Texas Advertising for Teachers in NC: Perhaps NC Should Advertise in Texas Too

Recently, the Houston School District in Texas decided to take advantage of how teachers in our state are being treated by a legislature that has no interest in supporting public education. Here’s their ad:



Perhaps we should run an ad in Houston, but it wouldn’t look like this one. Here’s what our ad might look like.



As long as our North Carolina Legislature is more interested in tax cuts for the wealthiest and for businesses, than providing a quality education, unfortunately this won’t change, but with the way our state government is acting, one has to wonder whether that is their intention.

NC State Superintendent Responds to Anti-Public Education Budget of NC Senate

In her response to the North Carolina State Senate’s budget proposal which continues the anti-public education agenda of this current state legislature, North Carolina State Superintendent, June Atkinson, pointed out these additional, hidden gems in that budget:

• Administrator salaries have been separated from the teacher salary schedules and no change from last years salaries. Personnel on these schedules would receive an average 2 percent pay raise.
• Teachers would get 11% pay raise if they choose to give up tenure.
• Central office employees would receive a $500 raise while the rest of state workers would receive $800.
• Teacher assistant funding would be cut in half.
• No improvement in instructional supplies funding and technology.
• State funding to local central offices would be cut by 5%.
• Reduced funding to school transportation by $28.6 million. Funds replaced with driver’s education funding which would be cut entirely.
• The North Carolina Department of Public Instruction would be cut by 30%.
• Grades 2 and 3 teacher allotments will remain at 1 teacher per 18 students rather than be reduced to 1:17 as funded last year.

As Dr. Atkinson amply points out, “The dismal state of textbook, technology, and instructional supplies funding means that teachers will have fewer resources to work with as they develop lessons and assignments,” this lack of additional instructional resources continues even as accountability and testing demands have increased. These cut resources will also translate into teachers having to take on even more responsibilities and duties in the schools as well. Teachers will most likely in their dedication do what they normally do, continue to dig deeper into their own pockets for money to pay for what this state legislature is refusing to pay for.

It would appear that our North Carolina Legislature and Governor are continuing the same strategies and plans that had from last year. They will do all they can to make sure business and industry get those tax cuts as evidenced by their proposals now to limit taxing from local governments. Education is simple dispensable with these politicians. That leaves these questions to think about?

• Why would any business or industry be willing to move to North Carolina with such anti-public education leadership in the state government—from Governor McCrory, to Senate leader Phil Berger, to House leader Thom Tillis. All that talk about preparing students for careers and jobs seems to be bluster. These people aren’t willing to work with educators. They are focused intently on an agenda that must have been borrowed from the American Legislative Exchange Council or ALEC.
• How can our state government leaders possibly think this budget would be good for public education in this state? This budget will do more to set education back in North Carolina than anything else this state legislature has done. One can almost conclude that is their intention; wreck public education in this state.

You can read Dr. Atkinson’s full response to the draconian North Carolina Senate budget here. (Dr. Atkinson’s Response.)

NC State Senate at It Again: Continuing Their Dismantling of Public Education

One thing is for certain, when our current North Carolina Legislature is in session, they are looking for ways to cut public education. Yesterday, it became apparent that our North Carolina State Senate has decided that they want to give teachers big pay raises, but on two conditions:

1) Teachers must give up their tenure voluntarily.

2) Teachers in the lower grades must give up having teacher assistants in their classrooms.

It’s clear our legislature is on a mission to get rid of tenure, and they will do anything they can, including using bribery in the form of pay raises teachers deserve. The level deviousness and subterfuge  Senator Phil Berger and Senator  Jerry Tillman and the North Carolina State Senate resort to in this matter literally leaves one tongue-tied. There are simply finding a “backdoor” way to continue their destruction of public education. One can almost picture ALEC (American Legislative Exchange Council) standing over their shoulder, leaning down and whispering these schemes to them.

In their budget plan, they trade teacher assistant jobs for the pay raises, thereby putting even more people out of work and making the work of lower grade teachers even more difficult after budget cuts the previous year forced most districts to increase class sizes. 

Here’s some of the other cuts in this NC State Senate budget that seem to show that our North Carolina Legislature is still on a path to dismantling public education is this state.

• In 2015 all drivers education funding in the state will be cut.
• NC Department of Public Instruction would see a 30% cut.
• Funding for buses and transportation would be cut in another bill.

When it comes to public education, I’ve grown to be surprised very little with what Senator’s Phil Berger and Jerry Tillman do when it comes to public education. They simply do not see it as important, why else would they be doing what they’re doing? What surprises me more? There still seems to be so little protest from other educators. Perhaps that’s because most of them have already left the state.

Perhaps the Houston School District want to run that advertisement again. I am sure there might be more takers this time. This keeps up, Berger and Tillman will have closed down public education in this state and all our educators will have moved to Houston. (See “Houston School District Lures Teachers with Job Fair."

See these WRAL articles for full details on these stories.

“Senate Leaders Defend Education Cuts"

“Senate Budget Funds Teacher Salaries Through Other Ed Cuts"

“NC Bill Would Cut Funds for School Buses"

 

 

What Should Teacher Evaluations Look Like? Ideas to Consider

Recently, I received an anonymous comment on my blog post entitled “Merit Pay in Education: An Exercise Manipulation and Futility.” I have purposefully chosen to not publish anonymous comments on this blog because I believe firmly that if you have something to say, then you should be willing to divulge your identity. Part of your message is who you are, and hiding your identity is actually hiding part of your message. At any rate, the commenter who calls him or herself “Engaged Parent” seemed to practically dare me to publish his or her comment. I won’t publish it as a comment, but I will share it here with my own commentary because there are some fundamental misconceptions apparent in that comment. Here’s “Engaged Parent’s” comment, then I will respond.

Even though you're going to NOT publish this comment I think it's worth sending it to you anyway. A teacher you are yes? I'm going to assume that.

Over and over again I see the same comments on how we can measure the success of education. It's great that we keep hearing how a merit program doesn't work but what's the alternative? It would be nice (for once) to hear a teacher tell us how a "bad" teacher can get filtered out of the system. I'm sure you will agree that not all teachers are good, there are always some bad apples in the bushel, no way around it. 
I agree, test scores are not always a good judge of how a teacher is doing but it does or it at least should give key indicators to a teacher that maybe what they're doing isn't the best for that particular mix of kids and that another approach might work better. But do they do that? I don't know.
Why are teachers the only ones who don't have to be put under the scrutiny of evaluation? The rest of the world has to go through it.

What I really want to say is I think that a happy medium could be met if careful thought was put in to it.
For instance:
10 % what did your students think of you?
15% what did your students parents think of you?
25% test scores
10% peer scores
15% self score
25% principal scoresIs that not a fair assessment? If not then come up with SOMETHING because personally I'm sick of hearing how teachers don't want to be assessed.

First of all, let me say that yes, I am a teacher, and I don’t think I’ve hidden that fact anywhere on this blog. You can find that information on the blog sidebar. I am currently a principal. As a teacher though, I am more concerned with your logic and misconceptions in your comment than anything else. First of all, you seem to suggest that merit pay should be implemented because we have no alternatives. Following this argument means that the rationale for implementing merit pay lies, not in whether it will work or not, but because we don’t have any other alternatives. That in itself is faulty reasoning. I certainly hope my physician doesn’t implement a treatment or my mechanic doesn’t simply initiate a car repair because he or she says, “What’s the alternative?” without considering the evidence of symptoms and lab test results that identify the problem.  You are hearing criticisms of performance pay because it has been researched and has failed to bring about the improvements sought, which is increased student learning. It has been tried in public education, even in North Carolina with no appreciable effect on the quality of education.

You next assertion seems to be thinly veiled when you state “It would be nice (for once) to hear a teacher tell us how a “bad” teacher can get filtered out of the system.” It appears you have a belief that “bad” teachers never get dismissed. I would agree with you that not all teachers are good, which I gather you really mean effective at helping students learn among the many other things teachers do. But contrary to your belief, they do “get filtered” out of the system, at least in my experience. So your belief that teachers who don’t do their jobs very good somehow are not subject to dismissal is another misconception. Teachers can be dismissed fairly but with “due process,” which means that I as an administrator must thoroughly document my rationale for doing so. Many administrators see “due process” or tenure as many call it, as an obstacle, but due process rights were put in place because historically, our education system was notorious for political firings and reprimands. Teaching historically has been quite political with school board members or even administrators firing teachers for noxious reasons. Teachers have been fired for being pregnant or even so a school board member can then hire a son or nephew. At any rate, it is a misconception that teachers who aren’t doing their jobs can’t be fired. It simply takes leadership and willingness to first try to help that teacher improve, then take the steps necessary to counsel them into another profession.

Still another misconception from you comment is that teachers aren’t under the “scrutiny of evaluations.” I have been an educator in North Carolina for 25 years, and I have always been subject to evaluations, so the idea that teachers aren’t somehow evaluated just isn’t true. Teachers in my state have been evaluated for years, and some are dismissed as a result of those evaluations. When you hear all the criticism of current evaluations systems, those do not come from the desire to avoid evaluations; it comes from the desire to have those evaluations be fair. You yourself acknowledge that test scores alone are not always a “good judge” of teacher, but there are much deeper issues with using test scores as a part of evaluation, such as the fact that more 70 percent of courses in a high school do not have these state tests. Teachers that I know aren’t trying to avoid being evaluated as you suggest; they simply want those evaluations to be fair and just, as any employee in any line of work would want.

Now, let’s take a look at the evaluation system you suggest. You provide several interesting sources of evidence for teacher evaluations. First of all, you would base 10% of the evaluation on “what students thought of the teacher.”  I hope you aren’t suggesting that students rate the teacher as a person. I suspect you are really suggesting that students are somehow surveyed on what kind of job they think their teachers are doing. This is reasonable in some ways, and I’ll agree with you. But there obviously has to be careful attention paid to the survey instrument so that its questions get at the heart of instructional prowess and not opinions about the teacher personally. The question then becomes, what do students know about a teacher’s instructional ability? The answer to that question could be used as a basis for survey questions. Our school has used student surveys for over 5 years, and one quite common problem is that the responses can sometimes be about anything other than the teaching. The data is useful, however, because it can help us make changes where there are genuine complaints and issues.

The second source of evidence for teacher evaluation you suggest is “what the parents think of their teachers.” Again, that seems reasonable, if what you are suggesting is a parent survey that focuses on a teacher’s ability to teach. For obvious reasons, the survey would need to move beyond asking the parent what they thought of the teacher as an instructor. But there are some issues that would need to be ironed out. For example, one issue that would need to be dealt with would be the fact that few parents witness the actual teaching teachers do in the classroom. They get most of their information about what happens in the classroom secondhand. I can tell you as an administrator that quite often  that secondhand information isn’t entirely accurate. A student often goes home and tells a parent one story about something that’s happened in their classroom or to them or what a teacher has done. That parent next calls the principal, clearly angry, until they hear what really happened. Using parent opinions about teacher practice would be especially difficult since they do not witness teaching in action; they have to rely on hearsay, which as we know is unacceptable in court rooms. Parent surveys could focus, however, on the parts of teaching that they do directly witness, such as teacher to home communication. At any rate, if parent surveys were to be used in teacher evaluations, they would need to be much more than simply asking a parent what they thought of his or her teacher.

The third source of evidence you suggest for teacher evaluations are test scores. That also seems reasonable until you try to implement that practice which we’ve done in North Carolina.  The issues are many. Some of the tests are inferior and are of questionable quality. Then there’s the fact that not all subjects are tested, which leads to questions like: Do you evaluate only those in tested areas, or do you develop and administer tests in every single subject area, which is quite costly in terms of time and money? In addition, some tests were designed in a way that they make poor choices for use in evaluating teachers. Tests like ACT and SAT were created for an entirely different purpose rather than measuring teacher quality. Additionally, tests designed for assessing student achievement have never been proved valid for assessing teacher quality. Other issues with test scores used as part of teacher evaluations? How do you separate the effects of previous years teachers on this year’s teacher scores? The list of issues with using tests as evidence of teacher effectiveness is lengthy, that’s why teachers and myself question the practice. A test is a test is a test is how much of the world sees it, but most of us who’ve been in education know tests aren’t as simple as we wish they were.

The fourth source of evidence for teacher evaluations that you suggest are “peer scores” which I suspect you actually mean peer ratings. Peer ratings seem to make sense too, after all, who would know better than a teacher’s peers whether or not they are effectively teaching. But the problem with this one is similar to the parent one: there are few teachers who actually know how effectively a teacher is teaching, unless of course you set up a system by which they peer observe. That would work, but it offers logistical problems such as finding time and means for each teacher to observe each other in action. Currently, we use peer observations in evaluations as a part of our process so your suggestion isn’t far from current reality. There is one additional issue with peer ratings too; teachers are often very reluctant to honestly rate their peers because quite often, they have to work with these individuals, and they are often their friends. You have to be pretty naive about human nature to see peer ratings working very well.

The fifth source of evidence for teacher evaluations you suggest are “self scores” which I would suspect you mean self ratings. Believe it or not, we already ask our teachers to do “self-assessments.” While these aren’t directly connecting to a teacher’s final rating, they are used as a part of the evaluation process early in the year. Teachers use them to honestly look at how they stand with our teacher evaluation, and many use it as a basis for their professional development plan. Of course it’s like any self-assessment; it’s only as useful as the amount of honestly employed in its completion. The main problem with self-ratings is if high stakes are tied to it in any way, how noble do you think someone would be to give themselves a poor rating if it could impact their job status?

Your final source of evidence for teacher evaluations you suggest are “principal scores” which I take to mean principal ratings. In North Carolina, this is practice. Principals complete a summative evaluation of ratings on teachers at the conclusion of every year. This is in turn used to suggest professional development for the next year. Principal ratings are certainly not without issues as well. Most of us have worked for bosses who were tyrants and completely incapable of making fair and partial judgments. Because of this danger alone, principal ratings have issues too.

I would say “Engaged Parent” you do get one principle right in your evaluation suggestion; we do need multiple sources of evidence for teacher evaluations. The issue is simply deciding which ones will effectively improve instruction for our students. We do need multiple sources of evidence to evaluate teachers, but if we choose the incorrect evidence, then our teachers don’t teach well and what we set out to do which was improve student learning never happens. We can’t afford to get teacher evaluation wrong because in the end our children will suffer.

So, “Engaged Parent” we do have evaluations of teachers. We also use much of the evidence you suggest above, and there’s talk of adding other sources as well. Teachers as a rule in North Carolina do not complain about being evaluated. Like any employee they do complain about evaluated unfairly, and that is a great deal of the criticism you’re hearing. I would suggest that since you have a great interest in teacher evaluations, you might want to read a book called Evaluating America’s Teachers Mission Possible? by W. James Popham. Popham goes to great length to argue what a good, fair and valid teacher evaluation would look like. He even goes through about every single source of evidence you suggest and points out the problems with them and suggests how those problems might be alleviated. It’s a good read for anyone, educator or non-educator, looking into the evaluation of teachers.

Turning Your Classrooms from Places to Control Students to Places to Engage Them in Learning

“For the first time in the history of education, the teacher, the student, and the content do not need to be in the same place at the same time.” Ian Jukes, Windows on the Future

How we handle the details of designing our “learning spaces” ultimately determines what happens in our classrooms. As Jukes points out, for the first time in history students and teachers do not even have to be in the same place when learning. Also, the content is no longer confined to textbooks. Still, our schools’ classrooms are designed for “imparting knowledge” not engaging in authentic learning. I would bet if you look at any recent plan drawn up for a new school, the spaces are still designed for traditional factory model learning. The classrooms are arranged like so many pods with desks sitting in rows with a teacher desk placed at the front of the room with a whiteboard located behind. What many still do not quite understand is  a simple principle of classroom design: How you plan the learning space ultimately determines the kinds of learning that happens in that space. Even the furniture selections can impact the learning that happens.

Take the student desk as an example (like the illustration above). These desks are still everywhere in our schools. When new schools are built, hundreds of these are ordered and then placed in neat rows in classrooms. But this particular desk is problematic if we are looking to create learning spaces where students collaborate and engage in active learning. These desks are designed to be placed in rows and to actually restrict the movement of the student sitting in it. Have you ever complained about how hard it is to move and get out of these things? But in a factory era school, student movement is discouraged and what better way to do it than by designing a desk that minimizes the movement of students? These desks are perhaps a symbol of what’s amiss about so-called 21st century education today. We still think of learning spaces as ways to control students rather than ways to engage them in real learning.

I have no way of knowing whether those who designed the first student desks in this manner really had the goal of making a desk that restricted movement, but the fact that so many of these still exist in our classrooms is symptomatic of a greater problem: We just can’t let go of the idea that schools are factories whose job is to churn out students who have been declared educated through testing and credentialing. “Get’em through the system like widgets and declare them graduated and educated if they make through the hurdles and tests.” In our classroom learning spaces we still buy furniture whose purposes is to control and attempt to make learning fit into neat orderly boxes, when those of us who’ve been teachers for some time know real learning is messy and not always subject to the controls we place on it. We keep arranging our schools’ classrooms for teacher-directed instruction instead of designing them for student-directed and inquiry learning which we know is how most of our students want to learn. In a word, for all our talk, we are trying to fit 21st century learning into classrooms designed for factory-model education systems.

Obviously, my point is obviously not to get you to throw out all the student desks in your buildings. But, the question is, how can we re-envision our learning spaces to make authentic, engaging learning happen for our students? We can begin by looking at our current classrooms and see how we can transform them from places to control to places to explore and engage learning. This doesn’t really cost us very much either.

W. James Popham's Sarcastic Shot at Teacher Evaluation Reform

I don’t usually post a video on its own my my blog, but W. James Popham’s irreverent  look at the teacher evaluation reforms going in the United States simply speaks for itself. His mock info-mercial here is almost believable in the climate of Race to the Top and the NCLB waivers.

Year-End Reflection: Some Year-End Resolutions for Being Better Educators

“Loving ourselves does not mean indulging ourselves.” Ayya Kema

How many times have you heard the advice that until you love yourself you are incapable of loving others? We as educators live in a field that talks a great deal about “putting students first” and “sacrificing for the benefit of the kids.” What this translates to in daily practice is long hours, substantial amounts of time grading papers outside of class, and spending personal money taking care of the students. These are all noble actions. By far, the expectations that most every educator I know is that they literally “would give the shirt off their back" to a student if it would better that child’s life. They are, as a profession, despite much of the reform rhetoric, a dedicated group of people who genuinely care for the children in their charge.
For all their altruistic motives though, educators are just as prone to neglect their mental, spiritual, intellectual, and physical health in this exercise in self-sacrifice. They often literally give these up on the altar of sacrifice, resulting in the usual mental, spiritual, and physical problems. Mentally, this time of the year many are burnt out and struggling through the anxieties and pressures of ending another year. Spiritually, they’ve often neglected to engage in reflection and contemplation in their chosen religion, or non-religion, resulting in a sense of lost significance and purpose in life. Intellectually, educators haven’t taken the time to foster curiosity and intellectual exercise so vital to having the momentum of being life-long learners. Physically, educators struggle with their weight, high-blood pressure, cholesterol, and fatigue. In short, educators have neglected the four areas that matter most to their overall well-being and happiness: mental well-being, spiritual well-being, intellectual well-being, and physical well-being.
Recently, I was forced to go to my doctor due to a dull chest pain that seemed to be persistent. To make the story short, I found myself connected to an EKG machine for the first time of my life of 51 years, and upon my exit from his office, armed with a prescription for cholesterol medicine. I have prided myself in not having to take any medications up to this point, and now I was going to have to take it each day. The combination of these occurrences were not powerful enough to be epiphanies, but they were eye openers. I realized I was neglecting myself into having more and more health problems. Something had to change.
Since that event, I did some inventory. Honestly, I had done well in the area of mental and spiritual well-being recently. For me, both of these were being satisfied with my ongoing Buddhist meditation and mindfulness training. Mentally, I was dealing much better with job stresses, with just an occasional relapse. Spiritually, I continued to explore my own religion through daily mediation practice and one spiritual retreat every year. Things have felt good spiritually. Intellectually, I also felt engaged and alive. With all the books I’ve lined up for reading, and my ongoing professional learning through my PLN added to my pursuit of a doctorate degree, I felt intellectually satisfied as well. Physically, all was not well though. I was tired much of the time. My cholesterol was deadly while my diet was making me miserable every day. My stomach was constantly in pain or irritated. Overall I physically did not feel well. So, I focused on two things I knew would definitely help: diet and exercise.
I have been thinking about changing over to an all vegetarian diet for some time, and this health check gave me the motivation I needed to make a diet change. I vowed to eat vegetarian, and I have been doing so for three weeks now. I have eaten more fruits and vegetables.  For exercise, I simply decided to take a brisk walk of about 4 miles per day. In the interim three weeks, I have never felt better. I have more energy than ever, and I am able to focus for longer periods of time. Additionally, I have dropped 14 pounds in the process. I also no longer have the indigestion and stomach ailments I once complained about. The combination of diet and exercise, combined with my continued spiritual practices, intellectual pursuits have made me feel much more sharp and alive in my job as a school administrator.
I once had a college professor who always ask the question so what when any of us in the class made a contribution to the discussion, so I think that question is appropriate here: so what? What does that have to do with school leadership and being an educator. Simply put: as school leaders and educators we need to love ourselves just a bit more. Loving ourselves doesn’t mean we’re being selfish; it means we are actually loving our students by loving ourselves, taking care of ourselves. For example, a school administrator taking an hour or so in the afternoon for a brisk walk isn’t being self-indulgent; he’s demonstrating love for self. Taking time to engage in the spiritual or non-spiritual practice of your choice is also not self-indulgence. It also is loving self. Making decisions and being mindful about what you eat is also about loving self. It is so obvious we sometimes don’t see it: we can’t keep neglecting ourselves and expect to be able to do what’s best for kids for any length of time. Our students need living, capable and compassionate teachers and principals, not martyrs.
While I have only made some of these changes three weeks, I am confident that they will last because of the rewards of feeling much more energetic and alive. As this year ends, and you begin the process of reflecting on the year and thinking of the coming year, perhaps you need to make sure all your bases: mental well-being, spiritual well-being, intellectual well-being, and physical well-being are a priority. It’s so well known it’s a cliche, but you can only begin taking care of others when you have taken care of yourself.