Jersey Jazzman: Education "Reform": The Wrong Conversation

Jersey Jazzman: Education "Reform": The Wrong Conversation:

Education "Reform": The Wrong Conversation

 Jennifer "Edushyster" Berkshire has been having a series of conversations with some of the titans of reforminess. As Peter Greene notes, Jennifer is just about the most charming (and consequently disarming) person you'd ever care to meet; it's not a surprise, then, that she's been able to rope in some of the biggest names in education "reform" for her blog posts.


Her latest sit-down is with one of the better-knowns of a new breed of "reasonable" reformer: Peter Cunningham, creator of Education Post. I'll confess I haven't followed Cunningham's site religiously, but near as I can tell he's running a farm system, bringing up a bunch of hot prospects to push back on folks like Jennifer and Peter and me and others who don't buy into the reformy argument.

Except that pushing back isn't the ultimate goal; instead, apparently, we're supposed to lay aside our policy differences on tenure and testing and charter schools, all for the sake of kids. Because, in the "reasonable" reformer's mind, there's just oodles of stuff we can all agree on.

Take, for example, school funding. As Cunningham himself has recently said:

Instead of a tiresome debate around accountability, we agree on simple measures of progress and shared responsibility among teachers, principals, superintendents and taxpayers.

The only way to achieve this vision in a decentralized system like ours is with a much bigger federal investment. Today, 1-2 percent of the federal budget goes to K-12 education, while 16-20 percent goes to defense, when you include the wars. But education is the real defense industry of the 21st Century so let’s talk about shifting a few percentage points from unwinnable wars and unneeded weapons programs toward public education.

Conservatives will insist we also talk about entitlement reforms that could shift dollars from the elderly to the young. We should all welcome that conversation, including those of us who no longer have kids in school and are busy tracking our retirement portfolios. Our collective interest trumps our self-interest.

Now that is a very interesting framework; it deserves some unpacking.

What Cunningham is engaging in here is an argument I called Jonathan Alter out on years ago. Alter coined this position the "Grand Bargain": teachers would have to be held accountable in a system that he didn't care to define specifically; in return they would get "a lot more pay."

As I said at the time, the details in these grand bargains are never fully spelled out -- yet we teachers are expected to agree to them, like saps at the worst used car dealer you could imagine. Ask the teachers in Newark, for example, how their "grand bargain" worked out.

Cunningham isn't down at the teacher level, but his argument runs parallel to Alter's: we'll shift more money into education, so long as we get to keep expanding segregating "choice" systems, and keep ranking teachers using innumerate test-based measures, and keep closing "failing" schools (even though that is itself a failed strategy -- and Cunningham, of all people, should know this).

But notice where Cunningham gets his money for this grand bargain: either the defense sector, or, as an outcome of a conversation "we should all welcome," the elderly. But there is no mention in Peter Cunningham's world (so far as I can find) of raising taxes on the wealthy to pay for better schools for children in economic disadvantage.

Thank goodness I'm not an old, crusty cynic. Because, if I were, I would point out thatEducation Post is funded by multi-billionaires Eli Broad, Michael Bloomberg, the Walton family, and an anonymous plutocrat -- the very people who have benefitted from ourhistorical income inequity and our historically low taxation rate on the wealthy.

Thank goodness.

What I'll instead focus on is this idea of "shifting a few percentage points" of the federal budget to education. Remember, Cunningham was a part of the Obama administration's first term; he was there back in 2009 when the fight to get stimulus money into the economy was being waged. In Cunningham's own words, President Obama was a champion of funneling more money into the schools:

First of all, this argument overlooks obvious areas of agreement among reformers and unions. For example, most reformers join teachers in supporting more funding.

It’s worth remembering that the pro-reform Obama administration provided nearly $60 billion to save some 400,000 teaching jobs during the recession. This money came with no strings attached and dwarfed the administration’s “reform” initiatives. [emphasis mine]

See, there is common ground after all! Sure, us critics of "reform" may have a problems Jersey Jazzman: Education "Reform": The Wrong Conversation:

Which Pa. school districts get the highest share of aid from the state? | Philadelphia Public School Notebook

Which Pa. school districts get the highest share of aid from the state? | Philadelphia Public School Notebook:

Which Pa. school districts get the highest share of aid from the state?

