'Performance pay’ drove Denver teachers to strike -- and it is failing in other districts, too. #DCTAstrong #RedforEd #edcolo #coleg #copolitics #FairPayForTeachers - The Washington Post

'Performance pay’ drove Denver teachers to strike -- and it is failing in other districts, too. A North Carolina teacher explains why it doesn’t work. - The Washington Post

'Performance pay’ drove Denver teachers to strike -- and it is failing in other districts, too. A North Carolina teacher explains why it doesn’t work.

Denver teachers are out on strike, protesting the system of performance pay -- also known as merit pay -- used by Denver Public Schools. Once widely supported in Denver, teachers now say the 14-year-old system is confusing and leaves them without knowing exactly how much money they will make each year.

Performance pay is one of those ideas that rises and fades in cycles of school reforms over decades. It may sound as if it makes sense — giving more money to teachers deemed the best — but research has repeatedly shown that it doesn’t work for a number of reasons.

In 2011, I ran this post by researcher Esther Quintero, who wrote:

The current teacher salary scale has come under increasing fire in the modern school reform area — and not without reason. Systems where people are treated more or less the same suffer from two basic problems. There will always be “free riders,” and relatedly, others may feel their contributions are not sufficiently recognized. So what are good alternatives? Based on decades worth of economic and psychological research, measures such as merit pay are not the answer.

Although individual pay for performance (or merit pay) is a widespread practice among U.S. businesses, the research on its effectiveness shows it to be of limited utility (see here, here, here, and here), mostly because it is easy for its benefits to be swamped by unintended consequences.

Education historian and activist Diane Ravitch has written about it repeatedly too:

It is curious that teachers vigorously oppose merit pay, even though they are the ones who are supposed to reap the rewards. What do they know? They know that merit pay undermines collaboration and teamwork. They know that it corrupts the culture of the school.

In this post, veteran North Carolina teacher Justin Parmenter explains why it isn’t working in North Carolina. Parmenter teaches seventh-grade language arts at Waddell Language Academy in Charlotte. He is a fellow with Hope Street Group’s North Carolina Teacher Voice Network. He started his career as a Peace Corps volunteer in Albania and taught in Istanbul. He was a finalist for Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools teacher of the year in 2016. This appeared on his blog (and he gave me permission to publish it). You can find him on Twitter here.

By Justin Parmenter

“I find no evidence that teacher incentives increase student performance, attendance, or graduation, nor do I find any evidence that the incentives change student or teacher behavior. If anything, teacher incentives may decrease student achievement, especially in larger schools.” -- Harvard economist Roland Fryer

A few years ago, Harvard University economist Roland Fryer set out to learn whether the New York City Department of Education’s distribution of $75 million to teachers who met performance targets in 200 high-need schools actually led to better outcomes for students. His research determined that it didn’t. Not only CONTINUE READING: 'Performance pay’ drove Denver teachers to strike -- and it is failing in other districts, too. A North Carolina teacher explains why it doesn’t work. - The Washington Post

School Reform in the U.S.: Naivete and Fatalism | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice

School Reform in the U.S.: Naivete and Fatalism | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice
School Reform in the U.S.: Naivete and Fatalism

“If naivete is a danger, so is fatalism.”*

The history of school reform has been a back-and-forth journey between hyperactive innocence and passive resignation. I will explain this and give examples shortly but I want to ask one question and then make one fact clear before I do.

Why has school reform occurred again and again? One would think that reformers who have defined the educational and social problems to be solved, planned solutions to those problems, and adopted remedies would be satisfied and walked away confident that the problems would disappear. Not so. Turns out that the social and educational problems reformers, generation after generation, aim to solve hang around after well-intentioned problem-solvers exit. Then another generation of wannabe reformers enter stage right or stage left, do their thing and float off the stage (see here, here, and here).

The fact is that for tax-supported public schools in the U.S. there has been a perennial school “crisis” since the late-19th century (see here, here, and here). Naive reformers have attacked (and continue to) with gusto and money again and again, “crises”, leaving disappointed practitioners, parents, and researchers slinking away, resigned to failure in the wake of perverse changes they had not anticipated. The above quote says it well.

