The Forum for Education and Democracy has set out to distinguish between the myths and the facts around the turmoil in Wisconsin as thousands continue to march on the Capitol to oppose anti-union legislation. They ask their readers to rethink some of the myths that are circulating. We share their ideas about the myths with our readers to rethink also.
•Myth #1: Public employees in Wisconsin and elsewhere are overpaid. The truth is they’re probably underpaid when you factor in things like level of education. In Wisconsin, nearly 60 percent of public employees hold at least a four-year college degree – double the private sector workforce. That’s because many are teachers and other professionals. When you compare apples to apples, they earn 4.8 percent less than comparable private sector workers, according to the Economic Policy Institute.
•Myth #2: Public employees aren’t sacrificing their fair share. In the last round of bargaining in Wisconsin, the American Federation of Teachers alone offered more than $100 million in concessions in the form of higher health insurance premiums, furlough days and increased pension contributions. In Ohio, unions representing public employees gave back more than $200 million in concessions, essentially balancing the budget on their own backs.
•Myth #3: High employee benefits got us into this budget mess. Wisconsin was looking at a budget surplus until Republicans gave $117 million in business tax breaks. The reality is that the state is now facing a budget gap, but the gap is 13 percent of the budget. The average gap in other states is 20 percent, so things in Wisconsin are actually better than the norm.
•Myth #4: The state retirement system is in trouble. Again, Wisconsin is in a better position than many states. The $72 billion Wisconsin Retirement System is over 97 percent funded according to the Center of Retirement Research, a non-partisan think tank. By comparison, the fund in neighboring Illinois is only 52 percent funded.
•Myth #5: The governor has no other option. This is clearly not the case. The public employee unions have already said they will give him concessions to erase the budget gap – if he backs off his pledge to crush their bargaining rights. Also, Wisconsin and other states have large amounts of unspent stimulus funds that could be used to ease the burden. If ever there was a rainy day, this is it!
Showing posts with label Teachers. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Teachers. Show all posts
Wednesday, February 23, 2011
Tuesday, November 2, 2010
Do Teachers have Free Speech Rights? An Update on Recent Court Decisions
Readers will remember the article by author Sam Chaltain in our winter 2008 issue of the journal, entitled, "Ways of Seeing (and of Being Seen): Visibility in Schools." Sam has his own website and blog at: "Democracy,Learning,Voice." Check it out. Sam gave us permission to reprint his article on teachers' rights from his website.
Free Speech for Teachers? Think Again . . .
by Sam Chaltain
Reprinted by permission from Democracy, Learning, Voice.
In case you missed it, there was a major case last week involving the First Amendment rights of teachers to make curricular content decisions. And the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals’ ruling puts another nail in the coffin of the free-speech rights of public employees.
In the most recent case, an Ohio teacher’s contract was not renewed after controversy erupted over a few book assignments she made with her High School English class. As recently as a decade ago, the teacher may have had a legitimate chance in court (although not neccesarily). That’s because, prior to 2006, the U.S. Supreme Court evaluated public employee free-speech claims by using a test with two basic prongs. First, the court would determine whether the speech in question touches on a matter of public concern. If it did not, the teacher would receive no First Amendment protection whatsoever. If the speech did touch on a matter of public concern, the court would proceed to the balancing prong of the test, in which it would balance the teacher’s interest in commenting upon a matter of public concern against the school officials’ interest in promoting an efficient workplace of public service.
Prior to 2006, courts sometimes sided with school officials even though the public school teachers’ speech touched upon a matter of public concern. In one 2001 case, for example, the Eighth Circuit determined that a school principal did not violate the First Amendment rights of three teachers who were ordered to quit talking about the care and education of special needs students. Subsequent appeals in the case acknowledged that the teachers’ complaints about the lack of care for special needs students touched on matters of public concern. Nonetheless, the appeals court noted that the teachers’ speech “resulted in school factions and disharmony among their co-workers and negatively impacted [the principal's] interest in efficiently administering the middle school.”
Conversely, in 1993 the Eleventh Circuit reached a different conclusion in the case of Belyeu v. Coosa County Board of Education. In this decision, a teacher’s aide alleged that school officials failed to rehire her because of a speech she made about racial issues at a PTA meeting. The aide said the school should adopt a program to commemorate Black History month. Immediately after the meeting, the principal asked to speak with her and told her he wished she had raised this issue privately rather than publicly. A lower court determined that the speech clearly touched on a matter of public concern, but that the school system’s interest in avoiding racial tensions outweighed the aide’s right to free speech. On appeal, however, the Eleventh Circuit reversed, writing that the aide’s “remarks did not disrupt the School System’s function by enhancing racial division, nor, based on the nature or context of her remarks, was her speech likely to do so.”
This is all a precursor to 2006, however, when the U.S. Supreme Court effectively eliminated the free-speech rights of public employees in its 5-4 decision in Garcetti v. Ceballos. As my friend and former First Amendment Center colleague David Hudson explains, since Garcetti “public employers are able to defend themselves against allegations of retaliation by claiming that employees’ criticisms of government operations were made as part of their official duties.”
Indeed, a pattern has emerged in this post-Garcetti world, in which it has become almost impossible to mount a successful First Amendment lawsuit based on speech that relates to the workplace. In other words, a teacher who wishes to claim First Amendment protection for decisions about curricular content must do so knowing that the same protections s/he would be afforded as a private citizen will not apply to anything so directly related to his or her official duties.
Ironically, the 1969 case that is hailed as the high-water mark for student free-speech, Tinker v. Des Moines, features these lines: “It can hardly be argued that either students or teachers shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate. This has been the unmistakable holding of this Court for almost 50 years.”
No longer.