Which school districts in Pennsylvania receive the most state funding as a share of their total revenue?

If you guessed Philadelphia, you'd be dead wrong.

As the interactive map below shows, the Philadelphia School District (85 percent economically disadvantaged) receives about 45 percent of its funding from Harrisburg — nowhere near the top of the list.

Rural districts in Western Pennsylvania dominate this category.

Meyersdale School district (45 percent economically disadvantaged) gets 73 percent of its revenue from the state.

Valley Grove School District (56 percent economically disadvantaged) gets about 72 percent of its revenue from Harrisburg.

Tussey Mountain School District (58 percent economically disadvantaged) receives about 70 percent of its funding from the state.

Districts in the far Northeast section of the commonwealth also receive a large portion of their school budgets from the state.

Northeast Bradford School District (47 percent economically disadvantaged) gets 68 percent of its funding from Harrisburg.

Susquehanna Community School District (58 percent economically disadvantaged) also gets about 68 percent.

What drives these numbers?

• Pennsylvania's lack of a predictable, student weighted funding formula allows state tax dollars to flow through Harrisburg in a largely irrational manner. Districts with more students in poverty, more special education students, and more english language learners don't formulaically receive additional state aid to help cover the added costs of meeting the needs of those students. If such a formula were implemented, urban districts like Philadelphia, Allentown and Reading would see a boost, while many rural and suburban districts would likely receive less state revenue.

• Lawmakers dole out education spending largely based on what a district received the year prior. This "hold harmless" provision means that even if a district loses enrollment, the state will not reduce its share of aid.

• In some cases, districts with stronger connections to state political power get funding boosts not enjoyed by other districts.

It's important to stress here that this analysis looks at the percentage of funding sources, not overall dollar amounts.

In total dollars, Philadelphia receives the most state aid by far. But it has, by far, the most students — serving about 203,000 kids in district-and-charter-run public schools.

The next most populated district is Pittsburgh, which serves 26,000 students.

To have and to have not...

Overall, the state's poorest urban districts receive less state aid as a percentage of total funding than the state's rural districts.

The exception is the Reading School District (93 percent economically disadvantaged), which tops the list with 73.3 percent of its funding coming from Harrisburg.

Chester Upland (82 percent economically disadvantaged) gets 66 percent.

York City (84 percent economically disadvantaged) gets about 57 percent from the state.

Allentown (88 percent economically disadvantaged) gets about 53 percent.

Erie (80 percent economically disadvantaged) gets about 54 percent from Harrisburg.

Wealthy suburbs of Philadelphia and Pittsburgh receive the least state aid.

School districts in Radnor and Lower Merion get about 11 percent of their funding from the state. Fox Chapel Area School District gets about 16 percent.

Some urban education advocates question why these districts need to receive any state aid at all.

The map above reveals a few other standouts. The Wallenpaupack School District (52 percent economically disadvantaged) gets only 21 percent of its funding from Harrisburg.

Jim Thorpe School District gets about (50 percent economically disadvantaged) gets only 17 percent.

Akin to Philadelphia's situation, Delaware County's William Penn School District (79 percent economically disadvantaged) gets about 41 percent.

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About this series: Multiple Choices is a collaboration between Keystone Crossroads and the Philadelphia Public School Notebook, an independent, nonprofit source of education news. The project is funded by a grant from the William Penn Foundation in Philadelphia.

In the Multiple Choices podcast, Keystone Crossroads senior education writer Kevin McCorry joins with Paul Socolar, publisher and editor of the Public School Notebook, and Notebook contributing editor Dale Mezzacappa to explain and explore the history, complexities and controversies of public education funding in Pennsylvania.

Look for new installments of Multiple Choices every week for the rest of the spring, as the General Assembly reviews Gov. Wolf's ambitious school funding and tax plan.

