Destroying the Teaching Profession in Louisiana

Destroying the teaching profession? That's a pretty sensational pronouncement. My background as a science teacher requires me to provide evidence when I make such a dramatic claim. Lets look at the evidence:

1. Starting with Act 54 of 2010, our State, in an effort to win Race to the Top grants from the US Department of Education, decided to tie half of our teacher evaluations to student performance using a system called the Value Added Model. In the process of adopting regulations for VAM, our new State Superintendent unilaterally (in contradiction to the law) decided to count the VAM for 100% of a teacher's evaluation in cases where a teacher scored in the bottom 10% of the VAM ranking of teachers.   Why do I consider this as part of the destruction of the teaching profession? As the LDOE was in the process of finalizing the VAM system, it was never revealed to the general public that the initial testing of the VAM demonstrated that the stability or reliability of the VAM system was totally erratic and unreliable. Data showed that up to 74% of the teachers rated as ineffective by VAM could have been incorrectly graded. Around that same time the original author of Act 54, Representative Frank Hoffman who is an experienced educator declined to endorse the VAM plan. He was immediately removed from his position on the House Education Committee by Jindal lieutenants. The new VAM system was implemented anyway in the 2012-13 school year with chaotic results. John White changed the rules several times in the middle of the process and even approved exceptions for one group of teachers based on political pressure from a Jindal lieutenant to go easy on teachers in one of his favored schools. On the other hand, some teachers who had reputations as excellent teachers were crushed by the new inaccurate system.
2. The next huge blow to the teaching profession came in 2012 with the ramming through of Act 1 by the Jindal administration. This was the new law that was intended by Jindal and White to make every employment decision in our K-12 schools dependent in some way on student performance. It is now well known by educational researchers that the classroom teacher has no more than a 20% influence on the academic performance of students. Socioeconomic factors are much more dominant in determining student outcomes, yet Jindal sought to make 100% of a teacher's future totally dependent on student outcomes. (That is of course except for some teachers who were specifically exempted mainly because they were favored by a Jindal ally) Act 1 was introduced at the very beginning of the 2012 legislative session with instructions to Jindal lieutenants to move the legislation through before teachers and their unions could react effectively. Even so, with minimal notice, thousands of teachers showed up at the capitol to oppose Jindal's draconian legislation. At first they were locked out of the capitol while representatives of business and industry and a fake professional organization were let into the committee room to take all the seats. When teachers were finally let in to testify, one of the Jindalistas demanded to know from each teacher before they testified about what type of leave they were taking to visit the capitol. That set the tenor for the entire debate, and the conclusion was well known even before the debate began. In addition to the atrocities of Act 1, Act 2 adopted in the same session dropped the requirement that teachers in charter schools have education degrees. Also our non-educator Superintendent, John White announced that advanced teacher degrees made no difference in effectiveness and that the state would stop funding the National Board Certified Teachers. Step increases which for years had encouraged long careers in education began to be systematically phased out by Act I at the same time that seniority rights were dissolved and merit pay based on the erratic VAM was added.
3. It turned out that Act 1 was so hastily drawn up that it violated the State Constitution and it also violated the basic principles of due process. Courts have now struck down almost all parts of the new law. Kudos to the much maligned teacher unions (LAE and LFT) for fighting hard and winning legal battles for the teaching profession.
4. At the same time that teachers were expected to accept their loss of seniority rights, loss of step increases, loss of pay for advanced degrees, loss of support of NBCT, and accept the atrocities of the erratic VAM system, they were also subjected to a new untested COMPASS evaluation system. This new evaluation amounted to little more than a dog and pony show. Administrators were expected to penalize teachers if they could not demonstrate that their students showed initiative and self direction. What about teachers who happened to be assigned students who had very little motivation and self direction? Competent administrators were just as frustrated as experienced teachers by this artificial “play acting” while the new evaluation contained no real measurement for the kinds of reliability and creativity that are so important in the long run for effective teaching.
5. Another way to destroy teaching as a profession is to humiliate and embarrass teachers at every opportunity and blame them for the ills of society. That is what has been done with the way the accountability system has been implemented in Louisiana. Originally (15 years ago) school accountability was supposed to be equally  applied to schools, teachers, parents and students. Now our education bosses have dropped all pretense of requiring accountability of parents and students. The relentless attempt to shame and blame teachers and schools for factors over which they have no control is resulting in a corruption of the entire accountability system. Read this Crazy Crawfish blog to see how teachers in EBR are being systematically humiliated in an effort to pass and graduate all students without regard to actual academic achievement. Classroom discipline laws are violated every day in a blind effort to baby all students into staying in school. But its not just happening in EBR. The New Orleans Recovery District has been coercing teachers to give passing grades to students who have done nothing in class but disrupt the education of other students. These are examples of Campbell's law which is a well known principle that explains how pressures applied to educators to meet unrealistic goals are corrupting and compromising the intended accountability. That's why some administrators are systematically violating state discipline law and the toothless joke that is called the “teacher bill of rights” initially sponsored but never enforced by Jindal. Look at what happened to the Baker teacher who tried to enforce school rules. How can anyone continue teaching under these conditions?
6. The final insult to teachers is that they are now being asked to implement a new set of standards for their students that are in many cases age inappropriate, that do not allow for individual differences in students and that have been rushed without field testing of any kind. Only in the field of education are reformers who are not professional educators willing to implement major changes without field testing. The ultimate insult to the teaching profession is that such standards were developed by non-K-12  persons who will never have to demonstrate any competence as teachers. The director of the Common Core writing committee (David Coleman) is a person that was denied a job as a K-12 teacher because he had no teaching credentials.
7. It is a demonstration of the lack of respect for the teaching profession in Louisiana that the last two State Superintendents of education in our state have no credentials as educators. John White could not be hired as an assistant principal in most Louisiana schools yet he has been given supreme authority over all teachers and administrators in this state. Our national Secretary of Education is also a non-educator. Is this how our country professionalizes teaching?