(Postscript: If you’re a junkie for First Amendment law, check out my three books on the subject, including answers to all of the most frequently asked questions as they pertain to First Amendment issues in schools.)
Sam Chaltain is a DC-based educator and organizational change consultant. Previously, he was the National Director of the Forum for Education & Democracy, an education advocacy organization, and the founding director of the Five Freedoms Project, a national program that helps K-12 educators create more democratic learning communities. Sam spent five years at the First Amendment Center as the co-director of the First Amendment Schools program. He came to the Center from the public school system of New York City, where he taught high school English and History. Sam also spent four years teaching the same subjects at a private school in Brooklyn.
Sam’s writings about his work have appeared in both magazines and newspapers, including the Washington Post, Education Week and USA Today. A periodic contributor to CNN and MSNBC, Sam is also the author or co-author of five books: The First Amendment in Schools (ASCD, 2003); First Freedoms: A Documentary History of First Amendment Rights (Oxford University Press, 2006); American Schools: The Art of Creating a Democratic Learning Community (Rowman & Littlefield, 2009); We Must Not Be Afraid to be Free: Stories Of Free Expression in America (Oxford, 2011); and Faces of Learning: 50 Powerful Stories of Defining Moments in Education (Jossey-Bass, 2011).
Free Speech for Teachers? Think Again . . .
by Sam Chaltain
Reprinted by permission from Democracy, Learning, Voice.
In case you missed it, there was a major case last week involving the First Amendment rights of teachers to make curricular content decisions. And the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals’ ruling puts another nail in the coffin of the free-speech rights of public employees.
In the most recent case, an Ohio teacher’s contract was not renewed after controversy erupted over a few book assignments she made with her High School English class. As recently as a decade ago, the teacher may have had a legitimate chance in court (although not neccesarily). That’s because, prior to 2006, the U.S. Supreme Court evaluated public employee free-speech claims by using a test with two basic prongs. First, the court would determine whether the speech in question touches on a matter of public concern. If it did not, the teacher would receive no First Amendment protection whatsoever. If the speech did touch on a matter of public concern, the court would proceed to the balancing prong of the test, in which it would balance the teacher’s interest in commenting upon a matter of public concern against the school officials’ interest in promoting an efficient workplace of public service.
Prior to 2006, courts sometimes sided with school officials even though the public school teachers’ speech touched upon a matter of public concern. In one 2001 case, for example, the Eighth Circuit determined that a school principal did not violate the First Amendment rights of three teachers who were ordered to quit talking about the care and education of special needs students. Subsequent appeals in the case acknowledged that the teachers’ complaints about the lack of care for special needs students touched on matters of public concern. Nonetheless, the appeals court noted that the teachers’ speech “resulted in school factions and disharmony among their co-workers and negatively impacted [the principal's] interest in efficiently administering the middle school.”
Conversely, in 1993 the Eleventh Circuit reached a different conclusion in the case of Belyeu v. Coosa County Board of Education. In this decision, a teacher’s aide alleged that school officials failed to rehire her because of a speech she made about racial issues at a PTA meeting. The aide said the school should adopt a program to commemorate Black History month. Immediately after the meeting, the principal asked to speak with her and told her he wished she had raised this issue privately rather than publicly. A lower court determined that the speech clearly touched on a matter of public concern, but that the school system’s interest in avoiding racial tensions outweighed the aide’s right to free speech. On appeal, however, the Eleventh Circuit reversed, writing that the aide’s “remarks did not disrupt the School System’s function by enhancing racial division, nor, based on the nature or context of her remarks, was her speech likely to do so.”
This is all a precursor to 2006, however, when the U.S. Supreme Court effectively eliminated the free-speech rights of public employees in its 5-4 decision in Garcetti v. Ceballos. As my friend and former First Amendment Center colleague David Hudson explains, since Garcetti “public employers are able to defend themselves against allegations of retaliation by claiming that employees’ criticisms of government operations were made as part of their official duties.”
Indeed, a pattern has emerged in this post-Garcetti world, in which it has become almost impossible to mount a successful First Amendment lawsuit based on speech that relates to the workplace. In other words, a teacher who wishes to claim First Amendment protection for decisions about curricular content must do so knowing that the same protections s/he would be afforded as a private citizen will not apply to anything so directly related to his or her official duties.
Ironically, the 1969 case that is hailed as the high-water mark for student free-speech, Tinker v. Des Moines, features these lines: “It can hardly be argued that either students or teachers shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate. This has been the unmistakable holding of this Court for almost 50 years.”
No longer.
(Postscript: If you’re a junkie for First Amendment law, check out my three books on the subject, including answers to all of the most frequently asked questions as they pertain to First Amendment issues in schools.)
Sam Chaltain is a DC-based educator and organizational change consultant. Previously, he was the National Director of the Forum for Education & Democracy, an education advocacy organization, and the founding director of the Five Freedoms Project, a national program that helps K-12 educators create more democratic learning communities. Sam spent five years at the First Amendment Center as the co-director of the First Amendment Schools program. He came to the Center from the public school system of New York City, where he taught high school English and History. Sam also spent four years teaching the same subjects at a private school in Brooklyn.
Sam’s writings about his work have appeared in both magazines and newspapers, including the Washington Post, Education Week and USA Today. A periodic contributor to CNN and MSNBC, Sam is also the author or co-author of five books: The First Amendment in Schools (ASCD, 2003); First Freedoms: A Documentary History of First Amendment Rights (Oxford University Press, 2006); American Schools: The Art of Creating a Democratic Learning Community (Rowman & Littlefield, 2009); We Must Not Be Afraid to be Free: Stories Of Free Expression in America (Oxford, 2011); and Faces of Learning: 50 Powerful Stories of Defining Moments in Education (Jossey-Bass, 2011).