Some examples of dangerous naivete and fatalism will help.

Naivete:

1. Mark Zuckerberg’s $100 million grant to the Newark public schools in 2010. With an additional $100 million raised in private funds, reformers closed Newark schools, created more charters, and vowed to improve abysmal student test scores in math and reading. Mayor Cory Booker, Governor Chris Christie, and others hailed the grants. However, much pushback from a subsequent mayor, community activists, and parents, largely ignored by the donors in giving  CONTINUE READING: School Reform in the U.S.: Naivete and Fatalism | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice

Badass Teachers Association: On The Anniversary Of The Parkland Massacre by Dr. Michael Flanagan

Badass Teachers Association: On The Anniversary Of The Parkland Massacre by Dr. Michael Flanagan
On The Anniversary Of The Parkland Massacre by Dr. Michael Flanagan

This February 14th, the United States will be marking a tragic anniversary. It has been one year since 17 students and teachers were killed at the Marjory Stoneman Douglas school shooting in Parkland, Florida.  

While likely the survivors, friends and families of those killed can viscerally recall every detail of that day, far too many Americans do not. School shootings happen so frequently now. Those of us who were not there confuse the faces of the killers, and rarely remember the names of the innocent victims.

We have become so inured to these massacres that we are conditioned to question the death toll before we even know the facts of the case. As soon as one person says: “There was another shooting at a school,” the immediate response is: “How many killed?”

The reporting of the casualty count after a mass shooting drives the round-the-clock news stream. For those of us watching, the death toll becomes akin to a video game score. And that is an important part of the problem. We shake our heads, complain about legislators not doing anything about guns, and then we move on to sports. Mass murder has become as common as a weather report.

The arms sales go on, and the money continues to flow from the gun lobbyists to our representatives. This process repeats with each subsequent shooting.  

Incomprehensibly, in the aftermath of the Parkland massacre, just as with Sandy Hook and Columbine, the sale of semi-automatic weapons  increased between 2%-3%. It’s as if the shooting of children serves as an advertising campaign for gun manufacturers. How else is it possible that someone hears that a particular weapon killed children, and is immediately continue reading: Badass Teachers Association: On The Anniversary Of The Parkland Massacre by Dr. Michael Flanagan

School Shooting Tracker: Counting school shootings since 2013

School Shooting Tracker: Counting school shootings since 2013
School Shooting Tracker: Counting school shootings since 2013
NBC News is tracking school shootings. Here’s what we found.

Since 2013, 61 people have been killed and 98 injured in 38 school shootings, according to a school shooting tracker that NBC News is making public. As of February 11, 2019, it has been four days since the last school shooting.

This tracker will be an ongoing effort to identify and contextualize shootings in all types of schools from kindergarten to college, across the U.S.

The tracker focuses on the segment of school shootings where an active shooter, with intent to harm, injures or kills at least one student or faculty member during school or at a school event. Read the full NBC News criteria for school shootings, including the FBI’s definition of an active shooter, below.

SCHOOL SHOOTINGS IN  

2019201820172016201520142013

This year, zero people have been killed and one injured in one school shooting.

THIS YEAR'S SHOOTINGS

On February 7, there was a shooting at Frederick Douglass High Schoolin Baltimore, Md. The shooter was a relative of a student. Read the article about the shooting.

WHY WE ARE DOING THIS

Every time a major school shooting occurs in the United States, the national conversation that immediately follows recounts the number of similar incidents that have happened to date that year. The chilling statistics, broadcast over the airwaves, published in newsprint and shared on the internet, vary depending on the news organization and its definition of a school shooting.

Several organizations and databases track gun violence in schools, including Everytown for Gun Safety, the Washington Post school shooting database, and the U.S. Department of Education. These publishers contribute to the public’s understanding of the effect of gun violence even though each might provide different numbers for school shootings that have occurred in a particular time period.

Dr. Daniel Webster, a professor at the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Policy and Research, said that part of the difficulty in studying gun violence is determining what counts as a school shooting.

