Let's Review the Democratic Process

On Wednesday at 8:30 a.m. the House Education Committee will hold a hearing on Governor Jindal's education reform package in Committee Room 1 at the Capitol. This legislation will include at least HB 974 and HB 976. The Senate Education Committee will have a hearing on the Senate versions of the bills on Thursday.  Thank you to St Martin Parish and Vermilion Parish School Boards for making it easy for educators to attend. Educators in other parishes must try their best to participate also.

HB 974 basically destroys teacher tenure and eventually makes almost all teachers "at will" employees with approximately the same employment status and job security as a teenage store clerk. If the bill passes, school systems will be mandated to make most teacher employment decisions based on student test scores. But with this legislation, teachers who never achieve, or who lose tenure because of one bad evaluation can be fired for any reason with little recourse.

• The bill absolutely outlaws any layoff decisions for teachers based on seniority. A 25 year teacher must be laid off before a first year teacher if the new value-added evaluation yields even a slightly higher score for the first year teacher. No consideration can be given to the older teacher's 25 years of service to the school system or previous good evaluations.
• Each teacher automatically loses tenure upon receipt of an evaluation of "ineffective" no matter how many excellent evaluations he/she has received in the past.
• The Act 54 evaluation of a teacher that results in an "ineffective" rating shall be considered proof that the teacher is incompetent. Such teacher can be fired at any time without a tenure hearing.
• Even if the teacher's principal rates a teacher as "highly effective" on the qualitative part of the evaluation, a value-added result of "ineffective" overrules the Principal's evaluation and the teacher will receive a final evaluation of "ineffective".
• With this legislation our Governor and State Superintendent of Education are willing to bet the careers of thousands of teachers that an untested value-added evaluation which is producing highly erratic results in other states will accurately identify the 10% of Louisiana teachers that deserve to be fired each year. (According to the Act 54 evaluation plan, the bottom scoring 10% of teachers automatically get rated "ineffective".)

HB 976 would allow the almost unlimited expansion of voucher schools and charter schools throughout the state. Such schools would have a great incentive to recruit the best students thereby pulling high performers out of and lowering average student performance in public schools. The voucher schools would not be subject to accountability regulations and could expel or council out problem students back to the public schools. Local school boards would be required to forfeit the MFP funds for all such students recruited away from public schools. In addition, if a public school is rated by the state as "failing", charter school organizers would be allowed to run petition drives among parents to force a takeover of such schools from the locally elected school board. All MFP monies would follow these students to their new school.

The above legislation is patterned after extremely destructive legislation that is being introduced all over the country by a conservative big business group called ALEC. Click on this link to read a description of ALEC activities. This group is funded by school privatization interests such as K-12 Virtual Schools.

The Education Committee process is as follows: Prior to the start of the meeting proponents and opponents of the bills to be heard may be seated in Committee Room 1 which is on the ground floor of the Capitol on the House side. Seating is on a first come first served basis after the doors to the committee room are unlocked about half an hour before the meeting. Proponents of the bills may fill out a green card and may request to testify on the bill or just indicate support. Opponents fill out a red card and may request to testify against the bill. The hearing begins when the author of the bill is allowed to introduce the bill and discussion proceeds. At some point the chair calls for testimony from the audience. After discussion of pros and cons, committee members make appropriate motions and the bill may be voted up, down, or other approved disposition. If the bill passes it must go through the rest of the legislative process.

Please send emails to your legislator and to members of the House Education Committee. Attend the hearing if possible. Click on this link to use your address to get to your legislator web pages. Their Email addresses are listed there.

Many Educators should also attend the Senate Education Committee meeting on Thursday morning about 9:00 a.m. where the Senate versions of the same bills will be heard upon adjournment of the morning Senate session. Please send emails to your Senator and to the Senate Education Committee members before Thursday.

