It is absolutely urgent that school board members, superintendents and education leaders meet with their legislators now to discuss the needs of public education. Do not underestimate the potential influence that a unified education community can have on the legislature. Remember also that the Louisiana Constitution gives the Legislature overriding authority for the operation of our public school system. That's why educators, voters and parents should seek the Legislature's help to mitigate the effects of current budget cuts and unworkable edicts coming from the State Department of Education and BESE. This link to a Baton Rouge Advocate article explains how school board members and education leaders in south Louisiana recently met with their legislators in an effort to restore sanity to state governance of public education. The big issue discussed was the need for a moratorium on unfunded mandates. Educators pointed out that the three year freeze on state MFP funding, loss of federal stimulus dollars, diversion of Edu/Jobs funding by the Governor, and increased mandated costs, could have a major impact on vital services to children. Cost mandates include increased contributions to school employee retirement systems, and new programs such as the so called "value added" teacher evaluation program. Some state mandated programs such as student remediation are expensive but may not be cost effective. A local school system may spend big bucks on summer remediation which many students do not bother to attend. Yet the new school evaluation system may label a school as a “D” or an “F” for the poor performance of students who have not taken advantage of remediation opportunities. Since school systems are no longer provided specific funding for remediation, local school systems should be allowed maximum flexibility in providing remediation and curtailing programs that are not producing results. Local school leaders know best what works and what does not work and will design better programs without State Department interference.
Superintendents' Association president, John Sartin attended the Lafayette meeting with the 10 area legislators discussed in the Advocate article, and has other meetings planned for other parts of the state. From all accounts, the power point presentation and accompanying discussion were effective in gaining support of area legislators.
Recently A coalition has been formed that includes the School Boards Association, LAE, LFT, LASE, and others to pursue a unified program for the support of public education. The group is developing a list of legislative priorities.
In addition to the proposed moratorium on unfunded mandates, I believe educators should request a moratorium on new school takeovers by the State Department of Education. Student performance data presented in this blog demonstrates that students do better under the direction of local school boards than under the direction of the Recovery District. Just review the data presented in my Feb. 19th post. Such takeovers and the loss of per pupil revenue from local systems will eventually limit the ability of local school systems to provide top quality services. In addition, every state approved (type 2) charter fragments the support for local schools and creates a growing special interest group for privatization of public education without accountability to taxpayers. It is time the public hear the truth about school takeover and charter conversions.
I have written to both my legislators asking them to approve legislation that would at least temporarily halt the takeover of schools from local school systems until it can be shown that such takeovers are in the best interests of the children. I am attending a community meeting with my senator today, (March 17) to continue making this case and to present her with data as to why the present plan is not working. I believe if all educators and parents who are informed about this issue would make a similar case to their legislators, much could be accomplished. Now is the time for all of us who care about public education to speak to our elected representatives!
Thursday, March 17, 2011
Thursday, March 10, 2011
Fact Checking School Reform
The March-April issue of NEA Today magazine has an excellent article on current school reform issues. I urge my readers to click on this link to access the article. It examines the actual results of 5 major components of today's education reform: (1) High Stakes Testing, (2) Value Added Measures, (3) Pay for Test Scores, (4) Charter Schools, (5) Teacher Tenure (removing or modifying it). This analysis is the most concise and enlightening discussion I've seen of these current fads in education. It makes you wonder why the president of the United States and many other influential people would throw their support behind such half-baked schemes and subject our children and so many dedicated educators to the unintended consequences of such policies.
