England's coalition government has decided to allow groups of interested people – including parents, charities, universities, businesses, teachers, or educational groups – to apply to establish their own schools. According to the Department for Education, these schools are “non-profit making, independent, state-funded schools. There is not a ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach. They are not defined by size or location: there is not a single type of Free School or a single reason for setting them up.”
The ostensible unifying factor is that all of the schools are set up in response to local demand for more school choice, and for schools that reflect the needs and desires of local communities. The first 24 free schools opened in England this past September.
In developing this idea, the coalition government looked to two specific models: the free school movement in Sweden, and charter schools in the United States (in particular, the Knowledge is Power Program). Like US charter schools, free schools receive public funding but do not have to conform to the strictures that normal public schools must adhere to. They are largely free to determine their curriculum, they do not have to report to local education authorities (which perform similar functions as school boards do here), they can set their own pay and conditions for staff without having to worry about collective agreements, and they are able to hire teachers who do not actually have teaching credentials. The Department for Education argues that charter schools in the US have “shown how particular schools with these freedoms, coupled with inspirational teachers and leaders, can have a huge impact on academic performance and the numbers of pupils staying on in education.”
However, not everyone is altogether certain that US charter schools have been an unqualified success story. Research has shown that their effectiveness has been mixed, at best. While some charter schools have undoubtedly served some students (including minority and at-risk students) extremely well, some regular public schools have done the same; and some charter schools perform no better - or, indeed, worse – than their regular public school counterparts. A recent Answer Sheet blog post explores the research on charter schools:
Charter schools do exist in Canada, but only in the province of Alberta. In an informational brochure on the subject, the Alberta Teachers’ Association argues that
“the establishment of charter schools has meant that neighbourhood schools are left with less funding to educate higher-risk, harder-to-teach, higher-cost students. By encouraging the formation of charter schools, governments divert funding away from the public education system. Establishing charter schools allows governments to cater to the demands of narrowly focused, highly vocal, special interest groups. In the end, charter schools provide governments with an excuse to avoid implementing meaningful reforms that would enhance the quality of learning for the broader community.”
Swedish free schools have not been exempt from scrutiny, either. Unlike free schools in England, Swedish free schools are allowed to operate on a for-profit basis. According to a recent article in The Guardian, SNS, a business-funded Swedish think tank, has released a report that counters its typical pro-market viewpoints by arguing that the privately-operated free schools have “increased segregation and may not have improved educational standards at all.”
The Swedish minister of education, Jan Björkland, is planning to launch a parliamentary inquiry into free schools and school competition. He is quoted in the Guardian article as saying, “Loopholes in the legislation have meant that free schools can elect not to have a library, student counselling and school nurses.” Furthermore, “as they get just as much money as the municipal schools, the owners have been able to withdraw the surplus.” Perhaps most tellingly, the author of the SNS report says that although many municipal schools in Sweden are “horrendously bad,” “the difference between the free schools and the municipal schools is that the free schools actually have a profit incentive to reduce quality.”
(The SNS report is available here; however, it is only available in Swedish. Google Translate might come in handy. The Vlachos section begins on page 66.)
Other questions have been raised about Swedish free schools. In April 2010, the Times Educational Supplement reported that Ann-Christin Larsson, a senior officer with the teachers’ union Laraforbundet, said that the increased school competition created by free schools quashed the incentive to come up with new pedagogical ideas, and that free schools also increased segregation, as students in free schools tend to come from wealthier, better-educated families.
Recent research from Rebecca Allen, a Senior Lecturer at London University’s Institute of Education, found that Sweden “has fewer reasons to be concerned that a free school system will produce greater school stratification since the country’s lower levels of income and skill inequalities mean there is far less need for parents to choose schools based on social composition.” However, she also found that free schools have so far failed to transform educational attainment in Sweden.
In the UK, concerns about free schools have been articulated by the various teachers’ unions there. From the National Union of Teachers (NUT):
"The NUT opposes Free schools. We believe it is wrong that state funding should be given to small groups of individuals to run schools that are unaccountable to their local communities. In Sweden, where the Free Schools policy originated, three quarters of Free Schools are run by profit-making companies and there is clear evidence that they have resulted in segregation. The evidence on US charter schools is no better. We believe that Free Schools:
- are an attack on teachers' professional status
- will undermine national pay and conditions for teachers;
- will undermine local authorities;
- will break up common admission arrangements;
- will damage local democratic planning of school places;
- will redirect hundreds of millions of pounds that would be better spent on supporting existing schools."
Many see free schools as a sign of creeping school privatization. While they cannot be run for-profit in England (as they are in Sweden), their day-to-day operations can be delegated to for-profit companies, like Swedish free school chains Kunskapsskollan and Internationella Engelska Skolan.
Last week, The Guardian reported that the new free schools in England are “failing to take their fair proportion of pupils from low-income homes, when compared with neighbouring schools,” in spite of the government’s claim that free schools empower working-class families.
More on free schools from UK teachers' unions:
An organization called the Anti Academies Alliance has also outlined an argument against free schools:
Incidentally, the use of the word “crisis” in the title of Hamer's blog post ought to raise a few eyebrows. Many observers of BC’s education system might be surprised to hear that we face an education crisis. Recent PISA rankings put Canada near the top of the pack internationally, and BC students fare well compared to students in other provinces across the country. A Conference Board of Canada report card also recently ranked Canada second in education out of seventeen peer nations. Furthermore, a 2010 Statistics Canada report finds that Canada is one of the few PISA countries that demonstrate both high performance and high equity; its overall scores are high while the gaps between the highest and lowest performing students are low, indicating a high level of equity in educational outcomes. Canada is clearly no slouch when it comes to delivering a solid education to its students. In the introduction to BC’s new Education Plan, Minister of Education George Abbott writes,
“We’re starting from a strong position: motivated and talented students, outstanding teachers, committed parents, skilled administrators and dedicated education partners. We are also fortunate to live in a province that values education and gives young people opportunities to excel.”
The question remains – why should anyone in British Columbia be looking to the US, the UK, or Sweden for educational models? Canada consistently out-ranks these countries in international measures of educational success. None of this is to say that the education system in BC is perfect, or that it cannot be improved - but claims of a “crisis” in BC education seem overblown, to say the very least.
]]>Dispatch from Michigan: Urgent. 'All hell is breaking out here.'
In it, Quinn describes the increasingly dire situation facing Michigan public school teachers. He writes,
As you already know, Michigan has been under assault all year long. It began with the passage of the Emergency Financial Manager package, continued with the taxing of pensions for retirees, and culminated in the defunding of almost a billion dollars of education funding from K-12 schools; in exchange for $1.8 billion in corporate tax cuts. . .
This summer we also saw the attacks intensify with a tenure 'reform' package that eliminated due process and just cause for dismissals, eliminated seniority, added a list of prohibited subjects of bargaining, and imposed an evaluation system that will require 50% of a teacher's evaluation be based on test scores. . . .
And last week, the Governor signed Senate Bill 7 which requires all education professionals and municipal employees to pay 20% of their health care, regardless of income or previous concessions to keep health care for members. Eventually, health care will cost some support professionals more than they take home in salary. Insane!
The attacks on public education intensified this week with yet another package of bills designed to erode democratically elected school boards, increase privatization, and destroy collective bargaining rights for workers.
The package of bills unleashed this week will do the following: allow for the privatization of all educators, removes the 150 charter school cap, allows community colleges to charter in Detroit, expands 'cyber' schools and seat time requirements for students, creates and defines 'conversion' charter schools (parents can petition for their school to be a charter school), expands the list of services that public schools can provide to parochial schools, and expands schools of choice.
In addition there are bills that were introduced this week which prohibit districts from deduction of union dues, and that create a third tier of retirement where new hires will only be allowed to be part of a defined contribution plan (eliminating pensions from employees hired after July 2011). . . .
And on Thursday, it was reported that Senate Majority Leader Randy Richardville plans to introduce something called 'Right to Teach' which is a right to work law aimed just at teachers.
A "right to teach" law would make teacher membership in the Michigan Education Association voluntary rather than mandatory. No bill has been proposed yet, but one is expected this fall.
Senate Majority Leader Randy Richardville also supports pending legislation that would prohibit school districts from taking union dues out of teacher paychecks. The Michigan state House of Representatives passed a comparable bill today on a 55-53 vote; it now heads to the state Senate.
Richardville has commented on what he terms "Freedom to Teach" legislation on his website. Money going to union dues, he argues, "belongs to the teacher that earned it. It is up to them to contribute based on personal choice, not because the school district extracts it from paychecks and deposits it in the hands of the union bosses." He then goes on to acknowledge the sacrifices that teachers in Michigan have recently been forced to make - "salary reductions, concessions, paying more in health care costs, and in some cases, lay-offs." These changes (all of which have come at the hands of Republican legislators) embolden Richardville to claim that this new proposal will benefit teachers by making sure that they get to keep more of their salary. Furthermore, he argues that this rather unabashed attempt at union-busting "is truly a reform to help middle-class families keep more of their hard-earned money."
