Congratulations to West Virginia Teachers

Hooray for West Virginia Teachers!

I and many other supporters of public education are very pleased that the West Virginia teachers got unified and stood up to the politicians in demanding better salaries and health care funding. It was obvious from the news coverage that the parents, students, news media and the general public overwhelmingly supported teachers in this effort. But it only happened because teachers stood together as a Union! Teachers in West Virginia have learned that the only time teachers get treated as professionals is when they stand together and demand fairness.

West Virrginia teachers are returning to their classrooms now with tremendous pride and self respect.  Teacher solidarity is something that is very rare today as the teaching profession in most states is routinely bashed and humiliated by politicians in the name of education reform.

In Louisiana during the Jindal administration, teachers were told that they would be empowered to negotiate for their salaries individually based on their effectiveness as teachers. Jindal and John White implied that group action would no longer be necessary as teachers would finally be paid based on objective measures of their value to students. VAM (Value Added Measures) would allow individual teachers to negotiate handsome salaries or to move to other school systems like free agents. Teachers were led to believe that they would be respected and empowered as professionals.  In Louisiana, two sweeping laws were passed in 2012 that established merit pay for teachers based on their effectiveness in raising student achievement. Seniority for preference in layoffs and other matters was done away with, and step increases for years of experience were cut back to pay for the merit pay scheme. How has that worked out in Louisiana?

Since the state did not provide one penny to fund the new merit raises based on VAM (Value Added Measures) and SLTs (Student Learning Targets), local school systems chose to dismantle valued step raises to fund the relatively meager merit pay bonuses. So teachers lost a major incentive for remaining in the profession as test prep was substituted for creative teaching.

When John White first was established as the dictator of public education policy in Louisiana, he often talked about empowering teachers based upon their effectiveness. How has that worked out?

When VAM was implemented for only one year as 50% of a teacher's evaluation it turned out to be a hot mess and often penalized some of our best teachers. Now the plan is to use VAM as only one-third of the evaluation, but nothing has been done to correct the flaws in the system. So now a very bad plan is going to be used at a lesser impact. How can that do any good?

Teachers everywhere need to be respected and empowered because the job they do is one of the most important in our country.  Teaching works best as a collaborative effort rather than a competitive effort. No one has ever found a merit pay system for teaching that works. Louisiana's Jindal/White reforms were no exception. The VAM system for determining merit pay has proven to be extremely unreliable, while the SLT system is extremely easy to game. So no one has confidence that merit pay has any merit. Meanwhile teacher average pay in Louisiana is declining because of the destruction of step increases based on years of experience. As a result of these so called "reforms" Louisiana is experiencing a growing teacher shortage.

What we learn from the West Virginia teacher strike is that no one empowers teachers other than teachers standing up for themselves as a unified group.

Hooray for the teachers of West Virginia! I hope Louisiana teachers will follow their lead.

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The AP Data John White Did Not Want Us to See

Below are the latest rankings of states using AP scores, recently released by the College Board. This agency administers the Advanced Placement courses used by many of our schools.

Each year John White puts out a press release claiming great success in Louisiana student performance on AP tests over the previous year. The state even pays the fee for students to take the AP tests and gives schools extra points on their performance scores based on students taking AP courses. So each year there is an automatic increase in students taking AP courses. The only problem is that these courses are pretty much worthless unless the student scores at a level of 3 or better. Students who do not score at this level or higher do not get college credit for the course. The chart from the College Board on the state rankings on the latest results shows that Louisiana ranks second to last in the nation in students scoring at level 3 or higher! (Click on the figure to magnify it)

Juking the stats

Press releases from the LDOE about alleged success on AP tests is just one other example of "juking the stats". That's an expression reporters have used to point out how some school reformers often try to rig the data or report data in a way that presents a false picture of the real achievement of school reform.

Juking the stats also includes hiding the true passing scores on state tests (LEAP and EOC tests) by reporting only scale scores that look pretty good while the students statewide are averaging only a little above 40% on the percentage of questions the students answered correctly.

Another way of juking the stats is to pressure school counselors to register almost all graduates of a school as accepted applicants to college. Here's the thing: Some colleges have entrance requirements that would exclude many of our high school graduates because they are not truly qualified to succeed in college. But there are many fly-by-night colleges thet will accept almost anyone. So just getting kids accepted to college is extremely easy if you fill out the correct forms. But none if this means that all these "accepted" students will actually attend college. It is very sad that many of our students who are given worthless diplomas never attend or flunk out their first semester of college. Readers of this blog know that I believe that our current practice of pretending to prepare all students for college is a cruel hoax on our taxpayers, parents and particularly the students!

TFA corps member and experienced teacher exposes fraudulent claims

Here is a blog post from Gary Rubinstein that revues the true performance of Louisiana students on AP tests. The chart above shows that Louisiana has actually slipped lower in performance from the 2016 year.

Superintendent White is a failure using the very measures of success that he used to claim that Louisiana schools were failing before he took over our schools.

John White thought he could bully teachers to produce higher student test scores and send more of our kids to college. Our students are not progressing because the new Common Core based curriculum and the associated tests are not valid. He has failed miserably using the very standards he has used to criticize us before he took over. Juking the stats is a poor substitute for the real education our students so desperately need.