The future of your profession and the public school system is at stake. Please do everything possible to exercise your democratic rights and represent your profession.
Sincerely,
Michael Deshotels

The Object is to Fire Teachers; and Lots of Them

Have you sent emails to your legislators yet? Time is running out! Just scroll down to my Friday, March 9th post to get sample emails.Well it turns out that the Governor's teacher dismissal legislation, (HB 974 or SB 603) is even worse than I thought it was. When you combine the new legislation with the implementation of the Act 54 evaluation, there are two major ways a teacher can lose tenure and get fired! An astute reader of my blog posted a comment to last Friday's post to point out that according to a letter dated Feb. 28 sent to local superintendents by John White (go to page 4 to the section titled Final Evaluation), a teacher will get an "ineffective" overall rating if either the value-added (quantitative) portion of the evaluation or the Principal's evaluation (qualitative) part of the evaluation is unsatisfactory. So even if your principal believes you are doing a good job, that value-added part of your evaluation that was supposed to count for only 50% of your evaluation can destroy 100% of your future as a teacher.

Remember, you are not guilty of paranoid thinking if "they" really are out to get you!
John White also sent an ESEA waiver proposal to Washington at the end of February that totally changes the Louisiana accountability system. It takes away almost all the responsibility of the parents, sets totally impossible student testing goals to be achieved by all public schools in two years and proposes that the new evaluation system will require 10% of the teaching force to be rated "ineffective" each year (at least in the LEAP tested subjects).

How did all public school teachers' non-educator "bosses" at the Department of Education come up with the figure of 10% ineffective teachers each year anyway? Believe it or not, it comes from a mis-quote of education researchers' findings concerning the impact of teacher quality on student performance. Follow this link  to the  Educators For All website to see exactly how important research was twisted to mean something completely different from the conclusions that were made by researchers.

To put it simply, the incorrect assumption that teacher effectiveness is the most important factor in student success, leads our reformers (Governor Jindal and John White) to the inevitable (but incorrect) conclusion that all you have to do is fire the teachers that produce the least student progress (value-added), replace them with new teachers, and in a few years all of our students will perform at or above average! This is junk science based on false assumptions and has never been shown to work.

The primary factor related to student success in school is the rate of poverty (as measured by the percentage of students on free lunch). So if you have the misfortune (or you simply have chosen to work with at-risk students) your future will be at-risk when the Act 54 evaluation is implemented next year. Even if you are teaching more privileged students, value-added can defeat you if your students do not progress as predicted by formulas you will never see. If HB 974 or SB 603 passes, only one bad evaluation (which is in the hands of your students), and your tenure is gone. Also, according to the governor's legislation, the evaluation itself is the ultimate proof that you are "ineffective" and you  can be terminated immediately even if you have a hearing. And by law, that bad evaluation result must go to any of your future employers. So much for professional treatment of teachers. So much for the "teacher empowerment" talked about by Jindal and White. There are plenty of horror stories about the value-added evaluations being tested in other states like New York and Tennessee. Just click on this link to look at one example in Washington DC.

Please send emails now to your members in the Legislature, and particularly to members of the House and Senate Education Committees. (Make sure you have correct grammar and no misspelled words) I hope teachers and administrators will take a day of personal leave either Wednesday or Thursday to attend first the House Education Committee, then the Senate Education Committee meeting.

Jindal Plan Moving Now! March 14-15

Legislators are telling the LAE lobbyists that the Jindal public school destruction bills will be heard first in the House Education Committee on Wednesday March 14, then in the Senate Education Committee on Thursday March 15. I also got a personal call from a Republican Senator friend who told me the same thing.

They are telling us that if we as educators care about public education we had better show up at these committee meetings in large numbers. Our professional education lobbyists for the teacher unions and School Boards Association are heavily outnumbered by the big business lobbyists. And I'm sorry to say they have millions of dollars more than we have to contribute to legislators' campaigns. What we have is numbers! Public school teachers live and vote in every legislative district in this state in large numbers. When you add our voting relatives, we should be the most powerful political force in this state! Why don't we start to exert our potential influence?

 I know, it's because teachers and principals are busy preparing kids for the all important LEAP tests! I don't think I am exaggerating when I say that if the Jindal package passes intact, the public schools are in serious trouble and if you continue reading the second portion of this blog and my posts from the last two weeks you will know why.