“Let's say someone is shot on school grounds in the evening,” Webster said. “It has nothing to do with the school day and doesn't CONTINUE READING: School Shooting Tracker: Counting school shootings since 2013

KEEPING OUR SCHOOLS SAFE: A PLAN TO STOP MASS SHOOTINGS AND END GUN VIOLENCE IN AMERICAN SCHOOLS - https://everytownresearch.org/documents/2019/02/keeping-our-schools-safe.pdf

Oakland Strike: Support Students and Educators With Bread for Ed – California Educator #Unite4OaklandKids #WeAreOEA #WeAreCTA #strikeready

Oakland Strike: Support Students and Educators With Bread for Ed – California Educator

Oakland Strike: Support Students and Educators With Bread for Ed

Oakland teachers are set to go on strike soon in their fight for the education their students deserve and the resources educators need to do this. (See Oakland Education Association [OEA] for updates, and CTA’s information on how to support OEA members.)

Bread for Ed is an coalition effort to provide food for students and educators during the strike. Oakland Unified has 37,000 students, of which about 80 percent qualify for free and reduced lunches. OEA has about 3,000 members. If students do not have access to food, they may cross the picket lines to get food at school. Since one of the critical factors in winning the strike is to have an impact on district Average Daily Attendance funding, keeping students fed during this time is hugely important.

Bread for Ed ties directly into the radical, racial justice work started by the Black Panther Party in the late 1960s. The free breakfast the Panthers gave to children in Oakland spurred the government and school districts to beef up their in-school food programs. In addition, the fight for free public education dates back to the demand during the Reconstruction period to educate the children of free African Americans. 

Bread for Ed’s goal is to raise $50,000 to sustain students and educators during a strike. You can make a donation and find ways to volunteer at the site.

 SUPPORTING ORGANIZATIONS 

Oakland Education Association

Democratic Socialists of America, East Bay

California Educators Rising 

International Socialist Organization, Northern California

Agape Fellowship

Bay Rising 

Bay Resistance

A note to all supporters: Per OEA’s request, funds will be collected by East Bay DSA and paid out to our local food provider partners, and remaining funds will be sent to the OEA’s member assistance fund (strike fund). East Bay DSA is a 501c4 so your donations are not tax-deductible.

Oakland Strike: Support Students and Educators With Bread for Ed – California Educator

Educators stage mass teach-in to stop incarceration of immigrant children - Education Votes

Educators stage mass teach-in to stop incarceration of immigrant children - Education Votes
Educators stage mass teach-in to stop incarceration of immigrant children

Hundreds of teachers of the year and other educators from across the country are participating in a daylong teach-in Feb. 17 in El Paso, Texas, to draw the nation’s attention to the more than 10,000 immigrant children detained in overcrowded federal facilities and at risk of “significant psychological injury.”

Teachers Against Child Detention (TACD), a group of teachers led by Mandy Manning, the 2018 National Teacher of the Year, argues that the mass detention of children “violates their fundamental rights and can cause irreparable damage to their well-being and development.”

Mandy Manning

“I would hope that people wouldn’t see locking up children as ‘Republican’ or ‘Democrat.’ These are children, and I’m a teacher,” said Manning, who teaches high English in Spokane, Wash.

Organizers of the 10-hour Teach-in for Freedom, who aim to have at least one teacher from each state, have asked participating teachers to prepare a block of instruction on child incarceration, immigration or some other related topic.

For educators, concern for the well-being and safety of children and students has always been at the heart of who they are. “When children come to our country, they belong to us collectively as Americans. Every child in our care deserves that same safety and nurturing that I strive to give to my students,” said Michael Soskil, the 2017 Pennsylvania Teacher of the Year.

Soskil said educators “are uniquely positioned to speak for children in a way that cuts through the political polarization that we see in our country right now. . . Keeping children safe so that they can reach their potential is what we do. It’s time for us to use our voice to demand our government stop incarcerating children, not because it is a Democratic issue or a Republican issue, but because we are the protectors of children in this country.”

“As teachers, our life’s work is protecting and nurturing children,” explains TACD on its website. “TACD calls on all educators to act as mandatory reporters and speak out against the atrocities CONTINUE READING: Educators stage mass teach-in to stop incarceration of immigrant children - Education Votes

BLM@Schools in Solidarity with Denver Educators on Strike! – Black Lives Matter At School #DCTAstrong #RedforEd #edcolo #coleg #copolitics #FairPayForTeachers

BLM@Schools in Solidarity with Denver Educators on Strike! – Black Lives Matter At School

BLM@Schools in Solidarity with Denver Educators on Strike!