Data visualization by Rachel FeiermanWhich Pa. school districts get the highest share of aid from the state? | Philadelphia Public School Notebook:

Teacher: I don’t care about my students’ grades. This is far more important. - The Washington Post

Teacher: I don’t care about my students’ grades. This is far more important. - The Washington Post:

Teacher: I don’t care about my students’ grades. This is far more important.

This is the second in a series of essays I will publish in the coming weeks that emanate from a project in which more than 20 biology teachers around the country wrote around the prompt: “What is the value of letting students struggle in class?”  The effort was an attempt to give teachers an avenue to discuss teaching and how they deal with the struggles of their students. You can read about the project here, and the first post, here.

This was written by Bethany Dixon, the Science Department chair at Western Sierra Collegiate Academy, a public charter school in Rocklin, California, where she teaches biology and AP Biology. She is a regional coordinator for the National Association of Biology Teachers and has written for the California Science Teachers Association. She was Clark County School District’s New Teacher of the Year, an NSTA Teacher Academy Dow Fellow, and a NASA teacher researcher. She calls herself an active-duty Air Force wife to a patient husband and mother to a gregarious kindergartener. Currently, she is working with Stanford’s Center to Support Excellence in Teaching and Howard Hughes Medical Institute to build a Regional Teacher Academy for AP Biology teachers.

By Bethany Dixon

The 90 pounds of equipment didn’t seem like life support. I was freezing and claustrophobic in my rented wetsuit. My mask was leaking saltwater into my eyes and an unforgiving mixture of sharp liquid and air gushed into my throat from accidentally biting my mouthpiece. I have no gills. I have no swim bladder. I am going to die. Panicked, I clutched at my instructor and he took me by the shoulders, saying “It’s like a fish tank. You’ll love it.” He pushed a switch somewhere on my suit and I was finally able to float. We reviewed breathing through the mouthpiece and adjusted my goggles.

All animals avoid struggle. It’s an evolutionary advantage to be able to get out of dangerous situations before they begin. Technology has changed this. It’s not those who struggle who fail in our society because lives without struggle don’t exist. Our ability to handle the struggles determine our success. The distribution of struggle is highly unfair. Those who accumulate resources use them to avoid struggle: they keep their offspring protected from harm, as all creatures do. We recognize that this protection is a false wall. We build children’s ‘character’ by imposing socially-sanctioned struggles with a cushion of parental support. We all mean well: to protect our own and lead them into success.

On the opposite side of town are parents who struggle to house themselves. Their children are born into struggles, growing up with invisible encumbrances they may never recognize or outgrow. They lack the head start that money affords and, regardless of parental love and support, find themselves unconditioned for the world they’re entering. Poverty is a sledgehammer to their knees at the starting line. By the time they heal, the race is over. The few who overcome poverty are trapped in a nether-class: their calloused hands become a reminder of the ladder they’ve climbed. It’s easier to stay down than regret your lonely ascent.

Most of us aren’t exceptional. We can easily think of three worse and three better families: we are the unfortunate fortunate ones. We can’t afford private school but can drive our kids to a public charter every day. This year, 131 students will learn biology in a room with great windows, exposed ductwork, and unfinished cement floors. It’s my classroom. Here’s the part their families hate: I don’t give a damn about their kid’s grade. This isn’t a trendy, standards-based answer to student success questions, either: my aim is to figure out how to get your student to engage in the struggle and win.

My students are 15 years younger than me at most. These kids will be working with me, not picking out my nursing home. I can’t afford to sugarcoat the mess we’re in and who’s going to have to clean it up. We’re not playing school. We’re equipping our society for survival, and these are the children who will be solving our biggest problems. The task at hand is determining when and how to push students academically in order to help them reach their potential for the good of everyone.