The Michigan Education Association has posted a response to Richardville's position on their website. MEA President Steven Cook states, "That any lawmaker would so willfully use their power to attack a group of people for exercising their constitutional rights to free speech and participation in the democratic process is unconscionable."
In his September 9th "Weekly Message," Cook outlines the raft of education reform legislation recently proposed by the state Senate, and responds to Richardville's stance on "right to teach."
The lead researcher, Dr. Janet Mort, wrote that, "in my 40 years as an educator I have not witnessed a major education change so enthusiastically implemented by both teachers and administrators." The report describes the hurdles faced in implementing the program, the successes enjoyed, and makes recommendations for parents, teachers, administrators and school districts as full day kindergarten goes forward.
]]>According to Mother Jones, the legislation "would allow public school districts to hire teachers through private, for-profit companies. Privatizing the hiring process would presumably allow school districts to bypass compensation packages sought by teachers unions and let private companies compete for contracts with districts."
]]>The National Conference of State Legislatures has produced an online collective bargaining and labor union legislation database, which you can use to search for current collective bargaining or labor union-related bills by state or by topic.
On Tuesday, a bill that will restrict the collective bargaining rights of teachers in Indiana was approved by the state Senate and passed on to the desk of Governor Mitch Daniels, who is almost certain to sign it into law.
This is only the first part of Daniels' ambitious and aggressive school reform agenda, which also includes an expansion of charter schools, tax breaks for parents who send their children to private schools, and a merit pay plan for teachers.
The Tyee has joined the ranks of those wondering if Canada might be next in line for a Wisconsin-style attack on union rights.
]]>Also, news that the Koch brothers, who have had much to do with funding and supporting Tea Party politics in the U.S., may be trying to influence politics in Alberta and Ontario:
Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels eliminated collective bargaining rights for state workers on his first day of office in 2005. The right-to-work bill was yet another attack on public sector unions and would have made it very difficult for unions to organize in Indiana.
Though he supported the idea behind the bill, Governor Daniels had urged Republican legislators to drop the proposal because he was worried that it might derail the rest of his legislative agenda. Although the Republicans obliged, the Democrats remained out of the state, "saying that the Daniels agenda (including an aggressive school reform program that will grant private school vouchers to public school students across the state) needs to be changed before they'll come back to Indiana and let the legislative calendar roll on."
Daniels has faced harsh criticism from the anti-union right wing in Indiana, who believe that he has been too soft on the missing Democratic legislators and did not do enough to push the right-to-work legislation. The National Right to Work Committee, whose basic philosophy is that, "No one should be forced to pay tribute to a union in order to get or keep a job," took out an ad in Indiana newspapers accusing Daniels and Indiana state House Speaker Brian Bosma of "selling out."
Democrats are characterizing their return to Indiana as a victorious one, even though they "obtained concessions that amount to far less than the death of 11 bills, which is what they originally sought." They did, however, force at least three Republican-backed measures to be significantly scaled back, including the elimination of the right-to-work bill, a concession on the school voucher bill, and changes to labour provisions in House Bill 1216, which has to do with government construction projects.
House Minority Leader B. Patrick Bauer said in a statement, "The timeout forced by Democrats gave Hoosiers an opportunity to examine the radical agenda being attempted in Indiana and to speak out. We've protected working people from a march to the minimum wage. We've protected collective bargaining rights for Hoosier workers and teachrs. We've softened the blow to public schools and prevented passage of a bill for the private takeover of public schools. This timeout gave millions of Hoosiers a real voice in their state government."
Meanwhile, in Alaska, Representative Carl Gatto, a Republican, has proposed a bill modeled on the anti-union legislation in Wisconsin, which would bar public employees from bargaining for anything but wages. State Representative Berta Gardner, a Democrat, alluded to the fight in Wisconsin when she quipped that "If the Democrats flee here, we'll have to go to Canada."
]]>On March 18th, a Wisconsin judge ruled that the tactics used by Republicans to pass the anti-union bill in the absence of the 14 Senate Democrats violated the state's open-meetings law, thereby temporarily putting a stop to the legislation. The judge also barred Secretary of State Doug La Follette from publishing the law in the Wisconsin State Journal, which is the official publication that informs the public of new laws. Typically, a law must be published in the Journal within ten days of its approval in the legislature, and it comes into full effect a day after this publication.
Now, in apparent defiance of this ruling, Republicans have had the bill published anyway, though through a different channel. On Friday, the Legislative Reference Bureau published the law "according to the LRB's statutory requirement to publish legislation within ten days of enactment." While the LRB has stated that their publication of the law should not actually put it into effect, state Republicans insist that the opposite is true.
At this point, there seems to be some confusion as to whether or not the law is actually in effect. The Secretary of the state's Department of Administration, Mike Huebsch, said in a written statement, "the Department of Administration will begin the process of implementing (the law) as we are required to do the day after a bill is lawfully published." Secretary of State La Follette, however, maintains that the bill must be published by his office in the Wisconsin State Journal in order to take effect, something that has yet to happen. Over the weekend, La Follette said, "At this point, we wait until Monday to see if the Supreme Court decides to do anything. We wait until Tuesday for the trial judge to hold a hearing, which is scheduled for 8:30 a.m. Beyond that, I don't know." However, on Sunday Governor Walker's administration stopped collecting dues on behalf of state unions and began charging employees more for their health care and pensions.
There are currently three lawsuits pending against the legislation.
]]>"Teachers have already gotten the message that the public and policy makers do not trust them. The only talk now about increasing teachers' pay is to raise the pay of superior teachers, and that is in the context of firing poor-performing teachers. There is no talk of raising teachers' pay across the board. Indeed, it is clear to teachers that, if they lose their unions in this hour of state and municipal fiscal crises, they will have no protection at all in the face of enormous pressure on state and local officials to make massive cuts in teachers jobs, compensation and benefits.
Teachers know that now is when they need their unions more than ever. A determined widespread effort to weaken or destroy the only institution most teachers are counting on to protect them economically will confirm that message and force them into retirement or into the bunker where they will hunker down, and wait in brooding resentment for a change in the political weather.
...
Even if one has concluded that the current crop of teachers is generally of poor quality and must go - a conclusion I have heard no one utter - one would still have to ask where, exactly, a new crop of superior teachers is supposed to come from. The nation is doing nothing to recruit and train teachers on the needed scale who could lay any claim to be superior in any way to those already teaching. So if the current policy consists in the main of forcing the unions to the wall, that is a plicy that is almost certain to lead to no improvement in the qualifications of teachers as well as a broad decline in the morale of the teachers we already have. In fact, further eroding the morale of our current teaching workforce will prove a very effective deterrent to recruiting capable young people to teach in our schools."
(Marc Tucker, "Teachers, Their Unions and the American Education Reform Agenda," NCEE, March 2011)
]]>The story is not over yet - recall efforts will most likely be launched against a number of Republican senators and against Walker, once he is eligible for recall next year. Court cases are also a possibility, as many believe aspects of the Republican's legislative maneuvering was illegal.
If there is a silver lining to all of this, it is that the labour movement in the U.S. has been galvanized, and support for public unions may have increased since the Wisconsin protests started a few weeks ago. The Democratic Party in Wisconsin is also newly energized - in the 24 hours after the State Assembly voted for Walker's bill, the state party received $360,000 in contributions and welcomed streams of volunteers to help collect signatures for recall bids.
]]>Two major reform bills have just passed the state legislature in Idaho and now await the governor's signature. The first eliminates most collective bargaining rights for teachers, while the second establishes a teacher merit pay system. There is no funding for the second bill, however, and the House Majority Leader, Republican Mike Moyle, has said, "I think we'll be back a year from now, trying to figure out why we're lowering teacher salaries to pay for 'pay for performance,' and I don't think that's good."
In Missouri, bills in the House and Senate would eliminate teacher tenure, get rid of minimum salaries for teachers with master's degrees or ten years of experience, and would introduce a four-tiered pay system based on student test scores. The four tiers would be implemented in each school regardless of how good the scores are - some teachers will necessarily end up in the fourth tier, even if their students' scores are high relative to the rest of the state.
And in California, Senate Bill 355, if passed, will eliminate seniority-based layoffs in favour of performance-based layoffs and will establish a teacher evaluation system based partly on student test scores.
]]>We Are Wisconsin from Finn Ryan on Vimeo.
The second - cars in the state's Capitol Square a couple of hours after last night's Senate vote, honking to the rhythm of "This is what democracy looks like."
However, in rather startling news, Republicans in the state Senate voted 18-1 last night to pass an amended bill that still includes provisions that limit collective bargaining rights and require state workers to pay more into their pensions and health insurance premiums.
