PE can include lectures, games or discussions about nutrition, physical fitness and good sportsmanship.

A study last year found that more than half of schools surveyed were failing to provide even this modicum of physical activity for their students. Hilary McLean, a spokesperson for the department of education, said that budget cuts have prevented them from monitoring schools for compliance. However, with increasing pressure for schools to raise their API, many are cutting or reducing programs like PE to make room for more test preparation and reading and math support classes. If we really want to fight obesity, abolishing NCLB would be far cheaper and more effective than congress’ plan to add a few cents per student to the free and reduced lunch program.

For-Profit Colleges are Pedagogical Poverty Pimps

A new report by the Education Trust says that students at for-profit colleges are more likely to drop out and have greater debt than those at public and private non-profit schools. For-profit schools aggressively recruit students, but do little to retain them, with only 22% graduating after six years, compared with 55% at public institutions. 96% of the students who do graduate from for-profit schools are left with large debts, compared with 62% at public schools, and the default rate for these loans is double the rate at public and private non-profit schools, suggesting that the quality of education at these schools is insufficient for graduates to secure well-paying jobs.

Like subprime lenders, for-profit schools prey upon the poor and tend to look the other way and ignore obvious risk factors, accepting anyone who is willing to pay their high tuition and lousy loans. 50% of the students at for-profit schools come from low income backgrounds. Many of these students did not do very well in high school and could not get into a more reputable 4-year institution.

For-profit schools boast that they provide great opportunities for low income students to earn degrees and move into lucrative careers. However, many aspiring college students lack the skills to succeed in college, like good time management, perseverance or the ability to read and write at a college level. Saddling them with enormous debt and abandoning them to either sink or swim is not much of an opportunity. In contrast, small public community colleges are inexpensive and often provide remedial and support classes and counseling to help struggling students, without leaving them in hock up to their eyeballs. Many also articulate with local 4-year universities.

Feds Rip Off Special Needs Kids

Feds Rip Off Special Needs Kids

Under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), the Feds have avoided paying their obligation to states to provide supplemental services for students with special needs. In 2008, for example, the federal government owed states $19 billion, but only paid out $10 billion.

In these challenging economic times, with so many districts facing budget and service cuts, and the federal government handing out trillions to Wall Street bankers and defense contractors, it is particularly disgusting to be short changing kids with disabilities. IDEA serves millions of children nationally. In California, districts are being asked to “push in” special needs students to regular ed classes to the fullest extent possible, creating an even greater need for funding to hire paraprofessionals and support staff. Under NCLB, special education teachers are being asked to become “highly qualified” in all subjects they teach which, at the high school level, may require some teachers to get credentialed in math, English, social studies and at least one science discipline. This also will require additional funding.

“Each year they ask us to do more, while providing us with less. Eventually they will ask us to do everything, and give us nothing. I think this might be that time.”—quote by a former colleague.

Religious Extremists Infiltrate Louisiana School System

Yes, Christian extremists are at it again, this time in Louisiana. A series of high school life science textbooks have come up for approval before the Louisiana state board of education, and they are being attacked by fundamentalist religious groups like Louisiana Family Forum, a branch of Focus on the Family, because they include evolution and natural selection. As usual, the fundamentalists are demanding a disclaimer that these topics are “just theories,” and insisting that creationism be taught side by side. Keep the Science in the Textbooks, say Louisiana teachers. Dr. Jason Van Metre, who teaches at A. M. Barbe High School, wrote an open letter to the state board of education, saying that the notion that natural selection is controversial is ludicrous. In 2008, Louisiana Family Forum succeeded in getting lawmakers to pass the Louisiana Science Education Act, which allows local districts to provide “supplemental materials” that deny evolution and global warming.

In many ways, I prefer battles like this over the ed deform battles that are so much in the fore today. The religious zealots who challenge evolution are usually true believers who cannot be swayed, yet their arguments are so flimsy that they often lose in court. In contrast, the ed deformers who support merit pay, high stakes testing and charter schools are embedded in the highest levels of government, Wall Street and corporate America, and have the power and will to completely alter the education system from the ground up. Some of the ed deformers may sincerely believe in the merits of their program, but the real power brokers behind the ed deform agenda have huge financial stakes in it, which makes them particularly scary and not very entertaining. The anti-evolution zealots, in contrast, have all sorts of nutty ideas that are really quite amusing, like the notion that dinosaur fossils were left by Satan to throw us on the wrong track, or that the teaching of evolution has caused an increase in crime, or the idea that bananas must have been designed by an omnipotent creator because they fit so neatly in the human hand.

In all seriousness though, religion can play an enormous role in learning for some people, and poses a serious challenge to science teachers, even without distractions over textbooks. A child who has grown up in a household or community that denies evolution, or that believes in a young Earth, may tune out or resist learning during an evolution unit. Those who want to learn about evolution may find that their belief system or pressure from family and peers hampers their understanding. Even in the liberal San Francisco Bay Area, I routinely have students confront me with comments like, “My mother said I don’t have to learn this stuff because it’s against our religion,” or “the bible is evidence.”

As if teaching wasn’t already challenging enough. . .

Diabetes, Obesity May Impair Cognitive Function

“Fat Head,” used to be considered an insult, yet fat is essential for the growth of healthy, smart brains. Fat contributes to the development nerve cells (neurons) and synapses, the connections between neurons responsible for thought, communication, emotion, movement and memory. Myelin insulates the axons of neurons and facilitates rapid transmission of nerve impulses. Several types of fats are critical for proper brain development, including cholesterol, which is essential for myelination of axons and for the production of the vesicles that carry neurotransmitters across the synapse. The brain is the most cholesterol rich organ in the body. Therefore, anything that reduces the amount of cholesterol in the brain may in fact impair cognitive function.

Recent research suggests that drugs that lower cholesterol, like statins, may impair cognitive function, while a new study suggests that diabetes, which affects cholesterol production, may reduce cholesterol production in the brain. In the study, researchers found that diabetic mice had reduced levels of cholesterol in the membranes of their neurons near the synapses. If the same holds true for people, this could have profound implications for diabetics, particularly the growing number of diabetic children who may find their disease impairing their academic success.

Obama, We Want Cops In Our Oakland Schools

Oakland Police Chief Anthony Batts wants $5-6 million from Washington, D.C., to place cops in four middle schools. The schools, Madison, Westlake, Roosevelt and Frick, would get six officers each. If successful, the program would spread to all of Oakland’s middle schools. 

The goal of the program is to reduce involvement in gangs and criminal activity by strengthening “bonds between police and students," according to Troy Flint, a spokesman for the district. However, the program will do nothing to mitigate the main causes of youth crime and violence: poverty and a lack of activities and resources for youth. It does nothing to help struggling parents, or to secure housing, health care or nutrition for the children, nor will it address the overall crime, violence or gang activity in the communities.The cops may believe that their efforts will reduce community animosity toward the police and reduce acts of violence against police vehicles. However, as long as they continue to police poor communities like an occupying army, chances are that any gains will be short-lived.