Struggle in my classroom can’t be established until students trust me. Demonstrating caring, sharing my goals for them, explaining the course goals and recognizing and communicating feelings to my classes are a necessary part of teaching. Students have to know that you’re going to catch them before they’re willing to take a leap. They have to struggle to learn something meaningful, and learning to overcome struggle is the most valuable thing I can teach them. Their success comes down to understanding where they are on a daily basis. For me, this means where they fall in my head on this chart:

Students’ ability to engage in productive struggle is mitigated by three consistently changing factors: their parental involvement (socioeconomic status, ability to resolve conflict effectively, etc.), their motivation in school, and their inherent ability to do well on school-related, academic tasks. Student ability can be affected by everything from how much they were read to as a child to the amount of sleep they had last night. Their motivation can wax and wane with parental involvement or hold steady regardless of input. Identifying students on this spectrum allows us to begin to have conversations about students that may be helpful for educators: how do we serve a student who has no parental support, is highly motivated, but has low ability? What happens when a student has high parental involvement and high ability, but low motivation? What about a moderate amount of motivation, high ability, and toxic parental involvement?

Each situation has a commonality: they all require a compassionate instructor to introduce challenging material, model successful struggle, and provide students with skills rather than answers. Struggle is a visceral, uncomfortable, necessary place for learners. Providing students with strategies, curriculum, and facts cannot happen until they trust that teachers have their best interests at heart. Earning trust depends on the student, their circumstances, and individual teacher personality. When students enter fight-or-flight because they’re in unfamiliar waters, they’ll need a teacher to set them on the right course.

As a terrified scuba student I had reached struggle: in fact, I was past it. Panic had set in. I couldn’t reconcile the idea that my body was sinking but I’d be alive and well with my scuba gear. Intellectually I ‘got’ it … but my body was in full-fledged fight-or-flight mode. Taking students from panic to understanding requires courage, trust, and experience. When I look to support students in unfamiliar territory, I go back to when I was in panic and remember the support I needed. The scuba instructor gave me choices but supported my decisions. He explained the benefits of success and the costs of failure. He took my fear seriously and listened to my concerns. Because of his patience I was able to succeed: I tightened my grip on his gloved hand, pushed under the water, and opened my eyes. Teacher: I don’t care about my students’ grades. This is far more important. - The Washington Post: 

Valerie Strauss covers education and runs The Answer Sheet blog.

10 U.S Presidents who also worked as teachers - Yahoo News

10 U.S Presidents who also worked as teachers - Yahoo News:

10 U.S Presidents who also worked as teachers

 On National Teacher Day, Constitution Daily looks at 10 Presidents who were teachers in some capacity before they occupied the White House – including one who later married his own teacher.

The most common occupation among the Presidents is lawyer, with 25 future Presidents practicing the law in some capacity. But as you’ll see below, more than a few Presidents paid partly for their legal educations while working as educators.

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Millard Fillmore: Teacher’s Pet?

Our list of “presidential teachers” starts with the second President and ends with the current President.

John Adams

John Adams taught for a brief period after graduating from Harvard. Adams taught in at a Latin school in Worcester, to earn money to pay for his legal education.

John Quincy Adams

John Quincy Adams was as a professor at Harvard University from 1806 to 1809, and he also lectured at Brown University. Adams taught oratory and logic classes.

Millard Fillmore

Not only was Fillmore a teacher at one point, he married his own teacher! In 1819 the 19-year-old Fillmore attended a school for several months, and he eventually married his teacher, who was two years older than Fillmore. Fillmore then taught elementary school to help pay for his law school tuition.

James Garfield

His first occupation was as a part-time teacher in rural schools in Ohio. Garfield later taught penmanship at the same Vermont academy, the North Pownal Academy, that also employed Chester Alan Arthur as an instructor, and he taught at the Western Reserve Eclectic Institute in Ohio.

Chester Alan Arthur

After graduating from Union College, Arthur spent several years teaching school and studying the law until he passed his bar exam.

Grover Cleveland

He was a teacher at the New York Institute for the Blind in Manhattan before deciding to pursue a law career.

William Howard Taft

Between 1896 and 1900 Taft was the first dean and a professor of constitutional law at the University of Cincinnati. After failing in his 1912 re-election bid, Taft became the Chancellor Kent Professor of Law and Legal History at Yale Law School, before returning to public service as a Supreme Court justice.

Woodrow Wilson

After graduating from Princeton University, the University of Virginia Law School, and Johns Hopkins University, Wilson entered into a prestigious academic career. He was named president of Princeton in 1902 before he went into politics.