Sunday, October 10, 2010
Norm's Notes: A teacher pushed to the edge
Norm's Notes: A teacher pushed to the edge
See also: Teacher’s Death Exposes Tensions in Los Angeles
N.Y.Times, November 9, 2010
See also: Teacher’s Death Exposes Tensions in Los Angeles
N.Y.Times, November 9, 2010
Monday, October 4, 2010
Time for a Serious National Conversation on the Public Purposes of our Schools: An Interview with Bill Ayers
Readers will find the interview with Bill Ayers from Truthout.org an interesting departure from the mainsteam media's superficial coverage of our national debate on school reform. We reprint it in its entirety with permission from Truthout.org. In his interview, Ayers talks about the public purposes of schooling -- something often left out of the economic and privatized goals that have dominated the national debate -- and the real social and human conditions that need to be addressed. For readers who would like to read the article we published by Bill Ayers in our special issue on "Schooling as if Democracy Matters," go to: "Singing in Dark Times."
Back to School: An Interview With Bill Ayers
Friday 01 October 2010
by: Maya Schenwar, Executive Director, t r u t h o u t Interview
Reprinted by permission from Truthout.org
As the 2010-2011 school year grumbled to a start - and millions of public school students settled into overcrowded, underfunded, under-resourced classrooms - I sat down in Chicago with education theorist and activist Bill Ayers to discuss true democracy, false reform and his latest book (co-authored with cartoonist Ryan Alexander-Tanner), "To Teach: The Journey in Comics." In an educational culture increasingly permeated by top-down marketplace values, Ayers, who taught primary school for years, still believes in the possibility of a schooliverse where every teacher is respected and every student is valued as a full human being, where collaborative learning and growth trump the school-eat-school "Race to the Top." And by the end of our conversation, I did, too.
Maya Schenwar: In "To Teach," you talk about how a good school is defined by good teachers. What do you think of this practice that's been circling the country, of "reconstituting" schools and firing all the teachers? Does that logic work?
Bill Ayers: Not at all - not even close.
Monday, July 12, 2010
An Impassioned Defense of Public Education: Diane Ravitch's Speech before the NEA
Below is a transcript of the speech by Diane Ravitch that was delivered before the 2010 Representative Assembly of the National Education Association. We reproduce it with her permission in its entirety to inform our readership.
Ravitch's new book,The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education, questions many of her earlier commitments as the Assistant Secretary of Education under the President George H. W. Bush. In her impassioned speech before the National Education Association, where she received its Friend of Education award, Ravitch takes a critical look at the state of today's educational reform movement, the consequences that have followed its implementation, and the betrayal of public education as the "backbone of this democracy."
Speech Delivered at the 2010 NEA Representative Assembly
by Diane Ravitch
Thank you, John Wilson. [Ed.: Dr. Ravitch points out that the transcript on the NEA website omitted her acknowledgement of Dennis Van Roekel as well as John Wilson.] Thank you, all my friends in the NEA. Thanks to all my new friends in Colorado and Massachusetts and California. Thank you so much, California. The first time I spoke about my book was before the NEA scholars group in October. But the first time I went public was in San Jose, California. Thank you.
Let me first thank you so sincerely for this honor. I accept it with humility, with gratitude, and with respect for the more than three million educators that it represents.
Next, I would especially like to thank Camille Zombro of San Diego. Without Camille and without her help and the help of teachers in San Diego, I could not have written chapter 4 of the book. Read it and you will see why.
Well, it’s kind of amazing that this convention is being held in New Orleans. I was, just a few minutes ago, interviewed by documentary filmmakers who said to me, “Well, don’t you know that New Orleans is proving a new model?” The new model consists of wiping out public education and firing the unions, and it’s spreading across the country. And I said, “God forbid.” I pointed out to them what we all used to know, which is that public education is the backbone of this democracy, and we cannot turn it over to privateers.
Since my book appeared in early March, I have started out on what I thought would be a conventional book tour, but it really has turned into a whistle-stop campaign. I have been to 40 different cities and districts. I have another 40 planned starting in September. I talked to union members, to school board members, to administrators, to left-wing think tanks, to right-wing think tanks. I have met with high-level White House staff. I have met with about 40 members of Congress. I would say that I have met so far about 20,000 teachers, and after today I think I am going to increase it to 30,000.
And in all of this time, aside from the right-wing think tanks, I haven’t seen met a single teacher who likes what’s happening? I haven’t met a single teacher who thinks that No Child Left Behind has been a success. I haven’t met a single teacher who thinks that Race to the Top is a good idea.
Wherever I went, I met teachers who understood that there is a rising tide of hostility to teachers, to the teaching profession, and to teachers’ unions. You see it almost daily in the national media, in Newsweek magazine with its dreadful cover story about firing teachers, and Time magazine with awful columns, and in the New York Times and the Washington Post and all of the major media.
And as I talk to teachers, by the end of my talk, I hear the same questions again and again: What can we do? How can we stop the attacks on teachers and on the teaching profession? Why is the media demonizing unions? Why does the media constantly criticize public schools? And why does it lionize charter schools? Why is Arne Duncan campaigning with Newt Gingrich? Why has the Obama Administration built its education agenda on the punitive failed strategies of No Child Left Behind?
And teachers want to know, as you want to know, who will stand up for public schools and their teachers? At every appearance that I’ve made, teachers would come up to me afterward and they would say to me, “Stand up for us. Speak for us. Be our voice wherever you go.” And I promised that I would, and I have.
I promised to speak out against No Child Left Behind. It’s a disaster. It has turned our schools into testing factories. Its requirement that 100 percent of students will be proficient by the year 2014 is totally unrealistic. Any teacher could have told them that. Thousands and thousands of schools have been stigmatized as failing schools because they could not reach a goal that no state, no nation, and no district has ever reached. By setting an impossible goal, No Child Left Behind has delegitimized public education and created a rhetoric of failure and paved the way for privatization.