So now when an analysis by Lafayette Association of Educators president Rodolfo Espinoza demonstrates (see also the post on Diane Ravitch's blog) that there has been a huge increase in the number of teacher resignations in Lafayette Parish, the State Superintendent calmly assures us that there is no real problem in the teaching profession. Who needs real teachers anyway? All we need are test teachers. Click here to enjoy my favorite test teacher song.

Update on Student Privacy Legislation

Most of the discussion in the House Education Committee Wednesday centered on Representative Schroeder's HB 946 on student data privacy. The committee heard emotional testimony from parents from all parts of the state who were appalled that State Superintendent John White had agreed to hand over much critical private student data with the ID of such students to private data collectors and to the Louisiana Workforce Commission.  These parents were angry that such private information could have been mishandled by the DOE and that parents were never consulted over the data use.  It was also pointed out that the Federal FERPA regulations have been changed by the OBama administration to allow extensive student data sharing without parent permission.

Things got muddied up when John White warned the committee members that Louisiana may lose significant federal funding if certain data was not collected and provided to federal authorities. Schroeder explained that he had not been shown any federal or state laws that required such data to contain traceable student IDs. Everyone agreed to try to iron out the problems and continue debate on the bill next Wednesday. It does look like the parents made their case quite effectively and that the Education Committee will approve a student privacy bill.

School Takeover Does Not Work!

Patrick Dobbard and John White know very well that school takeover by the state does not work. But it got so obvious to everyone else that they are now returning schools taken over in Pointe Coupee and St Helena back to their local school boards. This development runs completely contrary to the continuing policy of Arne Duncan, Bobby Jindal, and all the privatizers who want to continue school takeovers and closures as a way of letting “entrepreneurs” and con artists make a buck on the backs of our students and teachers. The experiment has failed but it is still profitable for some so the exploitation of children continues.

The takeover history of Coupee Central high school was a study in how not to manage a school as conditions went from bad to worse with only about a third of parents still willing to send their children to the educational hell hole this school has become. Eyewitnesses in recent years visiting Pointe Coupee Central have described classrooms with students running wild, computers and educational equipment vandalized and a general disregard for the purpose of education. Student enrollment has dropped to only 185 students from an enrollment of more than 549 before takeover. Almost none of the graduates of Pointe Coupee Central have even attempted college. Many teachers are demoralized by the frequent changes in administration and lack of support for discipline and order.