Lyndon Baines Johnson

As a student at Southwest Texas State Teachers College, Johnson was assigned to a tiny Hispanic school in a deeply impoverished area, where he thrived. Johnson left his brief career as a teacher to pursue politics during the Great Depression.

Barack Obama

From 1992 until his election to the U.S. Senate in 2004, Obama served as a professor at the University of Chicago Law School. He was a Lecturer from 1992 to 1996. He was a Senior Lecturer until 2004.

Recent Constitution Daily History Stories

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50 interesting facts about Abraham Lincoln’s life

10 U.S Presidents who also worked as teachers - Yahoo News:

Teach for America’s plan to turn around falling applications - Fortune

Teach for America’s plan to turn around falling applications - Fortune:

Teach for America's plan to turn around falling applications

 Elisa Villanueva Beard, co-CEO of Teach for America, tells Fortune about how the organization plans to bounce back after a year when applications dropped by about 10%.

Taking over when a charismatic founder steps down is never easy, but Elisa Villanueva Beard has had it tougher than most.

Beard and co-CEO Matt Kramer took on the top jobs at Teach for America, the highly selective organization that trains college graduates to teach in troubled schools, when founder Wendy Kopp stepped down in 2013. Then, after 13 straight years of growth, the number of applications to TFA fell slightly for the 2014/2015 school year, and dropped again for 2015/2016–this time by about 10%. Meanwhile, critics have charged TFA’s boot-camp style training, limited time commitment, and relationships with charter schools with undermining the teaching profession and public education.

Beard and Kramer are not the only ones struggling with these issues. The criticisms directed at their organization reflect the broader tensions that are everywhere in public education today. It’s also worth noting that TFA remains the largest source of new teachers, and that, according to a new study, students taught by relatively inexperienced TFA teachers post similar test scores to those who are taught by teachers with more than a decade of experience.

Originally from the Rio Grande Valley in South Texas, Beard joined TFA’s teacher corps in back 1998. She held a variety of regional posts before becoming COO and then co-CEO.

Beard, who lives in Houston with her husband and four sons, talked with us about how TFA is working to turn around its recruiting numbers, bring in more minority teachers, and forge stronger local relationships. What follows is an edited transcript from that conversation.

Fortune: Teach for America is facing some challenges. Applications were down about 10% last year, following a decline the previous year. What’s behind the drop?

Elisa Villanueva Beard: Throughout our history we’ve seen that an improving economy makes recruiting more challenging. The country has a post-recession mindset. When we talk to college students, we hear that people are looking for financial stability. They want to get a good footing out of college. When that’s a big thing on people’s minds, the salary of a teaching profession is an issue.

The polarized conversation around education adds an additional layer of complexity. Negativity around the work of teachers makes it harder to attract new ones.

Are you changing the way you recruit to try to turn things around?

We are re-gearing and looking at a number of things. One is starting earlier. People are taking jobs earlier. We have to get to them by sophomore or junior year, through internships or other ways that younger college students can be exposed to our alumni, who are doing awesome work, and to people who have been shaped by the program.

We’re looking at people’s motivations and making customized pathways, such as a social justice or policy tract. This generation is really entrepreneurial and interested in social justice. Companies have figured that out, and as a social justice organization, we need to get that message out. We need to double-down and tell our stories of impact.

Also, we’re working on better execution of our entire recruiting process—even handling applications faster.

You mentioned you were innovating across your business model. What other changes are in the works?

One of our biggest steps is spurring new thinking about supporting teachers locally. In the past, direction came from the center and was pushed out. But our regions are so different. We’re going to have decisions made closer to the ground. We also had national training institutes, so you might train in Tulsa, but work in Raleigh. Incoming teachers will start being trained in the region where they will be working, so they can start meeting the community and the children sooner.

Some critics have said that TFA’s two-year commitment causes instability in schools, since many teachers don’t stick around after their second year. How do you respond to that?