I will continue to speak out against high-stakes testing. It undermines education. High-stakes testing promotes cheating, gaming the system, teaching to bad tests, narrowing the curriculum. High-stakes testing means less time for the arts, less time for history or geography or civics or foreign languages or science.
We see schools across America dropping physical education. We see them dropping music. We see them dropping their arts programs, their science programs, all in pursuit of higher test scores. This is not good education.
I have been told by some people in the Obama Administration that the way to stop the narrowing of the curriculum is to test everything. In fact, the chancellor in Washington, D.C., the other day announced she plans to do exactly that. That means less time for instruction, more time for testing, and a worse education for everyone.
In speaking out, I have consistently warned about the riskiness of school choice. Its benefits are vastly overstated. It undercuts public education by enabling charter schools to skim the best students in poor communities. As our society pursues these policies, we will develop a bifurcated system, one for the haves, another for the have-nots, and politicians have the nerve to boast about such an outcome.
Public schools, as I said before, are a cornerstone of our democratic society. If we chip away at support for them, we erode communal responsibility for a vital public institution.
Teachers are rightly worried about the Race to the Top. I pledged to keep asking again and again why a Race to the Top replaced equal educational opportunity. Equal educational opportunity is the American way. The race will have a few winners and a lot of losers. That’s what a race means.
Race to the Top encourages states to increase the number of privately managed charters, to pass laws to evaluate teachers by test scores, to promote merit pay, and to agree to close or privatize schools with low scores or to fire all or part of their staff. All of this is wrong.
And thank you for passing a resolution expressing no confidence in Race to the Top. Why expand the number of charters when research shows that on average they don’t get better results than regular public schools? Last year, a major evaluation showed that one out of every six charters will get better results, five out of six charters will get no different results or worse results than the regular public schools. A report released just a couple of weeks ago by Mathematica Policy Research once again shows charter middle schools do not get better results than regular public middle schools.
The National Assessment of Educational Progress, on whose board I served for seven years, has tested charter schools since 2003. In 2003, 2005, 2007 and 2009, charter schools were compared to regular public schools and have never shown an advantage over regular public schools. Charter schools, contrary to Bill Gates, are not more innovative than regular public schools. The business model and methods of charter schools is this — longer school days, longer hours, longer weeks, and about 95 percent of charter schools are non-union.
Teachers are hired and fired at will. Teachers work 50, 60, 70 hours a week. They are expected to burn out after two or three years when they can be replaced. No pension worries, no high salaries. This is not a template for American education.
If we pursue the path of privatization and deregulation, we better keep in mind what happened with the stock market in 2008. And to those who tout the benefits of vouchers and charters, I want you to point out this example to them, of Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Milwaukee has had charters and vouchers now for almost 20 years. Twenty years with vouchers, almost 20 years with charters.
They have seen a steadily declining enrollment in the public schools, and meanwhile research now shows that African-American students in Milwaukee, the supposed beneficiary of all of this choice, have test scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress, test scores that are below those of their African-American peers in Mississippi and Louisiana.
There was no rising tide. Choice promoted no rising tide, and no boats were lifted. While all of this money was invested in choice, there were no benefits to the students.
The Race to the Top plan to use test scores to evaluate teachers is a very bad idea, badly implemented. Legislatures should not decide how to evaluate teachers.
SB6 was wrong in Florida. Thank you to the Florida Education Association and to all the parents and friends who stood with you who defeated that pernicious piece of legislation. And thanks to you for persuading Governor Charlie Crist to do the right thing by vetoing it. Now you have got to make sure that whoever is the next governor will veto it again if it dares to come back again.
191 is wrong in Colorado. Sorry to say that it was passed. It was signed into law, and the teachers may stand to be fired because the test scores didn’t go up consistently. And these are matters that are, in many cases, beyond their control. Teachers should be judged by professional standards and not by a political process. Research does not support evaluating teachers by test scores.
Students are not randomly assigned to classes. Teachers’ so-called effectiveness fluctuates depending on which students happen to be in a teacher’s class. The single most reliable predictor of test scores is poverty, and poverty, in turn, is correlated to student attendance, to family support, and to the school’s resources.
And perhaps we should begin demanding that school districts be held accountable for providing the resources that schools need. Just like No Child Left Behind, Race to the Top requires and pressures districts to close low-performing schools. The overwhelming majority of low-performing schools enroll students in poverty and students who don’t speak English and students who are homeless and transient. Very often, these schools have heroic staffs who are working with society’s neediest children. These teachers deserve praise, not pink slips. Closing schools weakens communities. It’s not a good idea to weaken communities. No school was ever improved by closing it.
You know, a lot of teachers don’t pay attention to the national scene. They are busy teaching kids. They don’t pay attention to what’s happening in Washington. But when the Central Falls staff, the entire staff, was fired without a single teacher having an evaluation, the message went out that there is a new game of punishing teachers. And the message also went out when this was endorsed by Secretary Duncan and then reaffirmed by President Obama. This is not a good message.
We should thank our teachers, not fire them, not threaten them, and not close their schools.
Merit pay is another of the useless fads of our time. Merit pay has nothing to do with education. It destroys teamwork. It incentivizes teachers to compete with each other for money instead of collaborating for each other for the benefit of children.
Teachers need to share what they know and work towards one common goal — helping children and young people grow and develop. Merit pay will promote teaching to not very good tests. It may or may not improve scores, but it definitely will not improve education.