They were able to vote on this bill because the three-fifths quorum is only needed for bills that appropriate funds. All of the fiscal provisions have been taken out of the amended bill, allowing the nineteen Republican senators to push a vote through.
Protesters flooded back into the Capitol building last night:
The motives of Scott Walker and the Wisconsin Republicans are once again called into question by this move. Walker's original rationale for taking collective bargaining rights away from public employees was as a necessary means of improving the fiscal situation in the state. Without any fiscal provisions in the bill, it seems clearer than ever that this is an ideologically-motivated fight against unions. Timothy Cullen, one of the Democratic senators, said, "To pass this the way they did - without 20 senators - is to say that it has no fiscal effect. It's admitting that this is simply to destroy public unions."
This afternoon, the State Assembly voted 53-42 to pass the amended bill. It now moves on to Governor Walker, who has promised to sign it into law as soon as possible. Walker released a statement yesterday to voice his support for the tactics of the Republican senators:
"The Senate Democrats have had three weeks to debate this bill and were offered repeated opportunities to come home, which they refused. In order to move the state forward, I applaud the Legislature's action today to stand up to the status quo and take a step in the right direction to balance the budget and reform government. The action today will help ensure Wisconsin has a business climate that allows the private sector to create 250,000 new jobs."
The fourteen Democratic senators are still out of the state. Republicans in the Senate voted last week to fine the Democrats $100 for each day that they are gone, but MoveOn.org has so far raised over $100,000 to help them as they continue to battle Walker's bill.
Watch Rachel Maddow's recap of last night's events:
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In Wisconsin, Governor Scott Walker has announced his two-year budget plan, which cuts $1.5 billion in funding to public schools and local governments. In the plan, Walker's anti-union collective bargaining legislation must be enacted in order to avoid widespread layoffs and employee furloughs.
Walker continues to threaten the fourteen absent Democratic State Senators with the promise of layoffs for about 1,500 public employees later in the week if the senators continue to refuse to return to Wisconsin. State Senator Jon Erpenbach, a Democrat, "expressed frustration that the governor had not done more to acknowledge that the state's major public employee unions had agreed to sizable cuts in workers' take-home pay - 6 percent to 8 percent on average - by diverting more of their paychecks to pay for health care and pension plans." The fact that unions have acceded to the governor's financial demands have led many to speculate that Walker's anti-union legislation has much more to do with politics than with money. About 60 protesters remain camped inside the Capitol, but authorities began yesterday to prohibit additional protesters from entering the building.
Republican State Senators in Ohio have put forth a revised version of their public employee unions bill, which would now preserve collective bargaining but would prevent public employees from striking. Democratic legislators "said it did not appear to include enough modifications to win their support." The State Senate could vote on the bill as early as tomorrow.
And more states are considering anti-union legislation:
In Kansas, House Bill 2130 would prohibit unions from using "dues, fees, or any kind of deduction from a member's paycheck for the purpose of engaging in political activities." The bill would also ban public employee organizations from endorsing political candidates.
Kansas is already a right to work state, a state in which it is illegal to make employment conditional upon union membership, and a state where union members cannot be compelled "to provide financial support to political causes and candidates." House Bill 2130 goes farther by barring union members from making voluntary payroll deductions to union political action committees.
In Missouri, a House committee is considering legislation that would compel "unions to get written permission from their members before deducting dues from their paychecks." According to an Associated Press article, the bill would require employees "to sign a form each year that gives their employer permission to make the deductions. That requirement would be combined with legislation sponsored by House Speaker Pro Tem Shane Schoeller that also would demand that workers sign a form every year authorizing a union to use any money from their paychecks for political purposes."
The House Labor Committee in Iowa has passed House Study Bill 117, which "makes numerous changes to collective bargaining laws, ranging from allowing the legislature or governor to veto decisions made by an arbitrator to denying unions the ability to negotiate their health insurance or retirement plans. Restrictions or limitations on outsourcing would be lifted, and unions would no longer have any say regarding layoffs. The bill also allows employees to become 'free agents,' who can negotiate their terms of employment directly with employers even if they are in a union shop." The bill now goes to the full House for debate. It is very unlikely that House Democrats will let the bill pass as-is.
A bill that would turn Minnesota in a "right to work" state was proposed in January but is currently stalled in that state's House of Representatives. The bill would prohibit unions "from requiring prospective employees to join or pay dues."
And finally, the Puerto Rican government recently fired every member of the teachers' union's executive committee from their teaching jobs and permanently revoked their teaching licenses.
A coalition of U.S. progressive groups has put together a television ad campaign featuring real protesters from Wisconsin talking about the impact that Scott Walker's proposed legislation would have on them. The ad will apparently reach about 57% of Wisconsin voters.
Another bill still in the Idaho Senate would increase class sizes in grades 4 to 12 to free up money to pay for the education reforms - including the merit pay plan, which will cost $38 million in its first year.
Legislative attacks on public sector unions continue around the United States:
In Wisconsin, Governor Scott Walker's proposed legislation would limit public sector collective bargaining to wages, exempt employees from paying union dues, and would require unions to conduct annual votes amongst their members to reaffirm their legitimacy. The bill has passed in the State Assembly, but the state's fourteen Democratic senators remain in hiding in Illinois, thereby preventing quorum and blocking a vote on the bill in the Senate.
In Indiana, Republican legislators have proposed bills that would ban collective bargaining by public employees and that would allow members of private sector unions to opt out of their union dues. The Senate has already passed a bill that limits teacher collective bargaining to wages and wage-related benefits, and another bill that links teacher evaluations to student test scores. Democratic legislators have also left Indiana in order to block quorum in the state House of Representatives.
In Ohio, "Senate Bill 5 would effectively end collective bargaining for state workers and allow hiring alternate workers during a strike. It would end binding arbitration, an option favored by the police and firemen, who are not allowed to strike." In this state, Republicans are in the majority in both the House of Representatives and the Senate, and there are not enough Democratic legislators to block quorum. Following protests by thousands of angry Ohioans last week, Republican Senate leaders agreed to change the bill to allow state workers to negotiate wages, but the bill now includes a provision banning strikes by public employees. More on Ohio here.
Protests against proposals for anti-union legislation are expected to spread to other states in the coming weeks. In Tennessee, Republicans are trying to pass legislation that would prevent teachers from bargaining with local school boards. Republicans in Michigan are also taking steps towards curbing union rights. And the House of Representatives in Oklahoma is considering a bill that would eliminate collective bargaining for municipal workers.
An alarming article in today's National Post posits that Canada might be next, thanks to the "growing backlash against the generous working conditions enjoyed by the public sector in Canada."
From Tuesday's Rachel Maddow Show - an overview of the protests, a debunking of the myth that states are in fiscal crises because of public sector unions, and a discussion of conservative attempts to capitalize on the financial crisis by weakening unions and shifting power to corporations:
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Other interesting findings:
The full report is available here.
]]>In the NEPC review, Jesse Rothstein finds that the MET conclusions about value-added are "unsupported" by their analyses. Not only is a teacher's value-added for a state test weakly related to his or her general effectiveness, but "many teachers whose value-added for one test is low are in fact quite effective when judged by the other." If MET's analyses of value-added are interpreted correctly, according to Rothstein, they "undermine rather than validate value-added-based approaches to teacher evaluation.
]]>"The Premier's Technology Council has long advocated that BC acknowledge this global shift and strive to become a knowledge-based society. ... Such a society is well educated, and relies on the knowledge of its citizens to drive the innovation, entrepreneurship and dynamism of that society's economy. More specifically, the economy will be 'directly based on the production, distribution and use of knowledge and information.' It is clear that the fabric of a knowledge-based society is built around skilled personnel. For individuals to fully participate in and contribute to such a society they need to acquire skills that will allow them to use information and continuously adapt to a rapidly changing globe." (7)
The stated purpose of this report is not to explain how any 21st century learning transformations to the current education system will be achieved. Instead, the PTC tried to imagine what a new 21st century learning system would look like if the province were able to start from scratch. The report does not include any recommendations, but it does contain slightly more detail on the vision for 21st century education in B.C. than anything we have seen so far.
More information about the Premier's Technology Council is here. Today's press release is available here.
UPDATE:
Janet Steffenhagen's blog post about this report can be found here. Also of interest are Stepan Vdovine's observations regarding the makeup of the PTC Council, which is largely composed of "corporate figures from the IT world."
]]>The New York Times recently published an article that notes the surging interest in the film, which, "with no advertising and little news media attention ... has become a must-see movie in communities where the kindergarten-to-Harvard steeplechase is most competitive."
Reviews of the film can be found here. (It is rather interesting to note that Oprah.com has published a positive review of the documentary.)
This time the slant on value-added is decidedly positive - the researchers "conclude that value-added data has an important role to play in teacher evaluation systems, but that there is much to be learned about how best to use value-added information in human resource decisions."