If we went to three, we would lose people. Two years is a long time to for kids coming out of college. The key is that TFA’s mission is to bring people who aren’t sure about Teach for America’s plan to turn around falling applications - Fortune:

Teacher Evaluation Debate in Sacramento - CETPA

Advocacy - CETPA:

Teacher Evaluation Debate in Sacramento

Teacher evaluation and training is an area of interest among legislators this year, in part spurred by the Vergara v. State of California lawsuit. As we’ve mentioned, some Democrats have proposed bills this session that could make part of the appeal moot by changing the current law with respect to teacher evaluations. 

Two measures would require locally negotiated best practices teacher evaluation systems, with various objectives required to be part of the evaluation. The nearly identical measures were introduced by Senate Education Committee Chair Liu (D-La Canada Flintridge), SB 499, and

Assembly Education Committee Chair O’Donnell (D-Long Beach) along with Speaker Atkins (D-San Diego), AB 575. Based on conversations with senior legislative staff, the intent is for both bills to set minimum state standards for teachers and administrators, with the metrics to be locally negotiated. Once amendments are agreed upon, the language will be amended into one or both of the bills and heard by their respective Education Committees, likely during the week of April 20th. 

A third bill related to evaluation systems, AB 1495 by Assembly Budget Committee Chair Weber (D-San Diego), would add to the current evaluation system a requirement to evaluate certificated employees based on pupil achievement and pupil outcomes as described in the LCAP, and sets forth evidence that may be used to show pupil progress. 

The politics of this issue are complicated by the pending appeal of the Vergara case. While the Legislature may want to pass legislation to potentially render a court decision moot, the Governor may not be willing to play along. His January budget proposed to spend $10 million dollars to strengthen teacher and administrator induction programs and data systems could be a signal that he doesn’t want to do anything legislatively on teacher evaluation right now. Look for these bills to move through the Legislature and ultimately come down to a decision by Governor Brown. 

The following is a summary of all employee evaluation and training legislation:

AB 333 (Melendez (R)): Healing Arts Continuing Education

Allows a licensed healing arts professional to receive one unit of continuing education credit for attending courses that result in the licensee becoming a certified instructor of cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) or the proper use of an automated external defibrillator (AED). Allows such licensees to receive two units of continuing education credits for conducting CPR or AED training sessions for employees of school districts and community college districts in the state.

AB 416 (Chavez (R)): Certificated Employees Evaluation 

Makes nonsubstantive changes to existing law that states the intent of the Legislature that the governing board of each school district establish a uniform system of evaluation and assessment of the performance of all certificated personnel within the school district.

AB 575 (O’Donnell (D)/Atkins (D)): Teachers: Best Practices Teacher Evaluation System 

Requires the governing board of each school district and charter school to adopt and implement a locally negotiated best practices teacher evaluation system, described as one in which each teacher is evaluated on a continuing basis on the degree to which he or she accomplishes specific objectives and multiple observations of instructional and other professional practices that are conducted by trained evaluators. Exempts hourly employees performing adult education classes. The evaluation shall include, but is not limited to, the degree of accomplishment of the following objectives:

1. Engages and supports all pupils in learning 
2. Creates and maintains effective environments for pupil learning, to the extent that those environments are within the teacher’s control
3. Understands and organizes subject matter for pupil learning 
4. Plans instruction and designs learning experiences for all pupils 
5. Uses pupil assessment information to inform instruction and to improve learning 
6. Develops as a professional educator 
7. Contributes to pupil academic growth based on multiple measures, as follows: 

1. State and local formative and summative assessments in the grade levels and subjects that these assessments are administered
2. Classroom work, local and state academic assessments, and pupil grades, classroom participation, presentations and performances, and projects and portfolios

A minimum of three performance levels is required.

AB 580 (O’Donnell (D)): School Employees: In-Service Training: Early Identification of Pupil Mental Health Issues 

Requires school districts, county offices of education, and charter schools to conduct annual in-service training for teachers in grades K-12 and for classified staff who have contact with students, on the early identification of mental heath issues. 

AB 1078 (Olson (R)): Teacher Evaluations

Requires the State Board of Education to revise, update, and adopt guidelines that school districts must use in the development of teacher evaluation. Requires the updated guidelines to include a determination of a teacher’s overall performance. 