The Black Lives Matter at School Coalition stands in solidarity with all Denver educators and school support personnel who go on strike today, Monday, February 11th.

Teachers across the country have continued to demonstrate that they cannot be expected to serve children and their families well when they do not earn enough money to take care of themselves and their families. Denver Public Schools (DPS), like school districts across the country, refuse to acknowledge that teacher salaries are not enough to cover the cost of living, and many teachers are forced to work two or three jobs just to make ends meet. We know that low pay for teachers makes it impossible to hire and retain Black teachers that are desperately needed to meet the needs of Black students.

As the child poverty rate continues to grow in all major cities, it is imperative that we demand adequate investments in ensuring all children receive a high-quality education. To that end, we must pay teachers a livable wage and support their efforts to bring a culturally rich curriculum to the classroom.

The current use of ProComp to offer bonuses to some Denver teachers is unsustainable because of the unpredictable effect it has on retaining all teachers, especially teachers CONTINUE READING: BLM@Schools in Solidarity with Denver Educators on Strike! – Black Lives Matter At School

Failing Charter Schools and the LAUSD Board’s Choice

Failing Charter Schools and the LAUSD Board’s Choice

Failing Charter Schools and the LAUSD Board’s Choice

Data doesn’t close opportunity gaps. People have to do that, so we now need people to take action.

– Carrie Hahnel, EdTrust-West

It is easy to blame a public school for failing to successfully educate a child. Teachers and schools make easy scapegoats in a society that consistently fails at addressing generational poverty, fails to support children with disabilities, and fails at balancing the need to nurture children with the necessity of putting food on the table. In California, we defunded our schools with Proposition 13 and are still wondering why these same schools are not educating children to our expectations.

Instead of addressing the root cause of failure, the education “reform” movement held up privatization as the solution. The charter school industry was created, resulting in even more money being diverted from public schools. Lacking proper oversight, these schools provided an environment where the health and safety of students could be endangered, funds could be diverted into the pockets of administrators and the parents of poor children could be taken advantage of. Education “reformers” treated these conditions as acceptable prices to pay for better educational opportunities for our children, or at least those without special education needs.

Predictably, it turns out that the charterization of the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) did not provide the miracle that was promised. The District has the highest number of charter schools in the country, with approximately 18% of its students in these publicly funded private schools. In the just-released list of 110 underperforming schools in the LAUSD, 20% were independent charter schools. Are we diverting $591.7 million from our public schools to get basically the same results?

In requesting that the state initiate a charter school moratorium, the CONTINUE READING: Failing Charter Schools and the LAUSD Board’s Choice

Cliff notes for new students of CA’s byzantine school system :: K-12 Daily :: The Essential Resource for Superintendents and the Cabinet

Cliff notes for new students of CA’s byzantine school system :: K-12 Daily :: The Essential Resource for Superintendents and the Cabinet

Cliff notes for new students of CA’s byzantine school system

(Calif.) Last month, a new two-year legislative session began in earnest, which means a lot of new faces on key policy and fiscal committees, and even some in leadership positions.

To help ease the transition—at least as far as education goes—the nonpartisan Legislative Analyst has issued a new guide to the state’s sprawling and dynamic school system.

Delivered in bite-size factoids, the white paper includes chapters on early education, the K-12 system, and California colleges, as well as the complex school facilities program.

The effort appears to be intended as a general resource rather than an all-inclusive authority, although the LAO also seemed to take care in reporting some items that might surprise its audience.

“Given California’s education system has so many facets, even those who have been immersed in it for years can at times feel daunted trying to understand it and keep apprised of all that is changing within it,” authors of the report said. “For state policy makers who need to be familiar with this system and who make important decisions that shape and reshape it, this report is designed for you. It is intended to help you learn as much as possible about the system as quickly as possible.”