In British Columbia, the main weakness that CADDAC noted in the current operation of the system is the fact that "If the student with ADHD does not have a coexisting Learning Disability or does not display significant disruptive behaviour, they will not be identified." Therefore, students with ADHD but no diagnosed learning disability "may be excluded from receiving accomodations for their academic disabilities," which can encourage "educators to believe that ADHD is not a legitimate disability."
A related news story can be found here.
]]>
In the "Other Resources" section, the new documentary, "Waiting for Superman," gets a mention. I'm not entirely sure where the quoted blurb about the movie comes from, but the BCELC certainly seems to be adhering to the pro-"Superman" party line, and I wonder what the motivation was for the inclusion of this film on the BCELC's list of resources. The film does not seem to me to be particularly relevant to 21st Century Learning, especially 21st Century Learning in B.C. Perhaps it was included in this list simply due to the massive amounts of publicity that it has been getting, or to the fact that is going a long way towards shaping the dominant and accepted narrative of current education reform in the United States. Either way, it seems like a strange choice.
]]>Links to the executive summary, the press release, and commentary can be found here.
]]>The beginning of the video is notable for the critical voice of the public school teacher, who has a lot to say about the effectiveness of charter schools and merit pay for teachers. It's a dissenting opinion that hasn't been heard much in the national U.S. media of late. It is clear, however, that the moderator is none too impressed by the teacher's or Weingarten's arguments, and is very obviously in thrall to the ideas of the reformers on the panel.
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New Jersey Governor Chris Christie is also calling for an overhaul of the teacher compensation and teacher tenure systems in that state.
And just last week, one day after the release of the NCPI performance pay study, the Education Department announced that it would be handing out $442 million to school districts and nonprofit organizations around the United States to create merit pay programs for educators.
An overview of the efforts of some of the winners of the Education Department Teacher Incentive Fund money is available here.
And Diane Ravitch took a critical look at merit pay and its less than stellar track record in a recent blog post.
Rethinking Schools has launched a website called Not Waiting for Superman, intended both as a response to the film and a way to "support efforts by teachers, students, and parents to improve and preserve public education. The site features links to lots of articles, reviews, and commentary about the movie.
A New York City-based coalition called the Grassroots Education Movement (GEM) to Defend Public Education has produced a documentary in response to "Waiting for 'Superman,'" called "The Incovenient Truth About Waiting for Superman." The film will be screened in New York and across the U.S. this fall. More information about the film and the related campaign is available at waitingforsupermantruth.org.
Watch the trailer here:
And the U.S. media's new obsession with education reform continues. NBC News hosted a two-day Education Nation summit in New York City and will spend the week highlighting education stories in its news coverage. Sponsors of Education Nation include the for-profit online University of Phoenix, American Express, the Gates Foundation, the Broad Foundation, BlackBerry and Microsoft. More information is available on the Education Nation website.
Matt Lauer interviewed President Barack Obama on the Today Show earlier in the week, as a part of the Education Nation coverage:
Valerie Strauss has written a good post on her Washington Post "Answer Sheet" blog about Education Nation and other recent media coverage of education reform in the U.S., and the distressing lack of objectivity and critical thinking displayed by the journalists involved.
]]>This past June, the Government of Alberata published a discussion paper titled, Inspiring Action on Education, which came out of the government's Inspiring Education initiative. According to the Minister of Education, Dave Hancock, this initiative "is among the broadest and most imaginative dialogues on the future of education that we have ever seen. Indeed, international education thought leaders have described our initiatives as leading edge, beyond what any other jurisdiction is doing. Inspiring Education was about dreaming the dream, and Inspiring Action is about what we all must do to make this dream a reality."
The paper lays out a vision for the transformation of the education system in Alberta. The crux of the matter seems to lie in the following statement:
"Governments, business leaders, researchers and communities in Alberta, Canada, and around the world, investigating the requirements of 21st century learners, have identified the need for competencies to be more central in the education of young people if they are to be active participants in an increasingly knowledge-based and globalized society." (9)
The paper goes on to outline seven competencies which, in addition to literacy and numeracy, are all components of a 21st century education. These seven competencies are essentially the same as the BC Ministry of Education's 7 Cs:
Policy directions outlined by "Inspiring Action" include
Also worth a look is the Inspiring Education Steering Committee Report, published in April, 2010, which provides some context for the Inspiring Education "vision," as well as the guiding principles of this reform movement. This report is slightly more vague than the Inspiring Action discussion paper, which goes into greater detail about the Ministry's proposed policy directions.
An ATA news release from June 6th states that Alberta teachers support the vision outlined in the Inspiring Education report, "but wonder how that vision will be achieved."
More on Alberta Education's Engagement Initiatives can be found here.
In New Brunswick, the key document is the Department of Education's NB3-21C: Creating a 21st Century Learning Model of Public Education, Three-Year Plan 2010-2013. Like Alberta, the Government of New Brunswick makes a direct connection between global societal change "in the age of knowledge and innovation" and the importance of learning as the "major socio-economic driver of the 21st century." In order to keep pace and compete in "emerging knowledge- and innovation-based economic sectors," the plan argues, the province must overhaul its educational system.
The NB3-21C document makes a direct reference to the Partnership for 21st Century Skills in the United States as one of the models for New Brunswick, and there is indeed a strong correlation between the 21st century skills outlined by the Partnership and the competencies proposed by B.C., Alberta and New Brunswick.
The competencies proposed for New Brunswick in the NB3-21C document are:
Like the BC and Alberta plans, NB3-21C also emphasizes
"the need to move from a teacher-directed to a learner-centred learning model. The flexible, analytical, engaged and motivated graduate who will succeed in the 21st Century is not the product of a learning environment where teachers take centre stage and students passively receive and recite information. The business of learning belongs to the student, and as such, must focus on the learner, with the teacher providing valuable supports and facilitation." (13)
This video, produced by the New Brunswick Department of Education, provides some insight into their vision of 21st century education.
The film screened at the Toronto International Film Festival but will not be opening to a wider Canadian audience just yet. The official website does, however, include a section about Canadian education.
Guggenheim, Rhee, and Bill Gates were guests on the Oprah Winfrey Show earlier in the week. Winfrey vociferously and unequivocally supports the film, and ended the program by presenting six different charter school networks with cheques for a million dollars each. Winfrey did not consult with actual teachers for the program, though early word was that her show tomorrow would include reactions from educators. Whether or not these will be critical voices, and whether or not they will actually get much air time, remains to be seen. The guests on tomorrow's show include Arne Duncan, Geoffrey Canada, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie (who has had an exceedingly contentious relationship with the state teachers' union), Newark, New Jersey Mayor Cory Booker, and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg (who just announced a donation of $100 million to improve public schools in Newark).
An Anthony Cody Education Week blog post titled, "OprahPaganda?" raises a number of concerns with Oprah's Monday show. As of right now, there are 341 comments on the "Shocking State of Our Schools" article on Oprah's website; some of these are excerpted here.
The Nation has published a lengthy review of Waiting for Superman that is worth a read. It takes a more critical stance on the movie and should give you a sense of the snowball effect that the buzz surrounding the film is having in the U.S. media. The article also quotes Alex Caputo-Pearl, a high school teacher and union activist in Los Angeles, who provides a counterpoint to all of the negative portrayals of unions by summing up the importance of social justice teachers unions:
"If teachers unions don't make a turn toward the social justice union model, along with fighting for more funding, it's going to mean not just a fundamental weakening of the union but frankly a real possibility of unions passing into history. It's a necessity to fight with and for a broad sector of society that includes teachers, but also the families and the kids we serve. Otherwise, unions, and more significantly, truly public, accessible and equitable education, will go out of existence."
The American Federation of Teachers has also posted a response to the film on their website.
]]>A related Washington Post article can be found here:
Teacher bonuses not linked to better student performance, study finds
Today Rod Allen, Superintendent of Student Achievement, gave a presentation to the BCTF Executive Committee about these new directions. It was a shortened version of a presentation given at the BC School Superintendents Association Summer Leadership Academy on August 19 - those PowerPoint slides are here. Allen outlined the Ministry's vision for the future of education in B.C.: personalized learning and greater choice for students, increased student engagement, moving beyond teaching factoids to students "who come into class with Google in their pockets" to a greater understanding of how things relate, and "teacher facilitated" rather than "teacher instructed" learning. Allen acknowledged that these models already exist in the province; the question is simply how to propagate these ideas.
Slide 32 of the BCSSA presentation, which was also included in today's presentation at the BCTF, lays out a number of "21st Century Foundational Skills." Although reading, writing, and numeracy are separated from what some have been calling the "Seven Cs," Allen emphasized the Ministry's position that these are all foundational, and that reading, writing and numeracy are as important as they ever were. The Seven Cs are:
While much of the discussion around these ideas has been very short on details, 21st Century Learning initiatives from other provinces and other parts of the world have been referenced by the Ministry, and it is worth taking a look at some of these in an attempt to understand what might be coming down the pike in British Columbia.