More Half-baked Policies
Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan, according to an Education Week article is warning the Congress that the Elementary Secondary Education Act should be revised and reauthorized to prevent up to 80% of US schools from being labeled as “failing schools”. This is the probable result according to Duncan of continuing the present federal policy that all American students must achieve proficiency in Reading and Math by the year 2014. My question about this is the following: “How could the Congress and the Bush administration have passed such a stupid, impractical law in the first place?” Every reputable expert in the field of tests and measurements could have informed president Bush and the Congress that such a mandate violated everything we know about student testing and performance. It was like the government decreeing that all children would somehow become average or above within a few years, (The Lake Wobegon effect), even though the schools are dealing with a constantly changing student body. The sad thing is that the Obama/Duncan plan for improving our schools is almost equally impractical as the one they want to replace. (see the above article in NEA Today)
More Half-baked Policies
Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan, according to an Education Week article is warning the Congress that the Elementary Secondary Education Act should be revised and reauthorized to prevent up to 80% of US schools from being labeled as “failing schools”. This is the probable result according to Duncan of continuing the present federal policy that all American students must achieve proficiency in Reading and Math by the year 2014. My question about this is the following: “How could the Congress and the Bush administration have passed such a stupid, impractical law in the first place?” Every reputable expert in the field of tests and measurements could have informed president Bush and the Congress that such a mandate violated everything we know about student testing and performance. It was like the government decreeing that all children would somehow become average or above within a few years, (The Lake Wobegon effect), even though the schools are dealing with a constantly changing student body. The sad thing is that the Obama/Duncan plan for improving our schools is almost equally impractical as the one they want to replace. (see the above article in NEA Today)
Saturday, February 19, 2011
The Louisiana 'Turnaround Zone'
State Superintendent of Education Pastorek, New Orleans Recovery District Superintendent Vallas, and others made a presentation recently to a joint meeting of the House and Senate Education Committees on the progress of Louisiana's Recovery Districts. As if to emphasize the dramatic improvements of student performance in the schools taken over by the State Department, the report was titled “Louisiana's Turnaround Zone”. It seems that the State Department of Education is attempting to introduce a new catch phrase that may reenforce the impression that dramatic progress has been made by the schools taken over by the Recovery District.
The report selectively presented data and charts that seemed to show major improvements. For example there was a chart for the New Orleans Recovery District that showed dramatic improvements in the graduation of “eligible” students in that school system. The problem is that this is not the accepted way of presenting graduation rates. The appropriate measure, called the cohort graduation rate was not reported to the joint legislative committee for the Recovery District. The cohort graduation rate tells us what percentage of 9th graders graduate with a standard diploma in 4 years. That's the graduation rate that is used to rate all other public school systems in the state. The following are the Cohort Graduation rates for the two Recovery Districts compared to the state average for the 2009-2010 school year:
Recovery District (Louisiana) 41.50%
Recovery District (New Orleans) 47.7%
Louisiana average 67.4%
The State Department of Education also produced a chart showing gains in percentage of students in the New Orleans Recovery district scoring basic or above on LEAP English/Language Arts and Math tests, but there was no comparison of how the students in that district are doing compared to all other Louisiana students. The following is such a comparison with state average performance and also with the performance of all other students statewide with demographics similar to the students in the New Orleans Recovery District. (Click on image to enlarge it)
Notice that even the 4th grade students in the New Orleans Recovery District scored lower than minority students classified as high poverty students in all other public schools in the State. These are students that have had the benefit of Recovery District services for their entire school experience.
Finally, no comparison was made between schools recently taken over by the state Recovery District in other parts of the state and the performance of the schools before takeover. The following is such a comparison: (Click on image to enlarge)
It seems premature to classify either of the Recovery Districts as 'Turnaround Zones'.
Dispite the data to the contrary, the State Department continues to encourage the myth that the Dept. of Education and its favored charter schools can take over and correct poor student perfomance. A recent Baton Rouge Advocate story describes a report made to the City of Baker School Board by representives of the State Department of Education. In this report the school board was warned that its schools were performing so poorly that all of them would be in danger of state takeover next year when the minimum acceptable school performance score goes to 75. The Dept. representatives informed the school board that student scores in two of the schools were so poor that the Department had determined that "potentialy half of the teachers in those schools were doing more harm than good." The Dept. representatives suggested that the school board should consider "personnel changes" in those schools. In addition to being insulting to the teachers and administrators of the two schools this assumption is obviously inaccurate and unfair. When we compared the student scores at the two Baker schools with Recovery District schools in the Baton Rouge area, the Baker schools far outperformed the takeover schools. Are the teachers in the takeover schools going to be informed by the State Department that they are doing "more harm than good" to their students?