Most lawmakers are no doubt well aware that K-12 expenditures represent the largest share of general fund spending. The governor’s proposed budget would provide nearly $59 billion for those needs in 2019-20—which is just under 41 percent of all general fund dollars.

The next closest program is health care, which would receive close to $30 billion next year, or about 21 percent of general fund dollars.

But state general fund money is just one source of support. Close to a third of the operational and capital funding comes from local property taxes, with federal money and other local sources providing the balance.

The LAO noted that California schools rely more heavily on state help than the average district across the U.S.

In the long-running debate about where California ranks nationally in education spending, the LAO CONTINUE READING: Cliff notes for new students of CA’s byzantine school system :: K-12 Daily :: The Essential Resource for Superintendents and the Cabinet

Chicago Public Schools Monitored Social Media for Signs… — ProPublica

Chicago Public Schools Monitored Social Media for Signs… — ProPublica

Chicago Public Schools Monitored Social Media for Signs of Violence, Gang Membership
School officials say the monitoring was about keeping students safe, not punishing them. But critics say it expanded the role of police in schools and increased surveillance of children.

This is a collaboration between ProPublica Illinois and WBEZ Chicago.

In January 2017, after a social media analyst for the Chicago Public Schools reviewed the Facebook profile of a Roosevelt High School student and began to suspect he might be in a gang, a police officer was summoned to the school to conduct an intervention. There wasn’t any imminent threat of violence, but the officer and a school district security official met with the student. They asked if he was in a gang.

“That is my business,” the student replied, according to a report from the intervention.

The officer, a member of the Chicago Police Department’s Gang School Safety Team, told the student he needed to be more respectful. The student said he was not in a gang but did hang around gang members.

The officer asked for their names, but the student wouldn’t give them. The officer asked if the student was considering joining a gang. He said he wasn’t sure. The student, the report concludes, “seemed to not be motivated and provided very short answers.”

Over the past four school years, more than 700 CPS students have been called into interventions like this one based on social media activity that points to their possible gang involvement. The interventions are one result of a $2.2 million award the district received in 2014 through the U.S. Department of Justice’s Comprehensive School Safety Initiative, which provides grants for violence CONTINUE READING: Chicago Public Schools Monitored Social Media for Signs… — ProPublica

Press Release: New Report Card Grades Each State On How Well it Protects Student Privacy | Parent Coalition for Student Privacy - https://www.studentprivacymatters.org/?p=1885

Big Education Ape: 2018 Year in Review – The K-12 Cybersecurity Resource Center - https://bigeducationape.blogspot.com/2019/02/2018-year-in-review-k-12-cybersecurity.html

Denver teachers set to strike over better pay and working conditions | US news | The Guardian #DCTAstrong #RedforEd #edcolo #coleg #copolitics #FairPayForTeachers

Denver teachers set to strike over better pay and working conditions | US news | The Guardian

Denver teachers set to strike over better pay and working conditions
Colorado city educators would be the latest in a broad wave of strikes and protests across the country battling for funding

School teachers in Denver, Colorado, are set to strike on Monday in the latest of a wave of actions that has swept the sector in the past year as educators battle for better pay and working conditions.

In Denver, teacher salaries have been steadily decreasing, leading to high turnover in the district. Teachers are forced to financially rely on bonuses and incentives beyond their control as part of a system called ProComp, first enacted in 2005.

“The bonuses and the amounts change every year. This has led to a problem where teacher salaries are different every year, and teachers, including myself, have been getting paid less every year,” said Michelle Garrison, a teacher at Farrell B Howell Early Childhood Education-8th grade school “You don’t ever get a paycheck that’s the same. It makes it hard for budgeting.”

Tanessa Wilson, a teacher at John H Amesse Elementary in Denver cited an example that teachers at her school missed out on a $1,500 bonus this year because students who receive free and reduced lunches decreased by 0.2%.

“These incentives are based on factors that are out of our control and we don’t think that is fair,” said Wilson.

Some 93% of the Denver Classroom Teachers Association membership voted to authorize a strike last month in the midst of new contract negotiations.

“The current model isn’t working for teachers, it isn’t working for students,” CONTINUE READING: Denver teachers set to strike over better pay and working conditions | US news | The Guardian