Back in June, Janet Steffenhagen pointed out a connection between the UK-based 21st Century Learning Initiative and the B.C. Ministry of Education in a Report Card blog post titled, "Government signals change ahead for B.C. schools." She reported that John Abbott, president of the 21st Century Learning Initiative, met with Ministry of Education representatives at St. Anne's Academy in Victoria in March. The Initiative's summary of the event states that the meetings were intended "to show how the ideas developed with the Initiative relate directly to the plans that British Columbia might be making for its future education policy." Abbott's PowerPoint presentation, which draws heavily on his 2010 book, Overschooled but Undereducated, can be downloaded here.
In both the book and the presentation, Abbott argues for a new view of adolescence. "In countless instances over the generations," he writes, "it has been adolescent muscle linked with a determination to break any limitations that others may put in their way that have pushed forward the boundaries of civilization" (238). If teenagers cause trouble, he argues, it is only because they have lost their purpose in a modern world that insists on sequestering them in schools and stripping them of the opportunity to use their energy to learn by doing. In a blog post written after landing in Vancouver in March, Abbott writes that, "To see education as a pre-eminently school-based activity is, and ever was, to miss the point of adolescence."
Other major concerns outlined in Abbott's Overschooled but Undereducated are the weakening of civil society, the rise of specialization in both school and work at the cost of the ability to see the big picture, and the negative ramifications of our switch to a service economy, in which "satisfication in a job well done has been replaced by the motivation to earn more money..." (160). He also takes aim at the accountability culture, asking if, "In their efforts to improve their examination results, have schools been forced into so over-teaching their pupils (so as to get the grades...to get the jobs...to get the good salary) that the pupils rarely learn how to work things out for themselves?" (190).
In order to harness the energy and potential of the adolescent brain, Abbott and the Initiative are pushing for some major education reforms. In April of this year, the Initiative actually put together a document specifically for British Columbia, called "Schools" in the Future: What has to change and why, which also draws heavily on the themes in Overschooled but Undereducated. In this paper, today's Western model of schooling - which Abbott considers indisputably problematic - is succinctly described:
. . . age-related classes assumed to be progressing at a uniform rate; skills and knowledge delivered via subject-specific disciplines; a custodial role for social development confused with a degree of willingness with which a child accepted the ethos of the school; more funds allocated to the education of older pupils leaving the youngest children to be taught in the largest classes; the increased marginalisation of home and community as an integral component of learning; the retention of teenagers in school to 'save' them from the turmoil of adolescence, and the training of teachers being more concerned with the preparation of subject specific instruction than with the development of pedagogic strategies informed by philosophy and the research into the nature of human learning. (4-5)
The ten "Elements of Change Required" are summarized at the end of the paper. These elements include
Here in Canada, the Canadian Council on Learning launched its own 21st Century Learning Initiative in 2005 in order to advance the work of John Abbott and the UK Initiative. They have also launched an interactive website, changelearning.ca, "which is a virtual community centre to share information and host discussions about meaningful educational change."
The influences of John Abbott and the 21st Century Learning Initiative on Margaret MacDiarmid and the Ministry of Education - with their calls for increased student engagement through personalized, hands-on learning guided, rather than dictated, by teachers - are evident. MacDiarmid has also referenced Alberta and New Brunswick as models for British Columbia; I will address these provinces and their plans in a future post.
]]>The Los Angeles Times has compiled excerpts from comments that teachers posted when they had the initial opportunity to review their scores, before the database was made public. It is interesting to note that of the teachers quoted here, most of those who express concern with the database are ranked highly on the Times' effectiveness scale. The full comments left by teachers can be found tied to their individual pages within the searchable database.
And further to my post of August 30th, another recent study - this one from the U.S. Department of Education - questions the merits of using value-added models to evaluate teachers:
The paper directly challenges the use of value-added modeling to evaluate teachers:
"For a variety of reasons, analyses of VAM results have led researchers to doubt whether the methodology can accurately identify more and less effective teachers. VAM estimates have proven to be unstable across statistical models, years, and classes that teachers teach.
VAM's instability can result from differences in the characteristics of students assigned to particular teachers in a particular year, from small samples of students (made even less representative in schools serving disadvantaged students by high rates of student mobility), from other influences on student learning both inside and outside school, and from tests that are poorly lined up with the curriculum teachers are expected to cover, or that do not measure the full range of achievement of students in the class.
For these and other reasons, the research community has cautioned against the heavy reliance on test scores, even when VAM methods are used, for high stakes decisions such as pay, evaluation, or tenure."
Valerie Strauss has provided a good summary of the report in The Washington Post's Answer Sheet blog.
Other studies have also cautioned against using value-added to make high stakes decisions regarding teachers:
"the use of VAMs does not obviate the need to collect other types of information for the evaluation process.
Most importantly, VAM results should not be used as the sole or principal basis for making consequential decisions about teachers (concerning salaries, promotions and sanctions, for example)."
]]>"Although VAM holds great promise, it also raises many fundamental and complex issues. ... If these issues are not adequately addressed, VAM is likely to misjudge the effectiveness of teachers and schools and could produce incorrect generalizations about their characteristics, thus hampering systematic efforts to improve education."
"Although value-added measures do not capture everything that goes into making a good teacher or school, The Times decided to make the ratings available because they bear on the performance of public employees who provide an important service, and in the belief that parents and the public have a right to the information."
The paper published another related article on Saturday - No gold stars for successful L.A. teachers - about outstanding teachers in the L.A. Unified School District who are apparently not recognized for their good work or asked to share the secrets of their success. When asked to comment on what she thought made her so effective, the top-ranked teacher replied, "The ones that love their students and love their job do well. You can't bottle that, and you can't teach it."
Another teacher, Aldo Pinto, "like most other teachers interviewed, said his good results had not been recognized.
'No one is ever really singled out, neither good nor bad,' said Pinto. 'The culture of the union is: Everyone is the same. You can't single out anyone for doing badly. So as a result, we don't point out the good either.'"
Walt Gardner presents his arguments against making these ratings public in the latest post on his "Reality Check" blog -Why Not Name and Shame Teachers?
Further elucidating the Obama administration's stance on the use of the value-added model in education, Arne Duncan gave a lecture last week, sponsored by the University of Arkansas Clinton School of Public Service and the Clinton Presidential Library, in which he called on more schools across the U.S. to disseminate information about student achievement and teacher effectiveness - not necessarily to post the results online, but to make the information available to teachers and parents.
]]>Taking Stock of Lifelong Learning in Canada (2005-2010): Progress or Complacency?
Canadian Council on Learning, August 2010
The report aims to "provide an overview of the current state of learning across Canada in all phases of life."
The President and CEO of CCL, Dr. Paul Cappon, is quoted in the press release:
"as our report shows, by continuing to fall behind in some key areas of learning, Canada may be creating a national knowledge disadvantage. Unlike Canada, competitor countries have developed, or are in the process of developing, coordinated approaches to education and lifelong learning."
The Vancouver Sun has also printed an article about the report: .
"More 'chronically unemployable' people likely product of Canada's education system, observers say"
Giuseppe Valiante, 25 August 2010
From the Times:
"No one suggests using value-added analysis as the sole measure of a teacher. Many experts recommend that it count for half or less of a teacher's overall evaluation.
And in Los Angeles, the method can be used for only a portion of the district's roughly 14,000 elementary school instructors: California students don't take the test until second grade and teachers must have had enough students for the results to be reliable.
Nevertheless, value-added analysis offers the closest thing available to an objective assessment of teachers. And it might help in resolving the greater mystery of what makes for effective teaching, and whether such skills can be taught."
United Teachers Los Angeles has voiced strong opposition to the Times' reporting and database. The union released a member alert urging members to write letters to the editor to express their disapproval, and the president of the union, A.J. Duffy, is now calling on members to boycott the paper. This hard-nosed stance has been criticized both in the blogosphere and in letters to the Los Angeles Times editor.
Leaders of the Los Angeles Unified School District are now asking UTLA to consider making the value-added analysis a part of teachers' evaluations. On Saturday, UTLA agreed to reopen negotiations on evaluations with the district, but Duffy would not indicate whether or not the value-added method would be a part of those negotiations.
U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan has come out in support of the Times' reporting and the database. According to the newspaper, "Duncan's comments mark the first time the Obama administration has expressed support for a public airing of information about teacher performance - a move that is sure to fan the already fierce debate over how to better evaluate teachers."
American Federation of Teachers president Randi Weingarten has also weighed in on the debate, arguing that while parents have a right to know how their children's teachers have fared on evaluations, that information should not be made available to the general public.
In Washington, D.C., Michelle Rhee, the influential chancellor of District of Columbia Public Schools, has indicated that she will consider making value-added scores available to the public. She recently made news by firing 76 teachers for poor performance, using a new evaluation system that holds teachers accountable for their students' scores on standardized tests.