I have spoken out repeatedly to defend the right of teachers to join unions for their protection and the protection of the teaching profession. Teachers have a right to a collective voice in the political process. It’s the American way. I don’t see the Wall Street Journal or the Washington Post or the pundits complaining about the charter school lobby. I don’t see them complaining about the investment bankers lobby, or any other group that speaks on behalf of its members. Only teachers’ unions are demonized these days.
Currently, there is a campaign underway to eliminate tenure and seniority. To remove job protections from senior teachers would destroy the profession. Supervisors will save money by firing the most expensive teachers. Imagine a hospital staffed by residents and interns with no doctors. Bad idea.
Instead of the current wave of so-called reforms, we should ask ourselves how to deliver on our belief that every student in this nation should learn not only basic skills, but should have a curriculum that includes the arts, history, geography, civics, foreign languages, mathematics, science, physical education, and health. But instead of this kind of rich curriculum, all they are getting is a heavy dose of high-stakes testing and endless test preparation. And as the stakes increase for teachers and schools, there will be more emphasis on test prep and not what children need.
Policymakers have been far too silent about the role of the family. Teachers know that education begins at home, and that when families take responsibility, students are likely to arrive in school ready to learn. We need, not a Race to the Top, but a commitment to provide greater resources for those children who are in the greatest need. Schools and school districts continue to vary dramatically in their access to resources. The role of the federal government in education is to level the playing field, not to set off a competition for money. Nor do we expect the federal government to tell states and districts how to reform themselves based on the Chicago experience.
Around the world, those nations that are successful recognize that the best way to improve school is to improve the education profession. We need expert teachers, not a steady influx of novices.
We need experienced principals who are themselves master teachers. We do not need a wave of newcomers who took a course called “How to be a principal.” We need superintendents who are wise and experienced educators, not lawyers and businessmen.
The current so-called reform movement is pushing bad ideas. No high-performing nation in the world is privatizing its schools, closing its schools, and inflicting high-stakes testing on every subject on its children. The current reform movement wants to end tenure and seniority, to weaken the teaching profession, to silence teachers’ unions, to privatize large sectors of public education. Don’t let it happen!
So here’s a thought for NEA. Print up four million bumper stickers that say, “I am a public schoolteacher, and I vote — and so does my family.”
Do not support any political figure who opposes public education. Stand up to the attacks on public education. Don’t give them half a loaf, because they will be back the next day for another slice, and the day after that for another slice.
Don’t compromise. Stand up for teachers. Stand up public education, and say “No mas, no mas." Thank you.
Ravitch's new book,The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education, questions many of her earlier commitments as the Assistant Secretary of Education under the President George H. W. Bush. In her impassioned speech before the National Education Association, where she received its Friend of Education award, Ravitch takes a critical look at the state of today's educational reform movement, the consequences that have followed its implementation, and the betrayal of public education as the "backbone of this democracy."
Speech Delivered at the 2010 NEA Representative Assembly
by Diane Ravitch
Thank you, John Wilson. [Ed.: Dr. Ravitch points out that the transcript on the NEA website omitted her acknowledgement of Dennis Van Roekel as well as John Wilson.] Thank you, all my friends in the NEA. Thanks to all my new friends in Colorado and Massachusetts and California. Thank you so much, California. The first time I spoke about my book was before the NEA scholars group in October. But the first time I went public was in San Jose, California. Thank you.
Let me first thank you so sincerely for this honor. I accept it with humility, with gratitude, and with respect for the more than three million educators that it represents.
Next, I would especially like to thank Camille Zombro of San Diego. Without Camille and without her help and the help of teachers in San Diego, I could not have written chapter 4 of the book. Read it and you will see why.
Well, it’s kind of amazing that this convention is being held in New Orleans. I was, just a few minutes ago, interviewed by documentary filmmakers who said to me, “Well, don’t you know that New Orleans is proving a new model?” The new model consists of wiping out public education and firing the unions, and it’s spreading across the country. And I said, “God forbid.” I pointed out to them what we all used to know, which is that public education is the backbone of this democracy, and we cannot turn it over to privateers.
Since my book appeared in early March, I have started out on what I thought would be a conventional book tour, but it really has turned into a whistle-stop campaign. I have been to 40 different cities and districts. I have another 40 planned starting in September. I talked to union members, to school board members, to administrators, to left-wing think tanks, to right-wing think tanks. I have met with high-level White House staff. I have met with about 40 members of Congress. I would say that I have met so far about 20,000 teachers, and after today I think I am going to increase it to 30,000.
And in all of this time, aside from the right-wing think tanks, I haven’t seen met a single teacher who likes what’s happening? I haven’t met a single teacher who thinks that No Child Left Behind has been a success. I haven’t met a single teacher who thinks that Race to the Top is a good idea.
Wherever I went, I met teachers who understood that there is a rising tide of hostility to teachers, to the teaching profession, and to teachers’ unions. You see it almost daily in the national media, in Newsweek magazine with its dreadful cover story about firing teachers, and Time magazine with awful columns, and in the New York Times and the Washington Post and all of the major media.
And as I talk to teachers, by the end of my talk, I hear the same questions again and again: What can we do? How can we stop the attacks on teachers and on the teaching profession? Why is the media demonizing unions? Why does the media constantly criticize public schools? And why does it lionize charter schools? Why is Arne Duncan campaigning with Newt Gingrich? Why has the Obama Administration built its education agenda on the punitive failed strategies of No Child Left Behind?
And teachers want to know, as you want to know, who will stand up for public schools and their teachers? At every appearance that I’ve made, teachers would come up to me afterward and they would say to me, “Stand up for us. Speak for us. Be our voice wherever you go.” And I promised that I would, and I have.
