Archive | December, 2010

Unions must fear lost membership more than lost teacher tenure

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On December 27, 2010 in Charter Schools, Customization, General, School Choice, Teacher quality, Unionism

Rick Scott will be inaugurated as Florida’s 45th governor in just eight days, following one of the nation’s closest gubernatorial races, and it is worth reflecting on what drove the Florida Education Association to call it “the most important election of our lifetime.” Those who think efforts to reduce tenure and increase merit pay are what will break the unions are missing the most important business ingredient here – market share.

FEA’s preferred candidate for governor, state CFO Alex Sink, lost by only 1.2 percentage points in a Republican landslide that saw the other four statewide Democrats lose by an average of 19 points. In the campaign’s final hectic days, a get-out-the-vote memo to members from my friend Jeff Wright, FEA’s director of public policy advocacy, helped explain the passion. He felt the same pressures I faced when I was a union president. To be a viable business, the union must maintain its membership base. Fewer members means less money and less clout.

“FEA is the only organization that has consistently fought back on stupid policies that do harm to students and to the people we represent,” Jeff wrote. “If we are no longer strong due to reduction in the number of people served by public schools, then they can do what they want with the education budgets of today.”

The flip side is that, when I was a union president, I knew that battles over tenure were great for business. That’s because teacher unions are in the business of selling protection, and anything that causes teachers to experience more job-related fear or insecurity increases union membership. I could never say so publicly, but the elimination of tenure would mean the union contract would be the only protection teachers had. That’s amounts to a full employment act for unions. Continue Reading →

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What accounts for teacher quality? A school’s grade provides only part of the answer.

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On December 23, 2010 in Education Research, General, Teacher quality

Four years ago, I helped create and lead a school improvement and professional development partnership between the University of Florida’s Lastinger Center for Learning and the Pinellas County school district. As part of this project I conducted 3,500 classroom observations over two years in which I assessed the quality of student and teacher engagement when I entered each classroom. Second-graders engaged in a turn and talk with an evaluation or synthesis prompt would score high, second-graders sitting at their desks doodling on a worksheet while their teacher shopped online at her desk would score low, and second-graders sitting passively at their desks while their teacher talked would fall in the middle. While this assessment was not a comprehensive measure of instructional quality, it provided a good snapshot and, with 3,500 data points, patterns were easy to discern.

The first year, each school’s data fell into a bell curve, with about 10 percent to 15 percent of the instruction falling at the top and bottom of the curve and 70 percent to 80 percent falling in the middle. Apparently teacher-centric instruction is still the norm in our schools, just as it’s been for the last 200 years. Toward the end of year one, we presented our findings to the schools and provided some professional development. Consequently the year two data skewed more positively with most of the low-end assessments moving to the middle. We saw only a slight increase in the upper levels.

I was unaware of each school’s state grade when I made my observations, but given the negligible variation between schools that I found in either year, I decided to see if there was a relationship between school grades and quality of teaching. There was none. That is, the quality of student and teacher engagement in schools graded A was identical to that in schools graded B, C and D. There were no F schools in our sample.

But while there was no variation between schools, the variation within schools was large. Every school had a small number of teachers who consistently scored high on our scale and an equally small number who consistently scored low. Continue Reading →

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Tuthill on teacher empowerment: charter schools encourage teachers to start their own shop

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On December 22, 2010 in Charter Schools, General, School Choice

RedefinED host Doug Tuthill visited the Dale Jackson Show on WVNN news talk radio in Alabama this morning by phone to talk with guest radio host state Rep. Phil Williams about school choice in Florida (podcast here). Doug and the Alabama state representative met in late November at the National Summit on Education Reform in Washington, D.C., and Williams wanted to learn more about the political factors that facilitated the expansion of charter schools in the Sunshine State.

Williams wants to introduce his own charter initiative in Alabama and asked Doug for advice on how he should proceed. Doug’s reply: Don’t let your opponents falsely claim that an expansion of school choice is an attack on public school teachers and public education.

Charter schools are very pro-teacher … I always resented the fact that a doctor can start a doctor’s office, a lawyer can start a law firm, an architect can start a firm, a CPA can start a firm — but if you’re a teacher, people think you’re too incompetent or not capable of running your own shop. One of the great things about the charter school movement in Florida is that it allows teachers to create their own charter schools. Continuing to treat teachers like 1930s blue collar assembly line workers is underutilizing their talents.

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The liberal nature of vouchers? Look to your history.

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On December 21, 2010 in General, Private Schools, School Choice

A story today on Stateline.org shortchanges much of the Democratic support that has rallied behind proposals for school vouchers and tax credit scholarships in several states. But a greater lapse may be the characterization of who has historically supported private-learning options.

Much of that is understandable, given that Republicans have been the most vocal in advocating for greater choice and marketplace competition in public education, particularly in the decade-long timeframe relevant to Stateline’s analysis. But the increasing Democratic support particularly for tax credit scholarships more closely reflects the reality of the voucher movement in the 1960s and 70s.

While it was economist Milton Friedman who introduced the idea for school vouchers in his 1955 essay, “The Role of Government in Education,” the voucher movement got a jumpstart soon afterward from liberal intellectuals and activists and Democratic lawmakers, particularly from Harvard social scientist Christopher Jencks, Berkeley law professor John Coons and Democratic Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan. Continue Reading →

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Mr. Secretary, we don’t drown students in Florida

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On December 21, 2010 in Charter Schools, Customization, General, Parental Choice, School Choice

U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan brings an intellectual heft and a genuine compassion to his job, which is why he can’t be excused for his duplicitous talk on learning options for poor children.

That word, duplicitous, is unusually harsh. So please allow me to try to defend it with three of his own statements, made all within a 29-minute span, to a distinguished audience at former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush’s National Summit on Education Reform in Washington earlier this month.

Statement No. 1: “We have to make sure that every single child has access to a great, great school. … Where we have high-performing schools – be they charter schools, be they district schools, magnet schools, International Baccalaureate curriculum – we need to replicate those successes. We can’t rest, we can’t wait until we have that great option in every community.”

Translation: This is his pitch for options, saying that each serves a role in a public education system that tailors instruction to the needs of all students. Not every student is right for IB or magnets, nor are these options intended to serve every student. In fact, privately operated and publicly franchised charter schools, which are a favorite of the president, currently are forbidden in 11 states.  

Statement No. 2: “I always think that in this country what works for wealthy people often works for poor families as well. In this country, for decades, probably for centuries, wealthy folks have had access to two, three, four, five, six great learning options. And poor families have often been relegated to one choice, and often that choice wasn’t a very good one. And the more we can empower parents and help them figure out what the best learning environment is for their child, help them understand what their child’s strengths and weaknesses are, and give them a menu of great options, and let them vote with their feet and figure out where they want to go – I think that will help to create a system of improvement.” Continue Reading →

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Does going to the best school matter? Only if it’s the best fit.

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On December 20, 2010 in Achievement Gap, Customization, General, Parental Choice, School Choice

In advising readers on whether an elite college is worth the cost, the New York Times offered a detailed analysis over the weekend that generally could be summed up in two words: It depends. As it relates to schools in the K-12 arena, that’s not a bad answer as well.

RedefinED host Doug Tuthill, a lifelong educator who could rightfully be described as an astute observer of public education and well-informed parent, often talks about his own choice of public high schools for his two sons in St. Petersburg, Fla. While Doug is known in these parts for launching the first International Baccalaureate school in Florida, a school that could be fairly described as academically elite, he chose an entirely different high school for his first son. He chose a high school that featured one of the more robust arts programs in the Pinellas County school district, the 22nd largest school district in the nation, and Doug believed it would be a good fit for his son. He was right.

Now, here is a fact that is relevant to this discussion. The high school is the only one in Pinellas County to have been judged by the state, based on standardized test scores, to be a failure. Did that matter? Not at all. Dad and son could not have been happier. (By the way, this is meant as no criticism of Gibbs High, which  improved its state grade to a “C” on the state’s latest academic report card.)

The second son had different ideas and so did his father. They chose St. Petersburg High School, home of the IB program that father helped create. But the second son found little to like about that school, judged to be an A by the state accountability system, and he wanted nothing to do with it. So the second left IB and ended up at a special charter school that allowed him to graduate with both a high school diploma and an associate of arts degree.

So this is the asterik that should be attached to any school’s rating: Success for any individual student might relate less to the perceived achievement or stature of the school and more to the individual needs of the student. In Doug’s case, an arts program at an “F” school sparked great success in one son, and an “A” school for another son turned out to be a poor fit.

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Bipartisanship over choice is becoming contagious

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On December 18, 2010 in Customization, General, Private Schools, School Choice

Today, redefinED host John Kirtley appears on the St. Petersburg Times’ education blog, the Gradebook, with an essay that showcases the increasing bipartisanship evident in providing school choice for underprivileged students. “For far too long, the important debate over whether we should provide private learning options for low-income schoolchildren has been a source of friction in education circles and partisan combat in political quarters,” Kirtley writes. “But when Oprah Winfrey spotlights the desperate needs of these children and some of the private schools that are turning around their lives, we can safely conclude this issue is now mainstream.”

Kirtley is the chairman of Step Up For Students, a nonprofit group that administers the Florida Tax Credit Scholarship for low-income students, and he’s currently serving on the education transition team for Florida’s Republican Gov.-elect Rick Scott. In Florida, Republicans control the governor’s mansion and the Legislature, and their voices once stood apart from Democrats in the support over school choice. But times have changed, and now, as Kirtley points out, nearly half the Democrats and the majority of the legislative Black Caucus in Florida support the tax credit scholarship. Continue Reading →

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Brookings: Stop shortchanging charter schools

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On December 16, 2010 in Charter Schools, General

The newest report on charter schools comes from a think tank that opens its executive summary with the following sentence, “Charter schools offer choice to parents who would otherwise be constrained to having their children attend a residentially assigned traditional public school.” This isn’t market-driven ideology from a libertarian institute. This comes straight from the center-left Brookings Institution, which is calling on the federal government to take the lead in promoting policies that stop shortchanging charter schools.

The institution’s Brown Center on Education Policy gathered seven scholars to study the federal government’s current role in charter policy. According to its report released today, the center found that the federal role is a “haphazard collection of laws, rules, funding preferences, and rhetoric that lacks coherence at the policy or action level.” There are now about 1.6 million students attending 4,900 charter schools in 39 states, the report shows, and those schools attract a disproportionate number of students eligible for a free or reduced-price lunch.

As if to underscore the growing political consensus over the role of charter schools in the nation’s public education system, the Brookings Institution draws a conclusion that could just as easily be mistaken for the conservative Heritage Foundation: “Charter schools are by definition schools of choice. The promise of education choice includes improving quality and efficiency through competition among schools, enhancing opportunity for students of low-income families who may otherwise be trapped in ineffective schools, and spurring innovation. But the promise of choice in public education is constrained by the quality and timeliness of information on school performance that is available to parents.” Continue Reading →

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One legend’s call to today’s civil rights leaders: Erase the lines we have drawn in the past

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On December 15, 2010 in Achievement Gap, Charter Schools, General, School Choice

After listening recently to RiShawn Biddle’s podcast calling on civil rights leaders to change their approach to education reform, I was reminded of an unpublished column written by one Florida legend in the civil rights movement, the Rev. H.K. Matthews. Matthews shared the commentary with me and others after several civil rights groups last summer demanded that President Obama reconsider the core elements of his education agenda, which included the expansion of charter schools and the closure of consistently low-performing schools. These iconic groups, which included the NAACP and the National Urban League, had good intentions in presenting their education policy framework, but Matthews found their arguments irrelevant today. Their call for equal opportunity, he wrote, was “limited by some familiar boundaries of generations past – those of neighborhood and family income.”

Matthews, whose story is chronicled in the biography Victory After the Fall,  marched with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in Selma, Ala., and was jailed 35 times for his many protests of segregated lunch counters in northwest Florida. In recent years, he has joined the call for more educational options for poor families, an effort he called “a natural extension of the civil rights movement.”  In this column, which has never seen publication until now, he asks his brethren to erase the lines we have drawn in the past:

The African-American leaders who convened in Washington last week [July] to call educational quality the “civil rights battle of this generation” have it at least half right. Unfortunately, their call for equal opportunity seems limited by some familiar boundaries of generations past– those of neighborhood and family income.

As President Obama put it: “What’s not working for black kids and Hispanic kids and Native American kids across this country is the status quo … What’s not working is what we’ve been doing for decades now.” Continue Reading →

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It’s time we redefine unionism for teachers, too

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On December 14, 2010 in Customization, General, Unionism

Former teacher union staffer and current Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa made news last week when he slammed the L.A. teachers union for being the “one unwavering roadblock to reform” in Los Angeles. According to the Los Angeles Times, Villaraigosa’s former union colleagues were furious at his “betrayal,” calling him a “turncoat.” But in the words of Harry Truman: “I never gave them hell. I just tell the truth and they think it’s hell.” Villaraigosa is correct. Teacher unions today are too conservative.

In the early 1960s, urban school districts were industrial factories controlled by political machines that were often more interested in maintaining political power than properly educating children. In response, teachers adopted a 1930s industrial model of unionism and began fierce political struggles for the right to collective bargaining. I joined those efforts in 1978 when I was elected president of a local Florida teachers union. I was proud when we finally won the right to bargain collectively in 1980 and I’m still proud of the improvements we achieved through organizing, bargaining and political action. But times have changed and unfortunately my former union colleagues aren’t keeping up.

Industrial-age unionism is no longer appropriate for a public education system that is abandoning the one-size-fits-all assembly line in favor of customized learning options. Teachers need a new unionism that uses collective power to promote individual teacher empowerment and embraces the innovations this empowerment will generate. Continue Reading →

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