Flush with Gates Foundation and junk bond Milkin/Federal grant money, the charter management organization Advance Baton Rouge thought it had a secret formula for school turnaround. An elite group of TFA corps members would infuse the students with their “high expectation” magic and soon all students would be graduating and moving on to Ivy League colleges. Instead the academic environment of the school fell victim to the incompetence of amateur educators and the public was never informed what happened to the millions of grant money.

The same thing happened to the 8 schools taken over in Baton Rouge and the one in St Helena. But the RSD is not returning the schools taken over in Baton Rouge. The local chamber of Commerce is supporting a new Achievement zone to be run by a new group of charter managers with millions of dollars of extra funding from foundations. You see, the big foundations would never put money into traditional schools. Instead the state has also taken over Istrouma High school and ended up closing the school that educated thousands of solid citizens over its long history and will again uproot another group of struggling students.

It turns out that our traditional schools that are run by experienced administrators and dedicated career teachers are the best hope for high poverty at risk student populations. Livonia High School run by the Pointe Coupee parish school board has made good progress.  In addition the most recent analysis by Herb Bassett using official state collected data has demonstrated that low performing sub groups last year actually progressed more when they attended so called “D” schools than when they attended "B" schools. You see most people don't understand that the letter grade rating of a school is much more an indication of the size of the “at risk” population of a school than the quality of instruction provided by the teachers. That is what is so unfair about our current system of school letter grades.

As I have pointed out in this blog before, the really dangerous charters are those I call predatory charters. These are charter schools now being approved by BESE over the objection of our local school boards whose method of operation is to try to attract the highest performing students from a local area. They cull out low performers by requiring parents to agree to do school volunteer work and by enforcing strict discipline codes that allow them to dump low performing students back into the local public school system. Examples are the new charter schools in the Baker and Iberville areas recently approved by BESE without input from local taxpayers. These charter management organizations are allowed to pocket a profit from our tax dollars while providing a cut rate educational program. Such charter groups don't have to worry about being subjected to special audits by our DOE to check to see if they are lying about their dropout rate or their efforts to cull out low performers.  Over time such predatory charters could drain local school systems of critical funding while severely damaging the state teacher retirement system. Such schools often do not participate in the retirement system and shift the unfunded liability to our public schools.

Important Student Data Privacy Bills

Four important bills dealing with student data privacy will be considered by the Louisiana House Education Committee this Wednesday, March 19. If your State Representative is a member of the House Education Committee, you may want to send him/her an email expressing your opinion on student privacy. If you want to check to see who your state Representative is, just click on this link to the legislative web site, type in your address and it will list your State Representative, State Senator, and Congresspersons. You should then simply click on your State Representative's  name to go to his/her web page and get his/her email address. Save it on your email contact list and you will be ready to send him/her emails when there are important education bills to be voted on.

In fact, I am asking you to send your state representative an email this Monday or Tuesday particularly if he/she serves on the House Education Committee. Please do your part if you care about student data privacy!

This Wednesday, March 19^th the House Education Committee will be voting on 4 bills that deal with privacy of student data. They are HB 384, HB 555, HB 560, and HB 946. You can view each bill by clicking on the bill number. 

 

Many Louisiana parents have made it clear that they are very concerned about the possibility that data pertaining to their child may be shared by our Dept. of Education or others with third parties who may try to profit by selling goods or services or even sell voucher plans to the parents. My readers may remember that John White originally planned to share student data using the InBloom system. He has since recalled the Louisiana data from the system.

 

Like the parents, I support all of the above bills which would greatly limit what can be done with information collected by the DOE on Louisiana students. I believe that if any recommendations are to be made to parents about the educational needs of their child, it should be done by trusted local teachers or guidance counselors, not self appointed salesmen for big business or rip off voucher programs.

Here is a sample email by teachers or parents:
 

Dear Representative _________,

I am a teacher (parent) who lives in your district. I am very much in support of any legislation that would protect the privacy of educational information and data collected on our students. Please vote for HB 384, HB 555, HB 560, and HB 946 or any proper consolidation of these bills.

Thank you in advance for your help with this important issue.

Sincerely,
 

Please feel free to put this in your own words since legislators respond better to individual rather than form emails.

At this point we have no reason to believe that there is strong opposition to the above bills but it is very important that we make our wishes know on this important matter.