I promised to speak out against No Child Left Behind. It’s a disaster. It has turned our schools into testing factories. Its requirement that 100 percent of students will be proficient by the year 2014 is totally unrealistic. Any teacher could have told them that. Thousands and thousands of schools have been stigmatized as failing schools because they could not reach a goal that no state, no nation, and no district has ever reached. By setting an impossible goal, No Child Left Behind has delegitimized public education and created a rhetoric of failure and paved the way for privatization.
I will continue to speak out against high-stakes testing. It undermines education. High-stakes testing promotes cheating, gaming the system, teaching to bad tests, narrowing the curriculum. High-stakes testing means less time for the arts, less time for history or geography or civics or foreign languages or science.
We see schools across America dropping physical education. We see them dropping music. We see them dropping their arts programs, their science programs, all in pursuit of higher test scores. This is not good education.
I have been told by some people in the Obama Administration that the way to stop the narrowing of the curriculum is to test everything. In fact, the chancellor in Washington, D.C., the other day announced she plans to do exactly that. That means less time for instruction, more time for testing, and a worse education for everyone.
In speaking out, I have consistently warned about the riskiness of school choice. Its benefits are vastly overstated. It undercuts public education by enabling charter schools to skim the best students in poor communities. As our society pursues these policies, we will develop a bifurcated system, one for the haves, another for the have-nots, and politicians have the nerve to boast about such an outcome.
Public schools, as I said before, are a cornerstone of our democratic society. If we chip away at support for them, we erode communal responsibility for a vital public institution.
Teachers are rightly worried about the Race to the Top. I pledged to keep asking again and again why a Race to the Top replaced equal educational opportunity. Equal educational opportunity is the American way. The race will have a few winners and a lot of losers. That’s what a race means.
Race to the Top encourages states to increase the number of privately managed charters, to pass laws to evaluate teachers by test scores, to promote merit pay, and to agree to close or privatize schools with low scores or to fire all or part of their staff. All of this is wrong.
And thank you for passing a resolution expressing no confidence in Race to the Top. Why expand the number of charters when research shows that on average they don’t get better results than regular public schools? Last year, a major evaluation showed that one out of every six charters will get better results, five out of six charters will get no different results or worse results than the regular public schools. A report released just a couple of weeks ago by Mathematica Policy Research once again shows charter middle schools do not get better results than regular public middle schools.
The National Assessment of Educational Progress, on whose board I served for seven years, has tested charter schools since 2003. In 2003, 2005, 2007 and 2009, charter schools were compared to regular public schools and have never shown an advantage over regular public schools. Charter schools, contrary to Bill Gates, are not more innovative than regular public schools. The business model and methods of charter schools is this — longer school days, longer hours, longer weeks, and about 95 percent of charter schools are non-union.
Teachers are hired and fired at will. Teachers work 50, 60, 70 hours a week. They are expected to burn out after two or three years when they can be replaced. No pension worries, no high salaries. This is not a template for American education.
If we pursue the path of privatization and deregulation, we better keep in mind what happened with the stock market in 2008. And to those who tout the benefits of vouchers and charters, I want you to point out this example to them, of Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Milwaukee has had charters and vouchers now for almost 20 years. Twenty years with vouchers, almost 20 years with charters.
They have seen a steadily declining enrollment in the public schools, and meanwhile research now shows that African-American students in Milwaukee, the supposed beneficiary of all of this choice, have test scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress, test scores that are below those of their African-American peers in Mississippi and Louisiana.
There was no rising tide. Choice promoted no rising tide, and no boats were lifted. While all of this money was invested in choice, there were no benefits to the students.
The Race to the Top plan to use test scores to evaluate teachers is a very bad idea, badly implemented. Legislatures should not decide how to evaluate teachers.
SB6 was wrong in Florida. Thank you to the Florida Education Association and to all the parents and friends who stood with you who defeated that pernicious piece of legislation. And thanks to you for persuading Governor Charlie Crist to do the right thing by vetoing it. Now you have got to make sure that whoever is the next governor will veto it again if it dares to come back again.
191 is wrong in Colorado. Sorry to say that it was passed. It was signed into law, and the teachers may stand to be fired because the test scores didn’t go up consistently. And these are matters that are, in many cases, beyond their control. Teachers should be judged by professional standards and not by a political process. Research does not support evaluating teachers by test scores.
Students are not randomly assigned to classes. Teachers’ so-called effectiveness fluctuates depending on which students happen to be in a teacher’s class. The single most reliable predictor of test scores is poverty, and poverty, in turn, is correlated to student attendance, to family support, and to the school’s resources.
And perhaps we should begin demanding that school districts be held accountable for providing the resources that schools need. Just like No Child Left Behind, Race to the Top requires and pressures districts to close low-performing schools. The overwhelming majority of low-performing schools enroll students in poverty and students who don’t speak English and students who are homeless and transient. Very often, these schools have heroic staffs who are working with society’s neediest children. These teachers deserve praise, not pink slips. Closing schools weakens communities. It’s not a good idea to weaken communities. No school was ever improved by closing it.
You know, a lot of teachers don’t pay attention to the national scene. They are busy teaching kids. They don’t pay attention to what’s happening in Washington. But when the Central Falls staff, the entire staff, was fired without a single teacher having an evaluation, the message went out that there is a new game of punishing teachers. And the message also went out when this was endorsed by Secretary Duncan and then reaffirmed by President Obama. This is not a good message.
We should thank our teachers, not fire them, not threaten them, and not close their schools.
Merit pay is another of the useless fads of our time. Merit pay has nothing to do with education. It destroys teamwork. It incentivizes teachers to compete with each other for money instead of collaborating for each other for the benefit of children.
Teachers need to share what they know and work towards one common goal — helping children and young people grow and develop. Merit pay will promote teaching to not very good tests. It may or may not improve scores, but it definitely will not improve education.