AB 1484 (Weber (D)): Teachers: Assignment Prohibitions: Performance 

Prohibits a pupil from being assigned two consecutive years to a certified employee who has the primary responsibility of instructing pupils and has received an unsatisfactory performance rating in the most recent evaluation.

 

Requires the governing board of each school district to evaluate and assess certificated employee performance as it reasonably relates to pupil achievement and pupil outcomes. 

Evidence of pupil progress may include written reports from classroom observations and data from any or all of the following:

1. State-adopted criterion referenced assessments 
2. District, school, or department-developed assessments 
3. Curriculum-based and end-of-course assessments 
4. Pre-test and post-test data 
5. Interim, periodic, benchmark, and formative assessments 
6. English language proficiency assessments 
7. Assessments measuring progress in an individualized education program 
8. Advance placement, international baccalaureate and college preparedness examinations
9. A-G coursework completion 
10. Industry-recognized career technical education assessments and program completion
11. Portfolios of pupils’ work and projects and of live and recorded pupil performances
12. Surveys from parents 

A minimum of three performance levels is required.

SB 279 (Huff (R)): Commission on Teacher Credentialing: Teacher Evaluations 

Requires the Commission on Teacher Credentialing to develop recommendations on a certificated employee evaluation system that is capable of being used by local educational agencies statewide and that contains multiple measures including, but not limited to:

1. Principal or supervisor observation 
2. Pupil performance on statewide assessments, including achievement levels and growth
3. Pupil, parent, and peer surveys, as appropriate  

Requires the commission to submit a report containing those recommendations to the Legislature and the Governor.

SB 380 (Allen (D)): Topline Teacher Recruitment and Retention Program 

States the intent of the Legislature to enact legislation to establish the Topline Teacher Recruitment and Retention Program, under the administration of the Student Aid Commission, which would make funds available to students at public postsecondary educational institutions who have graduated in the top 5% of their secondary school classes and have committed to teaching in public secondary schools for a specified number of years.

SB 429 (Jackson (D)): Instructional Programs: Title IX Instructional Video 

Subject to funding in the Budget Act of 2016, requires creation of an instructional video to train school administrators on comprehensive Title IX compliance and a Title IX pupils' rights video designed for pupils and parents. The State Department of Education would apportion funds to a county office of education (selected from applicant county offices of education) that would be the fiduciary agent for the videos.

SB 463 (Hancock (D)): School Climate: Train the Trainer Program 

Establishes the Safe and Supportive Schools Train the Trainer Program. Subject to funding in the Budget Act of 2016, the State Department of Education would apportion funds to a county office of education, designated by the Superintendent of Public Instruction. The designated county office of education would: 

1. Establish specific professional development activities that will lead to statewide professional development support structures and a network of trainers for the development and expansion of:

• The Schoolwide Positive Behavior Interventions and Supports (SW-PBIS) programs 
• Restorative justice 
• Social and emotional learning (SEL) 
• Trauma-informed practice  
• Cultural competency professional development in each region of the state, with a specific focus on those regions that are underserved and do not have access to trainers in these research-based approaches

2. Consult with the following entities to implement these strategies:

• The Regional K-12 Student Mental Health Initiative 
• The National Alliance on Mental Illness 
• The California Technical Assistance Center on SW-PBIS 
• The California County Superintendents Educational Services Association  
• The California Mental Health Directors Association  
• Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning (CASEL)  
• UCSF Healthy Environments and Response to Trauma in Schools (HEARTS) project  
• Restorative Justice for Oakland Youth  
• The International Institute for Restorative Practices  
• Other nonprofit and public agencies

3. Select an advisory committee of stakeholders and professionals who have participated in the development of these programs to assist in planning and implementation.

