Majority of states lining up to ditch No Child Left Behind Educators say Bush-era law leads to counterproductive ‘teaching to the test’ http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/44693695/ns/today-education_nation/

Unfortunately, we don’t spend enough time sharing those ideas with eachother, let alone with those outside of education.  The people that seem to have all the power in driving education reform come from outside; foundations, legislators, and other politicians.

We need to take back the voice of school reform.  We need to be seen as the ones working to fix the real problems, not the ones stading in the way of change.  The change that keeps getting proposed and acted on is not good for students, teachers, or our society in general.

One way that you can help bring about positive change is to write or call your legislators.  Please follow the following links to get the contact information for your representatives.  If they don’t know what you know about education reform, they will continue to listen to outside interests that have no idea what education is about.

California State Legislators – http://www.legislature.ca.gov/legislators_and_districts/legislators/your_legislator.html

U.S. Senate – http://www.senate.gov/

U.S. House of Representatives – http://www.house.gov/

Another way that you can help be the change that we need is by writing editorials to the newspaper.  Share your thoughts about what works and what doesn’t work.

Locally, ACT is working with the Industrial Areas Foundation (IAF) to form relationships with community groups that want to see positive change in all aspects of modern life.  We are learning about organizing and practicing it as we bring people together to be able to act on the issues that effect ourselves, our students, and our community.  If you would be interested in learning more about this work, please send me an e-mail, give me a call, or post a comment on this entry.

Finally, talk to your neighbors, friends, family, and anyone else you meet.  Let them know how larger class sizes effect your ability to reach and teach every child.  Explain to them how the focus on standards is driving out the joy of education.  Tell them that the economic problems of the state are causing districts to cut sports, arts, career/tech ed., and all the other valuable programs that can attract and hold our kids.

Remember that your union membership is like a gym membership.  You don’t complain that paying for a gym membership didn’t make you healthier.  You understand that you the membership gives you access to the gym.  Use your union membership.  Talk to your reps and directors.  Call the association office.  Express your concerns and ideas and what you would like to help do about them.  “All of us are stronger than any one of us.”  This is only true when all of us are working together. 

Yours in solidarity,

Hank Mollet

The Commercial Appeal (TN) (2/24, Roberts) reports, “Last week, a bill that would eliminate collective bargaining through teachers’ unions passed in the” Tennessee “state Senate Education Committee,” and another measure “has been introduced in the state House to end payroll deduction of public-sector union dues. Without a bargaining unit, city teachers fear decisions will be arbitrary, whittling away their pay to reduce the cost of public education.” Shelby County (TN) Education Association “leaders have ‘serious concerns’ about the bills, saying while they don’t affect Shelby County Schools, they may harm teachers in other Tennessee districts.” The Tennessean (2/23, Sisk) reported the GOP lawmakers in Tennessee “have pushed ahead of Gov. Bill Haslam in the race to shape the state’s agenda on education and provoked a confrontation with Tennessee’s biggest teachers union. The state Senate took the first step last week toward rewriting Tennessee’s education laws this year, when a committee voted to reverse a 1978 law that gave teachers the right to bargain collectively through a union.” The Tennessean adds, “Supporters say the bill would…give teachers who are not members of the union more” sway during labor negotiations, while opponents “say the bill would strip teachers of their ability to negotiate with school boards, and it is little more than payback by Republicans for the TEA’s past support of Democratic candidates.”

The Los Angeles Times (2/10, Watanabe) says the California Board of Education met Wednesday and the panel “put the brakes on” the parent trigger law, which “gives parents the right to force major reforms at low-performing schools.” The board “took no action on proposed regulations to implement the law but instead will set up a working group to help determine the procedures. … In what one critic called a ‘bombshell’ statement, state education officials said Wednesday that it would be difficult to write clear regulations based on the law because it was too vague.” So, education officials are working with Assembly Education Committee chair Julia Brownley (D) on a “cleanup” bill. That disclosure “set off alarm among supporters, including Parent Revolution. … ‘This is clearly nothing more than an attempt to repeal the law,’ said Gabe Rose, the group’s deputy director.”

From the NEA’s “The Opening Bell”:

Noting that using value-added teaching assessments is not feasible for subjects that are not tested as systematically as core subjects, Education Week (2/1, Sawchuk) reports on the quest by “teachers’ unions, content-area experts, and administrators in many states and communities” to find “measures that could be used to weigh teachers’ contributions to learning in subjects ranging from career and technical education to art, music, and history-the subjects, in other words, that are far less frequently tested. The work, which has taken place quietly, in contrast to the larger value-added conversation, is renewing interest in alternative sources of achievement information.”

 According to a front-page New York Times (2/1, A1, Gabriel, Dillon, 1.01M) article, “Several Republican governors have concluded that removing ineffective teachers requires undoing the century-old protections of tenure. Governors in Florida, Idaho, Indiana, Nevada and New Jersey have called for the elimination or dismantling of tenure,” and “their chances…have risen because of crushing state budget deficits.” The Times adds that New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg “has campaigned aggressively for the state to end ‘last in, first out’ protections for teachers,” and “warn[ed] that thousands of young educators face layoffs.” Bloomberg is “demanding” that Gov. Andrew Cuomo “scrap the seniority law.”

Teacher Accountability Issue Analyzed.
Robert C. Pianta, dean of the Curry School of Education at the University of Virginia, wrote in a blog for the Washington Post (10/24), “Teacher evaluation is emerging as the central flash point in education policy debates” as “it combines two elements new to education professionals and the public – quantifiable measurement of performance, and stakes like firing or public exposure.” However, “the core problem in public education is not identifying effective teachers. It’s that our existing system does not produce effective teaching in sufficient scope, scale, regularity, or intensity.”