In Nevada, a state law that prohibited test scores from being used in teacher evaluations was changed by the Legislature in February. In the wake of the reports coming out of Los Angeles, the Nevada Education Department seems to be taking steps towards the creation of a similar, publicly-accessible database of student test scores tied to individual teachers - though the Department says it will be another three years before they are able to implement such a database.
Related articles from the Los Angeles Times:
More from the blogs:
Other related news and commentary:
So far, the Ontario Ministry of Education has been unsupportive of the idea.
More information can be found on the ETFO EQAO Testing page.
The full report by Chris Watkins is titled, "Learning, Performance and Improvement," and appears in the most recent issue of IOE's Research Matters.
In his conclusion, Watkins notes that the "twin challenges" for schools are "to recognize that passing tests is not the goal of education, but a by-product of effective learning," and "to recognize that even when we want pupils to do their best in tests, pressure and performance orientation will not achieve it."
A Guardian article about the study can be found here.
]]>The full report is available here.
]]>As reported by the New York Times:
"Students who had learned much more in kindergarten were more likely to go to college than students with otherwise similar backgrounds. Students who learned more were also less likely to become single parents. As adults, they were more likely to be saving for retirement. Perhaps most striking, they were earning more.
All else equal, they were making about an extra $100 a year at age 27 for every percentile they had moved up the test-score distribution over the course of kindergarten. A student who went from average to the 60th percentile - a typical jump for a 5-year-old with a good teacher - could expect to make about $1,000 more a year at age 27 than a student who remained at the average. Over time, the effect seems to grow, too."
A presentation of the findings, titled "How Does Your Kindergarten Classroom Affect Your Earnings? Evidence from Project STAR," can be found here.
]]>The "Common Core" Standards Initiative: An Effective Reform Tool?
William J. Mathis
EPIC/EPRU, July 2010 (29 pages)
Contrary to what supporters of common standards argue, Mathis has found that the available data do not support contentions that common standards will increase global competitiveness, increase equity, or streamline the reform process. Furthermore, he states that "research support for standards-driven, test-based accountability systems is similarly weak," and countries with common, centralized standards "generally tend to perform no better (or worse) on international tests than those without."
]]>The full report can be found here; the executive summary is here; and a related AP news article is here.
The New York Times has posted an online debate on the efficacy of national education standards, with Alfie Kohn and others weighing in on the issue.
A related article was also printed in the Times today:
"Many States Adopt National Standards for Their Schools."
Also printed today - an article in Salon, by Mary Elizabeth Williams, that takes a very critical stance against the national standards:
"How nationalized education standards ruin schools."
Williams links to a story about Joyce Irvine, a former elementary school principal in Vermont who was removed from her position because the school district hoped that doing so would qualify them for federal stimulus money - this in spite of the fact that the school's low standardized test scores can almost undoubtedly be attributed to its high proportion of refugee and ESL students as well as its 97% poverty rate, and in spite of the almost universal praise that Irvine has garnered for her work to improve the school. Though grim and discouraging, this insight into some of the ramifications of the Obama accountability agenda is certainly worth a read.
]]>Another 24 states are still in the process of deciding whether or not to adopt the standards; Texas and Alaska are the only states that chose not to participate in the project. An editorial in yesterday’s Los Angeles Times argues for adoption by California, while a recent post by Washington Post blogger Valerie Strauss raises a number of concerns with the entire concept of national standards.
Learning in the 21st Century: 2010 Trends Update
Project Tomorrow
Blackboard K-12
June 2010
Key findings:
- The number of high school students taking online classes for credit has nearly doubled since 2008.
- The number of teachers who have taught online classes has tripled since 2008.
- Teachers need more training and preparation in order to effectively leverage online learning to impact student achievement and increase their own productivity.
Project RED – Key Findings
Full press release
ISTE 2010 presentation
June 2010
Project RED looks into the use of education technology in schools and is aimed at addressing two major issues: improving student achievement and evaluating the total financial impact of technology on state budgets.
The key findings of the study are:
- Technology-assisted classes reduce drop-out rates
- Schools with 1:1 learning programs, when properly implemented, have better education success than schools with fewer computing devices and poor implementation
- 80% of schools under-utilize technologies they have already purchased
Intel is the lead sponsor of the project; additional support comes from Apple, the Pearson Foundation, Qwest, and eChalk.
This study finds that charter middle schools are neither more nor less successful than traditional public schools in improving student achievement.
Other findings:
• Study charter schools were more effective for lower income and lower achieving students and less effective for higher income and higher achieving students. In addition, charter schools in large urban areas had positive impacts on students’ achievement in math; those outside these large urban areas had negative impacts on achievement.
• Study charter schools did not significantly affect most of the other outcomes examined, including attendance, student behavior, and survey-based measures of student effort in school.
• These charter schools did positively affect levels of satisfaction with school among both students and their parents.
The National Study of Charter Management Organization (CMO) Effectiveness: Report on Interim Findings
Robin Lake, Brianna Dusseault, Melissa Bowen, Allison Demeritt, and Paul Hill
Mathematica Policy Research and the University of Washington’s Center on Reinventing Public Education; June 2010
Press release
Full report
Charter management organizations are nonprofits that aim to promote the replication of high-performing charter schools. According to the press release, “the interim report finds that CMOs place great emphasis on teacher accountability and student achievement: they focus intensely on the schools they oversee, make extensive use of data on student and school performance, emphasize continuous academic improvement, and are more likely than school districts to pay teachers for performance. CMOs also offer significantly more time in their school day and year than the average school in the U.S.” The report notes a number of areas in which CMOs have problems as they continue to grow in size.
Equal or Fair? A Study of Revenues and Expenditures in American Charter Schools
Gary Miron and Jessica L. Urschel
Education Policy Research Unit & Education and the Public Interest Center
June 2010
A recent debate staged by Intelligence Squared considered the motion, "Don't Blame Teachers Unions for Our Failing Schools." Randi Weingarten was one of three panellists in favour of the motion, while Terry Moe, a scholar and union critic, formed part of the opposition. The audience was polled before and after the debate to gauge their positions on the resolution. It turned out that most of the people who were undecided before the debate ended up disagreeing with the statement, effectively blaming unions for failing schools in the United States. Edited excerpts from the debate can be read here.
A recent article in eSchool News also took on the issue of teachers unions:
The author, Laura Devaney, notes that anti-union sentiment has been intensifying recently. She talks briefly of a new film, Waiting for Superman, which takes a very critical view of teacher unions. Devaney writes that “in exploring the troubles of American public education, the film ends up pointing to one culprit above all others, those who have seen it say: teacher unions, which are portrayed as blocking much-needed reform.”
One trend that clearly emerges from Brill's article is the reformers' emphasis on individual teacher quality. According to Brill, the new breed of education reformer in the U.S. argues "that a country that spends more per pupil than any other but whose student performance ranks in the bottom third among developed nations isn't failing its children for lack of resources but for lack of trained, motivated, accountable talent at the front of the class."
The various new pieces of teacher accountability legislation and proposed changes to teacher tenure policies that have been sprouting up all over the country lately - in Colorado, Louisiana, New York, California (and in L.A.), Connecticut, and Washington, D.C., for instance - can be seen as a direct result of this point of view. In order to win Race to the Top money, states must demonstrate that teacher layoffs will be based on quality rather than seniority, and that teacher evaluations are tied, at least in part, to student performance.
Brill interviewed Arne Duncan before the recent dénouement of the battle over teacher merit pay in Florida. He writes that the Education Secretary "nodded when I speculated that Florida's chances seemed even better for the second round because a new law - passed by both houses of the Legislature after the first round ended - would force accountability on all teachers without the union's agreement." This is a reference to SB 6, which was roundly denounced by teachers in Florida and ultimately vetoed by Governor Charlie Crist in the face of a state-wide outcry.
Implicit in all of this is a challenge to the teachers' unions, who have traditionally been "the base of the base" for Democrats. Brill notes that the recent significant changes to teacher tenure in Washington, D.C. "could signal a new era in which the unions have to worry that Democrats ... not only won't yield in contract negotiations but will also support laws and programs aimed at forcing accountability. That is the threat posed by the Race."
Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, is quoted as saying that, "Deliberately or not, President Obama, whom I supported, has shifted the focus from resources and innovation and collaboration to blaming it all on dedicated teachers."
Weingarten, meanwhile, caused a bit of a stir when the AFT came out in support of Colorado's SB 191, which would usher in major changes to teacher evaluation and teacher tenure in the state. The legislation also has the support of Arne Duncan, but the Colorado Education Association remains firmly opposed to the bill.