I have spoken out repeatedly to defend the right of teachers to join unions for their protection and the protection of the teaching profession. Teachers have a right to a collective voice in the political process. It’s the American way. I don’t see the Wall Street Journal or the Washington Post or the pundits complaining about the charter school lobby. I don’t see them complaining about the investment bankers lobby, or any other group that speaks on behalf of its members. Only teachers’ unions are demonized these days.
Currently, there is a campaign underway to eliminate tenure and seniority. To remove job protections from senior teachers would destroy the profession. Supervisors will save money by firing the most expensive teachers. Imagine a hospital staffed by residents and interns with no doctors. Bad idea.
Instead of the current wave of so-called reforms, we should ask ourselves how to deliver on our belief that every student in this nation should learn not only basic skills, but should have a curriculum that includes the arts, history, geography, civics, foreign languages, mathematics, science, physical education, and health. But instead of this kind of rich curriculum, all they are getting is a heavy dose of high-stakes testing and endless test preparation. And as the stakes increase for teachers and schools, there will be more emphasis on test prep and not what children need.
Policymakers have been far too silent about the role of the family. Teachers know that education begins at home, and that when families take responsibility, students are likely to arrive in school ready to learn. We need, not a Race to the Top, but a commitment to provide greater resources for those children who are in the greatest need. Schools and school districts continue to vary dramatically in their access to resources. The role of the federal government in education is to level the playing field, not to set off a competition for money. Nor do we expect the federal government to tell states and districts how to reform themselves based on the Chicago experience.
Around the world, those nations that are successful recognize that the best way to improve school is to improve the education profession. We need expert teachers, not a steady influx of novices.
We need experienced principals who are themselves master teachers. We do not need a wave of newcomers who took a course called “How to be a principal.” We need superintendents who are wise and experienced educators, not lawyers and businessmen.
The current so-called reform movement is pushing bad ideas. No high-performing nation in the world is privatizing its schools, closing its schools, and inflicting high-stakes testing on every subject on its children. The current reform movement wants to end tenure and seniority, to weaken the teaching profession, to silence teachers’ unions, to privatize large sectors of public education. Don’t let it happen!
So here’s a thought for NEA. Print up four million bumper stickers that say, “I am a public schoolteacher, and I vote — and so does my family.”
Do not support any political figure who opposes public education. Stand up to the attacks on public education. Don’t give them half a loaf, because they will be back the next day for another slice, and the day after that for another slice.
Don’t compromise. Stand up for teachers. Stand up public education, and say “No mas, no mas." Thank you.
For an interesting interview with Diane Ravitch, see http://blog.ceaohio.org/wordpress/?p=997
Sunday, February 8, 2009
Where are Teachers' Voices in the National Education Debate?
From the Bellingham Herald http://www.bellinghamherald.com/291/story/786150.html
Print version - Sunday, February 8, 2009
Feb, 7, 2009
(Cross-posted on the Social Issues blog)
Where are teachers' voices in national education debate?
LORRAINE KASPRISIN / THE BELLINGHAM HERALD
Discussions surrounding the problems public schools face have become dichotomized in the national debate with teachers increasingly demonized and their professional expertise belittled and often ignored. The recent disagreements over the choice of a new Secretary of Education in the Obama administration along with the petitions that were circulated reveal the immense animosity and polarization of that debate.
Rather than a rational conversation on a direction for alleviating the problems that face the public schools, the problem has been presented as a great showdown between the forces of "good and evil." Even the mainstream media were not immune to this seduction. Newspapers and magazines like the New York Times and the New Republic have presented the decision over a new Secretary of Education as a battle between the "new reformers" and the "old establishment."
Who are the new reformers? Apparently from these publications, they are the outsiders who wish to see the schools privatized and turned into a commodity on the free market. They cry out for high-stakes testing, accountability measures, merit pay for teachers, vouchers, and the expansion of charter school experiments. Who is the "old establishment?" They are the teachers and their unions, the education schools who educate them, and the local school districts that represent the public. They are seen as advocates for things like more equitable funding and smaller class size.
Nowhere in this debate do we really hear the voice of teachers whose relationship with children, their parents and the community are carried out everyday on the grassroots level. Ultimately, it is their actions in the classroom with children, and the understanding they bring from their professional knowledge and experiences that will really make a difference in the achievement of children.
How do we reconstruct the public debate that brings in their voice? With this in mind, I would like to raise six questions for readers to consider if we are to redirect the public debate.
-- Why are individual teachers often acknowledged while teachers collectively often demonized?
The teachers union has been projected as a huge monolithic power structure that resists any reform on behalf of children. Unions, of course, are the mechanism that workers in our society have for a chance at equal participation in the power structure. Why are teachers as workers seen as such a threat to a schooling system of a capitalist society?
-- Why are professional expertise and training seen as a threat to reform?
Why can't we talk about the nature of the professional knowledge that is required to teach effectively in a multi-cultural, multi-racial democratic society that is constantly reinventing itself? How can the institutional structures that are politically set, and out of the control of teachers, be made to be more conducive with what teachers know about the developmental learning stages of their students? Without a serious conversation at this level, the charges and counter-charges are useless and banal.
-- Why does so much of the discussion on teacher incentives rely on a business or corporate model?
The assumption that if teachers receive merit pay, they will perform better has been repeated as an unexamined mantra throughout these debates. Of course, teachers should get more pay. But all teachers deserve a decent wage for what they do. Are teachers going to be more motivated because they earn more than the teachers down the hall? Perhaps, what inspires teachers' work is the support they receive, the respect they have earned, the opportunities to learn more from each other as part of their daily work, the collegiality with their colleagues in purposeful dialogue and goal setting, and the voice of the profession in decision-making over meaningful changes that will bring about real achievements for children.
John Goodlad, the longtime critic of American schools, has called this process "educational renewal" as opposed to "educational reform."