Please talk to your colleagues now, and plan to take a personal day Wednesday or Thursday, March 14 and 15 to come to the Capitol and show your concern about this disastrous plan. Educators should read the bills carefully and some should plan to testify in the committees. Every educator should go to the legislative web site, get the email address of your Representative and Senator now and send an email immediately indicating your opposition to these bills. I am including two sample emails, but I would expect the creative educators out there to customize their own emails to say exactly how they as individuals feel. Now is the time for us to do something important for our profession.

Here are the bills we expect to be heard; (we now have the official agenda and they are listed). In the House Education Committee starting at 8:30 a.m. March 14, HB 974 and HB 976 will be heard. Please click on the bill number to get the full text of the bill. 974 is the School Employment and tenure bill I discussed in my last post, and 976 is the Voucher and Charter school expansion bill. The corresponding Senate bills that will be heard on March 15 are SB 603 and SB 597.  Let me give you the most critical information about the Voucher and Charter school expansion bill.

By far the most destructive part of this bill is the provision that lets BESE authorize a large number of new agencies across the state that can approve new charters in every parish. These charters don't have to tackle turnaround of failing schools. (which have been a dismal failure in the RSD) They will be new charters that can cherry pick the best students from the public schools while public schools continue to serve the left overs. They have every incentive to do this because the new law says that they have to maintain a "B" or better rating. So expect a big PR campaign from these charter companies in your parish to recruit students for college prep schools. If you have resisted setting up magnet schools in your parish because you don't want to pull the best students out of your regular schools, they will specifically target your parish. If you have a lot of middle class families (white and black) who are uncomfortable with the school population in their local school, they will target your parish. Now imagine a few years into the future to see the result of all this. Schools will be re segregated into the haves and have-nots, and the public schools will be left with the have nots.

Now on the issue of HB 974. (tenure nullification and firing teachers based on student test scores) I just want to add a little information to what I gave you earlier this week. The issue is not tenure. Many teachers will tell you they don't care about tenure because they have a principal who knows they are doing a good job and who will never try to fire their good teachers. The problem is this new Act 54 evaluation system will be so erratic and unpredictable that teachers will be mostly at the mercy of the value added formula gurus at the state Department of Education. (there are many horror stories from other states that have tried this) Student performance is supposed to count for only 50% of the evaluation, but I firmly believe it will have a much greater impact than 50%. What do you think will happen if you teach in a high poverty school rated as C or D and most of the teachers get a satisfactory evaluation because of the COMPASS portion of the evaluation? Someone from Baton Rouge is going to come down hard on the principal because he/she is not rooting out the "incompetent" teachers. We all know it has nothing to do with teacher competence. "It's the poverty stupid!" You get the picture. This bill puts every educator unfairly at risk. Please start working on your emails to legislators now, and plan on sending a delegation of teachers and administrators to Baton Rouge on March 14 and 15.

This is how you get the email address of all legislators: Click on this link, and type in your address and zip to find all your legislators. Click on each one to go to their web page where you can get the email for your Rep. and Senator.

Additional Resources: Since this was first posted the LAE website has added a great legislator contact feature. Just click here to take advantage of the LAE expertize.

Take my advice. Forget about your party affiliation. This is not a political party issue. It is a survival of education issue. We just want our legislators to represent us and our families for a change when they vote on this.

Here is a simple sample email. I am sure you can improve on this:
Dear (your legislator):
I am a (teacher) (principal) (etc) who lives in your district. I am very much opposed to HB 974 (or SB 603) because it will unfairly base my continued employment as a teacher on student test scores. I do my job faithfully as a teacher but I have no control over students whose parents send them to school unprepared or let them miss too much school or allow them to refuse to do homework or study. I do not want to have my job and my due process destroyed because of factors over which I have no control. Please vote against this bill. My family and I are depending on you to represent us, not some unproven system.

Here is one for HB 976 and SB 597
Dear (your legislator)
I am a public school educator in your district. I am writing to ask you to oppose HB 976 or (SB 597). This bill (along with a lot of other bad provisions) allows private companies to come into our parish and establish a school that will cherry pick our students so that some individuals can make a profit off of our children. This will not improve education. It will simply further damage our public schools and endanger public educator's careers. Please vote against this bill.

Finally, I strongly recommend that schools have faculty meetings to plan your strategy on this. Someone needs to take the lead and research the bills and inform everyone. Send them to this blog. Do everything you can!