Steven Brill also has an article in Education Week, published online yesterday, that illuminates the scoring inconsistencies in the Race to the Top contest:
]]>Speak Up 2009 National Findings: Teachers, Aspiring Teachers & Administrators
Project Tomorrow
May 2010Administered in over 5,700 schools and 71 schools of education last fall, this survey reveals some gaps in the ways in which administrators, teachers, aspiring teachers, and students think about the importance of integrating various technologies into the classroom. One of the starker contrasts can be seen in attitudes towards the importance of online tools for collaborating in the classroom. While 67% of administrators and 51% of principals indicated that their “school of the future” would include the use of collaborative tools (blogs, social networking sites, and wikis, for example), only 27% of teachers agreed. Additionally, while many aspiring teachers see the value of technology integration, relatively few of them are being taught how to effectively utilise technologies in the classroom.
Lucinda Gray, Nina Thomas, Laurie Lewis & Peter Tice
U.S. Department of Education; Institute of Education Sciences; National Center for Education Statistics
May 2010This report presents the results of a survey intended to determine the “availability and use of educational technology among teachers in public elementary and secondary schools during the winter and spring of 2009.” Topics include the types of software and Internet sites used by teachers for classroom preparation, instruction, and administrative tasks; students’ use of educational technology during classes; modes of technology used by teachers to communicate with parents and students; teacher training and preparation to use educational technology for instruction; and the number of hours spent in professional development for educational technology in the past 12 months.
]]>Lucinda Gray, Nina Thomas, Laurie Lewis, Peter Tice
U.S. Department of Education; Institute of Education Sciences; National Center for Education Statistics
April 2010
Another one from the U.S. Department of Education, this time with data from the fall of 2008.
• “Despite Push, Success at Charter Schools Is Mixed,” The New York Times, May 1, 2010
In an op-ed piece, Charles Murray, a scholar at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, comes out as a strong proponent of school choice and charter schools but firmly denounces the use of standardized test scores as a way of determining whether one school is better than another. He uses his line of reasoning to argue that school choice is, in fact, a good thing – an interesting twist on the anti-testing stance.
• “Why Charter Schools Fail the Test,” The New York Times, May 5, 2010
**UPDATE (May 11th) - Some insight into Murray's article can be found at the Education Week "Bridging Differences" blog, in this post by Diane Ravitch. Ravitch points out that Murray's article is mistitled and is part of a larger response by proponents of choice to outcomes that would seem to weaken their position.
The National Association of Charter School Authorizers just released a report that “provides an overview of the policies, practices, and characteristics of the nation’s largest charter school authorizers as well as a sampling of smaller authorizing entities.
• The State of Charter School Authorizing 2009: 2nd Annual Report on NACSA’s Authorizer Survey
May 2010
That report is discussed further in an Education Week blog post and article, both published within the past couple of days:
• “The State of Charter School Authorizing,” Rick Hess, May 6, 2010
• “Closure of Stanford-Run Charter Sparks Debate,” Mary Ann Zehr, May 7, 2010
The union decided today to lift its moratorium on the administration of the tests after reaching an agreement with Education Minister Julia Gillard. She has stated the government's "opposition to the misuse of student performance data including simplistic league tables." Gillard will also form a working party of educational experts, including AEU representatives, to provide advice on the proper use of student test results and other indicators of school effectiveness.
Angelo Gavrielatos, president of the AEU, stated in a press release that "the working party will provide a way to advance and address the profession's educational concerns relating to the misuse of student test data including school league tables."
The controversial My School website will be updated after the results of this year's tests come in, and the information currently on the site will remain.
]]>So far, teachers in four Australian states – Queensland, Tasmania, New South Wales, and Western Australia - have been ordered by their respective industrial relations commissions to drop the boycott. Industrial hearings will be requested by the governments in Victoria and South Australia on Monday.
The State School Teachers’ Union of Western Australia has given up the boycott in the wake of the ruling from the West Australian Industrial Relations Commission. Education Minister Julia Gillard is hailing this move as, “the right thing for students, for their parents, for schools and for the nation,” and is calling on unions in other states to follow the lead of the SSTUWA. However, David Kelly, president of the SSTUWA, called Gillard’s comments “false and misleading” and noted that “the union is working with its lawyers seeking any and every legal option it may have to challenge the commission’s ruling.”
The unions face heavy fines and possible deregistration if they continue to ignore the orders from the IRCs.
Click here for the latest news from the New South Wales Teachers Federation.
A succinct summary of the foundations of the national moratorium campaign, launched by the Australian Education Union on April 12, as well as the specific directives for union members to follow throughout the testing period in order to comply with the moratorium can be found here, on the State School Teachers’ Union of Western Australia website. (It is hard to say, though, whether or not this page will stay online now that the SSTUWA has dropped out of the national campaign.)
The AEU’s “Stop league tables” campaign page is here.
]]>The Australian Education Union (AEU) has voted to ban teachers from administering the NAPLAN tests, which are scheduled for May. Yesterday, the Queensland Industrial Relations Committee ordered public school teachers in the state to halt their boycott of the tests. However, the AEU is insisting that the test ban will continue.
And in England, headteachers have come out strongly in favour of boycotting the national Sats tests for 10- and 11-year-olds, according to the results of polling carried out by the NUT and the NAHT.
Stay tuned for more updates.
Some recent insights into income inequality, the minimum wage in British Columbia, and the deterioration of the social safety net in Canada:
Daniel Wilson and David Macdonald
The Income Gap Between Aboriginal Peoples and the Rest of Canada
Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives
April 2010; 34 pages
Mending Canada’s Frayed Social Safety Net: The Role of Municipal Governments
Federation of Canadian Municipalities
March 2010; 72 pages
Iglika Ivanova
“Tax cuts don’t make up for B.C.’s low minimum wages”
CCPA Policy Note blog
April 4, 2010
Should the bill be signed into law, there is a chance that the Florida Education Association will challenge it in the courts.
In response to the new possibility of a veto from Crist, Republican Senator John Thrasher, the bill’s sponsor, is now talking about introducing a separate reconciliation bill in order to make changes to the merit pay bill once it becomes law. The process of reconciliation was recently used by Democrats in the U.S. Congress to pass the recent health care legislation. In the case of the Florida education legislation, Thrasher has stated that a reconciliation bill would address “implementation, not overall policy.”
Meanwhile, thousands of students in a number of Miami-Dade county high schools walked out of their classes today to protest the bill.
]]>The state Senate has already approved the bill, which aims to base teacher evaluations and salaries largely on student achievement. According to the text of the bill, the “student learning gains” that will be used to assess teachers “are measured by state assessments . . . , examinations in AP, IB, AICE, or a national industry certification . . . , or district assessments for subject areas and grade levels . . . .” This heavy focus on tying test scores to teacher pay has many in Florida – teachers, parents, and students alike – very concerned.
Should Bill 6 pass, Florida would be a unique case in the United States; no other state requires such a close correlation between student test scores and teacher salaries. Continuing coverage of the bill's progress and the local response, can be found at the Washington Post's Answer Sheet blog.
Other states and districts are moving forward with plans to tie teacher tenure and dismissal to standardized test scores. The Houston Independent School District (the largest public school district in Texas, and the seventh-largest in the U.S.) recently received approval from the Houston school board to implement a plan that would allow teachers to be fired if their students do not meet expectations on standardized tests over the course of a number of years. For the past three years, the district has used the same calculation of student progress to dole out performance bonuses to teachers.
New York City also recently announced that it would use state standardized test results to determine which teachers would be granted tenure this year – this coming even after sharp criticism of the New York State exam. And, as in Houston, test scores are used to determine bonus pay for teachers in New York City.
All of this recent emphasis on merit pay and the other student performance-based ramifications for teachers can likely be tied to the Obama administration’s approach to education reform, which includes strong support for merit pay, and the requirements that states must meet in order to be eligible for grants from the $4 billion national Race to the Top fund. Section (D)(2) of the Race to the Top application, “Improving teacher and principal effectiveness based on performance,” requires states to demonstrate that they will base teacher evaluations in part on student growth, and that these evaluations will be used to inform decisions regarding teacher compensation.
Other states in the news for attempts at teacher merit pay schemes:
From the US News and World Report:
"Education Secretary Arne Duncan Says Merit Pay Should Be Tied To Student Growth"
]]>The full report, Test, Punish, and Push Out: How “Zero Tolerance” and High-Stakes Testing Funnel Youth Into the School-To-Prison Pipeline, can be found here.
Elsewhere in the world of high-stakes testing:
Delegates at the Australian Education Union’s annual federal conference recently voted to boycott the yearly national literacy and numeracy tests for grades 3, 5, 7, and 9. The NAPLAN tests (National Assessment Program – Literacy and Numeracy) are used to create league tables, which rank schools based on test results. These tables are published on the government’s My School website, which went live this morning.
[UPDATE: The My School website crashed shortly after its launch due to overwhelming demand. Everything appears to be working properly now.]
The AEU objects to the use of test data to create league tables, arguing on their website that “League tables which rank schools based on raw test scores are bad for students, schools and education.”
Meanwhile, the National Union of Teachers in the UK saw 25% of its membership respond to an indicative ballot to voice their opinions on the efficacy of SATs. 95% of those respondents said that the current testing system should be abolished, and 76% indicated that they are prepared to boycott the tests. The NUT and the National Association of Head Teachers (NAHT) now plan to ask their 300,000 members to respond to a full ballot to determine the level of support for a boycott of the tests, which are scheduled for the summer. The Guardian reported this week that various parents’ groups in the UK have come out in support of the potential boycott.
Other recent research into academic tracking and detracking can be found in the March 2008 issue of Teachers College Record:
In a new report, Raegen Miller argues that the term “value-added" needs to be eliminated from the discussion around the use of test scores as a measure of teacher effectiveness. The implications of the phrase “value-added” ignore the fact that test scores are a result of many contextual factors, not solely the efforts of an individual teacher; therefore, the language used to discuss teacher effectiveness and teacher evaluation needs to reflect these nuances. Furthermore, test scores should never be used as the sole determinants when making big decisions that affect teachers. Miller outlines a framework for guiding discussions around such decisions and for understanding how the data fit into these decision-making processes.
The news was greeted favorably by the National Union of Teachers and the National Association of Head Teachers; both organizations have campaigned vigorously for the abolition of the tests, known colloquially as SATs. The unions are currently balloting their members to gauge support for a boycott of the exams in 2010, and a petition circulated by the NUT calling for an end to the SATs has amassed roughly 25,000 signatures to date. The NUT calls SATs "bad for children, bad for teachers, bad for education and bad for communities."
In spite of the announcement, the unions have not stopped their boycott consultations. The NUT calls the decision to keep SATs in 2010, "clearly disappointing," and is urging members to continue to pressure the government to put an end to the tests.
The National Curriculum tests were instituted in 1993, and have been controversial right from the start. Under the testing system, assessments are given to 7-, 11- and 14-year-olds at the end of Key Stages 1, 2 and 3. In practice, 7-year-olds are assessed by class teachers, while older students sit for marked standardized examinations in English, math and science. In 2008, the system broke down; major problems scoring tests and delivering the results led to the elimination of SATs for 14-year-olds and of the science exams for 11-year-olds. Reports of inconsistent marking, faulty scoring, missing exam papers, and students mistakenly marked absent from the exam ultimately made the SATs status quo untenable.
However welcome the elimination of some of the exams might have been, educators continue to argue that the problems affecting the tests for 14-year-olds were also problems for the SATs given to 11-year-olds, and that the continuation of the latter makes no sense now that the former has been done away with.
Also at issue are the league tables that are created with the SATs results. The SATs scores are used to rank English schools and the resulting tables are then published in national newspapers - reminiscent of the annual Fraser Institute school rankings here in Canada. It is common for parents to choose schools for their children based on the League Tables, in spite of the concerns that teachers and heads have raised over this practice.
Secretary Balls has indicated that, beginning in 2010, primary schools' teacher assessment data will be published alongside test data in the league tables in an attempt to provide a more complete picture of school and student achievement. Mick Brookes, general secretary of the NAHT, has stated that while "Acknowledging teacher assessment is a major step forward," it is still "not far enough."
For more information:
This study reveals the perspectives of “Generation Y” teachers on a number of professional issues (including performance pay, unions, and methods for improving teacher effectiveness), and compares these attitudes to those of older teachers. The authors also put forward a number of policy recommendations based on their findings, with an aim to support the successful management and retention of talented young teachers.
The Human Early Learning Partnership (HELP) has published a series of community EDI and socio-economic maps, as well as written summaries, for each school district in British Columbia. The EDI is used by Kindergarten teachers to measure the development of incoming students across five areas: physical health and well-being; social competence; emotional maturity; language and cognitive development; and communication skills. The maps and reports assess early childhood vulnerability in each geographic area.
]]>According to this study, high school dropout rates are too high in much of Canada, particularly among Aboriginal students and francophone Quebecers. The author examines the problem on a province-by-province basis, and makes a number of policy recommendations to combat it.
]]>This is the NCDI’s final report on the outcomes of the state-funded Texas Educator Excellence Grant (TEEG) program. In the end, the study found no evidence that the TEEG had any strong effect on student achievement gains. While it should be stressed that the findings pertain only to this specific performance pay program, the researchers provide advice to policy makers and practitioners for the design and implementation of future programs.
This report examines the state of professional development for teachers in the United States and abroad. The researchers found that, while many countries around the world invest heavily in professional development for educators, the United States lags far behind in this regard. The report presents a number of findings about the nature of effective professional development and argues for substantial changes to educational policies in the United States. The situation in Canada is not extensively discussed.
]]>This annual report card continues to find that the majority of Canadian children and youth are not meeting the country’s physical activity guidelines of 90 minutes of physical activity a day, though the proportion of children meeting the guidelines has risen from 9% in 2005/2006 to 13% in 2007/2008. The report stresses the strong ties between improved academic performance and regular physical activity, lending support to calls for more time allocated to school-based physical activity such as PE, recess, or school sports.
This study, commissioned by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, found that “a media-rich curriculum with integrated professional development for teachers can prepare low-income children for school success.” Preschool students who participated in a 10-week technology-supported literacy curriculum outscored non-participating students on all five of the early literacy measures used in the study.
In response to the 2007 murder of six-year-old Christian Lee, the Office of the Representative for Children and Youth undertook an investigation into systems of support for children and families exposed to domestic violence in Canada. The Representative found these systems to be inadequate, and puts forth a number of recommendations in this report. In particular, the Representative argues for greater cooperation and coordination between child welfare, criminal justice and family justice systems, as well as the provision of early intervention and support to victims of domestic violence.
Researchers from the University of Colorado at Boulder and Arizona State University collaborated on this report on commercialism in U.S. schools. They focused on attempts by advertisers to create a “total advertising environment” around students through various technologies, and found that advertisements for food represent the bulk of what children are faced with online, in school and on television.
The Parliamentary Budget Office prepared this report in order to investigate the Canadian government’s approach to school construction for First Nations communities. The report notes that funds for First Nations schools are not locked down, but instead can be re-allocated to other areas at the behest of the Federal Government. Furthermore, First Nations schools are under-funded by at least $200 million each year.
This report is the result of a study on the feasibility of full day kindergarten in British Columbia and the possibility of future full day pre-kindergarten for four and three-year-olds. The report is interesting for its investigation of early childhood education trends, both in Canada and internationally, as well as for its review of existing research on kindergarten and pre-kindergarten. Ultimately, the report emphasizes that any expansion of early learning in BC must be guided by the need for parental choice, the need for programs with quality characteristics supported by research, and the need for these programs to be introduced gradually.
This report argues that child-initiated play must be brought back to kindergarten classrooms. Kindergarten has become heavily focused on academic skills in response to the common assumption that the earlier a child starts to master the basic elements of reading, the more successful they will be in their later academic life. The authors challenge this assumption, and argue instead that “children who engage in complex forms of socio-dramatic play have greater language skills than nonplayers, better social skills, more empathy, more imagination, and more of the subtle capacity to know what others mean.”
A recent article in the New York Times addresses some of the same issues:
“Can the Right Kinds of Play Teach Self-Control?” (25 September 2009)
This study takes a look at nine-year-old schoolchildren in Canada and their variations in academic achievement, focusing on the similarities and differences between boys and girls, between children from low-income homes and higher-income homes, among provinces, and among communities of different sizes. A correlation between higher attention levels and higher academic achievement is also discussed, and it is noted that there seems to be a direct link between school readiness at age five and success in the classroom at age nine.
This annual report by the OECD compares educational and economic data across OECD nations, with indicators looking at who participates in education, what is spent on it, how education systems operate, and the results achieved. The evidence shows that investment in education pays significant economic dividends; not only does public investment in higher education result in high economic returns, but individuals in industrialized nations who have obtained a college education will earn a significantly higher average income over the course of their lifetime than workers without a college degree. The report also provides some insight into how investment in education can aid economic recovery.
Summary of Key Findings (9 pages)
The indicators in this report have been harmonized with those found in the OECD's Education at a Glance, enabling easy comparison of educational systems in Canada with those of other OECD member countries. The report includes information on various aspects of Canadian education, both at the national and the provincial levels, including educational attainment, academic performance of students, the economic benefits of education, and expenditures on education.
This literature review was undertaken in order to bring together extant research “on key factors and practices supporting literacy success for school-aged students.” The results on reading development and instruction are split into four sections: K-12 students, Aboriginal students, minority language students, and the role of family and community involvement. In each case, various reading promotion programs and approaches are evaluated for effectiveness.
On their first day of kindergarten, only 71% of children in British Columbia have met all of the developmental benchmarks that they need in order to succeed now and in the future. The authors argue that this high rate of early vulnerability is unnecessary and will have significant impacts on the BC economy in the future. They go on to make six major recommendations for public policy changes aimed at early vulnerability reduction and early human capital development.
Executive Summary (4 pages)
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