Baker schools Superintendent, Ulysses Joseph, has expressed concern that the State Dept. report itself is damaging to the Baker school system. He said: "How can we expect parents to send their children to school and encourage them to participate in school when the State Department has announced that some of our teachers are doing more harm than good?"
This Baker schools incident is just a taste of what is to come as the State Department begins to apply the new value added model of teacher evaluation throughout the state. Somehow, without observing the Baker classrooms, the State Dept. representatives were able to determine that half the teachers were doing more harm than good and that the school board needed to make "personnel changes".
The report selectively presented data and charts that seemed to show major improvements. For example there was a chart for the New Orleans Recovery District that showed dramatic improvements in the graduation of “eligible” students in that school system. The problem is that this is not the accepted way of presenting graduation rates. The appropriate measure, called the cohort graduation rate was not reported to the joint legislative committee for the Recovery District. The cohort graduation rate tells us what percentage of 9th graders graduate with a standard diploma in 4 years. That's the graduation rate that is used to rate all other public school systems in the state. The following are the Cohort Graduation rates for the two Recovery Districts compared to the state average for the 2009-2010 school year:
Recovery District (Louisiana) 41.50%
Recovery District (New Orleans) 47.7%
Louisiana average 67.4%
The State Department of Education also produced a chart showing gains in percentage of students in the New Orleans Recovery district scoring basic or above on LEAP English/Language Arts and Math tests, but there was no comparison of how the students in that district are doing compared to all other Louisiana students. The following is such a comparison with state average performance and also with the performance of all other students statewide with demographics similar to the students in the New Orleans Recovery District. (Click on image to enlarge it)
Notice that even the 4th grade students in the New Orleans Recovery District scored lower than minority students classified as high poverty students in all other public schools in the State. These are students that have had the benefit of Recovery District services for their entire school experience.
Finally, no comparison was made between schools recently taken over by the state Recovery District in other parts of the state and the performance of the schools before takeover. The following is such a comparison: (Click on image to enlarge)
It seems premature to classify either of the Recovery Districts as 'Turnaround Zones'.
Dispite the data to the contrary, the State Department continues to encourage the myth that the Dept. of Education and its favored charter schools can take over and correct poor student perfomance. A recent Baton Rouge Advocate story describes a report made to the City of Baker School Board by representives of the State Department of Education. In this report the school board was warned that its schools were performing so poorly that all of them would be in danger of state takeover next year when the minimum acceptable school performance score goes to 75. The Dept. representatives informed the school board that student scores in two of the schools were so poor that the Department had determined that "potentialy half of the teachers in those schools were doing more harm than good." The Dept. representatives suggested that the school board should consider "personnel changes" in those schools. In addition to being insulting to the teachers and administrators of the two schools this assumption is obviously inaccurate and unfair. When we compared the student scores at the two Baker schools with Recovery District schools in the Baton Rouge area, the Baker schools far outperformed the takeover schools. Are the teachers in the takeover schools going to be informed by the State Department that they are doing "more harm than good" to their students?
Baker schools Superintendent, Ulysses Joseph, has expressed concern that the State Dept. report itself is damaging to the Baker school system. He said: "How can we expect parents to send their children to school and encourage them to participate in school when the State Department has announced that some of our teachers are doing more harm than good?"
This Baker schools incident is just a taste of what is to come as the State Department begins to apply the new value added model of teacher evaluation throughout the state. Somehow, without observing the Baker classrooms, the State Dept. representatives were able to determine that half the teachers were doing more harm than good and that the school board needed to make "personnel changes".
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