-- Why are experiments like new charter schools articulated in the public debate as the prerogative of one side only? In reality, many teachers across the nation participate in these initiatives and are part of these experiments.
-- Why is the high-stakes accountability movement allowed to appropriate and dominate the language of accountability?
In today's climate, to argue against high-stakes testing and its effects is seen as an argument against accountability itself and used as an example of the status-quo. Why can't we take a serious look at what accountability can and should entail as a moral responsibility to assure equal chances for all our students rather than success on a high-stakes test?
-- Why can't we openly and honestly discuss the class disparities in this country and the legitimate concerns of parents and communities over the achievement gaps in student populations without using it for exploitation and a pretext for privatization and corporate gains?
-- Why can't we openly and honestly debate the public purposes of schooling in America? If advocates for the privatization of schooling really want to take public education in this direction, then let's debate what that means for the future of this nation's public school experiment.
At the beginning of President Obama's new administration that harbingers change and collaboration, a new national conversation is needed that brings all voices to the table. The dichotomization, polarization, simplification, and demonization must give way to a new, more inclusive public conversation that includes the voice of teachers and their communities on a grassroots level.
Lorraine Kasprisin is a professor in the Woodring College of Education at Western Washington University. She is also president of the Educational Institute for Democratic Renewal and editor of "Journal of Educational Controversy."
Print version - Sunday, February 8, 2009
Feb, 7, 2009
(Cross-posted on the Social Issues blog)
Where are teachers' voices in national education debate?
LORRAINE KASPRISIN / THE BELLINGHAM HERALD
Discussions surrounding the problems public schools face have become dichotomized in the national debate with teachers increasingly demonized and their professional expertise belittled and often ignored. The recent disagreements over the choice of a new Secretary of Education in the Obama administration along with the petitions that were circulated reveal the immense animosity and polarization of that debate.
Rather than a rational conversation on a direction for alleviating the problems that face the public schools, the problem has been presented as a great showdown between the forces of "good and evil." Even the mainstream media were not immune to this seduction. Newspapers and magazines like the New York Times and the New Republic have presented the decision over a new Secretary of Education as a battle between the "new reformers" and the "old establishment."
Who are the new reformers? Apparently from these publications, they are the outsiders who wish to see the schools privatized and turned into a commodity on the free market. They cry out for high-stakes testing, accountability measures, merit pay for teachers, vouchers, and the expansion of charter school experiments. Who is the "old establishment?" They are the teachers and their unions, the education schools who educate them, and the local school districts that represent the public. They are seen as advocates for things like more equitable funding and smaller class size.
Nowhere in this debate do we really hear the voice of teachers whose relationship with children, their parents and the community are carried out everyday on the grassroots level. Ultimately, it is their actions in the classroom with children, and the understanding they bring from their professional knowledge and experiences that will really make a difference in the achievement of children.
How do we reconstruct the public debate that brings in their voice? With this in mind, I would like to raise six questions for readers to consider if we are to redirect the public debate.
-- Why are individual teachers often acknowledged while teachers collectively often demonized?
The teachers union has been projected as a huge monolithic power structure that resists any reform on behalf of children. Unions, of course, are the mechanism that workers in our society have for a chance at equal participation in the power structure. Why are teachers as workers seen as such a threat to a schooling system of a capitalist society?
-- Why are professional expertise and training seen as a threat to reform?
Why can't we talk about the nature of the professional knowledge that is required to teach effectively in a multi-cultural, multi-racial democratic society that is constantly reinventing itself? How can the institutional structures that are politically set, and out of the control of teachers, be made to be more conducive with what teachers know about the developmental learning stages of their students? Without a serious conversation at this level, the charges and counter-charges are useless and banal.
-- Why does so much of the discussion on teacher incentives rely on a business or corporate model?
The assumption that if teachers receive merit pay, they will perform better has been repeated as an unexamined mantra throughout these debates. Of course, teachers should get more pay. But all teachers deserve a decent wage for what they do. Are teachers going to be more motivated because they earn more than the teachers down the hall? Perhaps, what inspires teachers' work is the support they receive, the respect they have earned, the opportunities to learn more from each other as part of their daily work, the collegiality with their colleagues in purposeful dialogue and goal setting, and the voice of the profession in decision-making over meaningful changes that will bring about real achievements for children.
John Goodlad, the longtime critic of American schools, has called this process "educational renewal" as opposed to "educational reform."
-- Why are experiments like new charter schools articulated in the public debate as the prerogative of one side only? In reality, many teachers across the nation participate in these initiatives and are part of these experiments.
-- Why is the high-stakes accountability movement allowed to appropriate and dominate the language of accountability?
In today's climate, to argue against high-stakes testing and its effects is seen as an argument against accountability itself and used as an example of the status-quo. Why can't we take a serious look at what accountability can and should entail as a moral responsibility to assure equal chances for all our students rather than success on a high-stakes test?
-- Why can't we openly and honestly discuss the class disparities in this country and the legitimate concerns of parents and communities over the achievement gaps in student populations without using it for exploitation and a pretext for privatization and corporate gains?
-- Why can't we openly and honestly debate the public purposes of schooling in America? If advocates for the privatization of schooling really want to take public education in this direction, then let's debate what that means for the future of this nation's public school experiment.
At the beginning of President Obama's new administration that harbingers change and collaboration, a new national conversation is needed that brings all voices to the table. The dichotomization, polarization, simplification, and demonization must give way to a new, more inclusive public conversation that includes the voice of teachers and their communities on a grassroots level.
Lorraine Kasprisin is a professor in the Woodring College of Education at Western Washington University. She is also president of the Educational Institute for Democratic Renewal and editor of "Journal of Educational Controversy."
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