SB 499 (Liu (D)): Teachers: Best Practices Teacher Evaluation System

Requires the governing board of each school district to adopt and implement a locally negotiated best practices teacher evaluation system, described as one in which each teacher is evaluated on a continuing basis on the degree to which he or she accomplishes specific objectives and multiple observations of instructional and other professional practices that are conducted by trained evaluators. The evaluation shall include, but is not limited to, the degree to of accomplishment of the following objectives:

1. Engages and supports all pupils in learning 
2. Creates and maintains effective environments for pupil learning, to the extent that those environments are within the teacher’s control
3. Understands and organizes subject matter for pupil learning 
4. Plans instruction and designs learning experiences for all pupils 
5. Uses pupil assessment information to inform instruction and to improve learning 
6. Develops as a professional educator 
7. Contributes to pupil academic growth based on multiple measures, as follows: 

1. State and local formative and summative assessments in the grade levels and subjects that these assessments are administered
2. Classroom work, local and state academic assessments, and pupil grades, classroom participation, presentations and performances, and projects and portfolios

Legislative Update

Assembly Speaker Toni Atkins (D – San Diego) has announced her committee appointments for the 2015–16 Legislative Session. Below is a list of the committees and their members that will be of particular interest to you. http://www.cetpa.net/advocacy

How Can Teachers Confront the Challenges of Baltimore, Ferguson and Urban America? | John Thompson

How Can Teachers Confront the Challenges of Baltimore, Ferguson and Urban America? | John Thompson:

How Can Teachers Confront the Challenges of Baltimore, Ferguson and Urban America?

 Now that Baltimore has captured our attention, we must all ask what should be doneWhen Work Disappears. Our urban crisis did not begin with deindustrialization; racism, Jim Crow and de facto segregation were the fundamental causes. With the energy crisis of the 1970s, however, the decline of economic opportunity was so rapid that too many families and too much of the social fabric of the inner cities were broken. With the self-segregation of "the Big Sort" and globalization, the bonds that tied schools and communities were further frayed.

These musings are intended only as a first draft of the ideas we need to discuss in order to tackle our urban crisis. First, we must stop making unforced errors and adopting policies that benefit the elites, but create hardships for working class and poor people.

The eventual death of our old blue collar industrial economy may have been unavoidable. But, we did not need to artificially accelerate the loss of jobs by subsidizing it. Under President Ronald Reagan, "Supply Side Economics" created tax breaks that encouraged the closing of still-profitable factories. Had Reaganism not sped up the destruction of blue collar jobs, working families would have had more time to adjust for the challenges of the 21st century global economy.

Similarly, families still would have faced many stresses during deindustrialization, but the Reagan administration created even more havoc through the War on Drugs. The data-driven nature of the War on Drugs made it inevitable that poor families of color would be its prime victims. As David Simon, a Baltimore journalist and an author ofThe Wire explains, Baltimore was one of the worst examples of the "juking" of stats and the corrupting nature of the drug war. As was also explained in The Wire, data-driven school reform undermined the integrity of test scores, and followed the same path in further undermining educational and civic values.

Second, we must unite, not divide. Deindustrialization of the Rust Belt was accelerated by the subsidies that were offered by Sun Belt states. Moreover, White Flight to the suburbs undermined the transition from old-fashioned de juresegregation. Then, during the 1990s, gentrification went hand-and-hand with charters that creamed the most motivated poor students of color and encouraged revitalization of favored parts of our urban centers. Charter schools and the extreme proliferation of choice eventually created self-segregation that has been dubbed "neo-Plessyism."

It is bad enough that society was too quick to abandon promising efforts to achieve socio-economic school integration, but competition-driven reform took bad urban schools and made them worse. Market-driven reform created neighborhood schools that served ever more extreme concentrations of children from generational poverty who have endured terrible trauma. Even worse, test-driven reform undermined efforts to provide aligned and coordinated socio-emotional student supports.

Third, we should remember Jesse Jackson's observation that you must back out of a blind alley the way you drove in. Whether we were forced to or not, Americans followed the corporate road map of "creative destruction," where the government was on the side of the profit-makers who bull-dozed our blue collar economy with no thought to the damage it would do to workers' families.

Then, we went along with the corporate school reform mantra which consciously sought to destroy the education "status quo" in the faith that "disruptive innovation" would rush to the rescue. In destroying the old industrial workplace, however, much How Can Teachers Confront the Challenges of Baltimore, Ferguson and Urban America? | John Thompson: