Public employees face a day of reckoning in Newark | Bob Braun's Ledger

Public employees face a day of reckoning in Newark | Bob Braun's Ledger:

Public employees face a day of reckoning in Newark

A Superior Court judge in Newark is expected to hear arguments today in a labor dispute that has implications for the future of all public employee unions.  Although the case deals only with the Newark Teachers Union (NTU),  the central issue—the so-called “management prerogative” of the state—could affect tens of thousands of other public employees.

At the core of the dispute is whether  a public employer—in this case, the Newark public schools run for the Christie Administration  by Christopher Cerf—can overturn 40 years of negotiated practice to decide unilaterally and without bargaining the provider of prescription drug benefits.

Cerf, contending he is acting “for the children” to save money, decided on his own to award the prescription program to Benecard Services, a company founded by former Republican senatorial and gubernatorial candidate Douglas Forrester and recommended by the even more politically connected insurance broker Connor Strong, owned by George Norcross  III who, although the Democratic political boss of South Jersey, is a close ally of Christie.

The provider now is GPP, but at stake is more than just the provider. Also at stake is the future of an entity known as the Supplemental Fringe Benefits Fund (SFBF), established in 1972 after several years of rancor between the NTU and the district—rancor that included a 61-day strike.

Under the terms of the agreement—which has been included in all NTU contracts for nearly 45 years—the SFBF hires the benefit providers. It is jointly overseen by the union and the school district.

Cerf has argued that, not only does he have the power to ignore the fund’s Public employees face a day of reckoning in Newark | Bob Braun's Ledger:

Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: After more than a year of stalling, finally a serious contract offer to the CTU

Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: After more than a year of stalling, finally a serious contract offer to the CTU:

After more than a year of stalling, finally a serious contract offer to the CTU

A SmallTalk Salute goes out to Karen Lewisand the CTU for forcing Rahm/Claypool's hand and finally getting a serious contract offer. This comes after a year of CPS stalling and forcing teachers to work without a contract.

Of course, the offer still has to be voted on by the union's Big Bargaining Team, the House of Delegates, and ultimately ratified by the membership itself if a strike is to be avoided. This is what union democracy looks like.

The details of the offer aren't being made public. But Lewis says that the "basic framework calls for economic concessions in exchange for enforceable protections of education quality and job security." She says those losses could include the end of the city's practice of picking up the bulk of teachers' required contributions to their pensions. But she says that the union would not bend on another key issue, incremental pay increases known as "step and lane" bumps that are doled out based on seniority and experience.

If accepted, the contract agreement would be a big blow to Gov. Rauner, who's Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: After more than a year of stalling, finally a serious contract offer to the CTU:

John Thompson: Where Are the Scholars in This Age of Disruption? | Diane Ravitch's blog

John Thompson: Where Are the Scholars in This Age of Disruption? | Diane Ravitch's blog:

John Thompson: Where Are the Scholars in This Age of Disruption?

John Thompson, historians and teachers, assesses a discussion about the role of scholars in the current era of tumult in education.

He writes:

Education Week published essays by four scholars, Jeffrey Henig, Jay Greene, Jeannie Oakes, and Rick Hess, on the role of academic researchers in school improvement. While I respect all four contributors, and with the key points of the four commentaries, I found a part of Henig’s message http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2016/01/13/the-responsibility-of-edu-scholars-in-the-public.html to be unsettling, so I will get my concerns out of the way before embracing the thrust of their arguments.

Being an academic turned inner city teacher, I know the joy that can come from bringing advanced scholarship into public education. I’m not surprised by Henig’s explanation why academics would be leery of edu-politics, however, especially during this era of bitter reform wars. He writes, “Younger scholars worried that those with opposing views would wreak revenge on them.” Moreover, Henig reports:
Seasoned and secure scholars worried about being drawn into making more simplistic and extreme statements than they felt comfortable with, believing that necessary to be heard above the noisy background of claim and counterclaim. As one researcher put it to me, “Once somebody else brings a knife to the fight, you have to bring a knife to the fight, too.”

Henig correctly complains that public discourse about education has become partisan and ideological. But, I wonder what exactly does he mean when charging that the debate has become “simplistic” and “simple-minded.” And, I was downright offended by his call for “at least some reasonable voices to be heard—voices that distill and accurately reflect what research has to say.” (emphasis mine) Speaking only for our side of the reform wars, teachers and unions are not just (belatedly) bringing a metaphorical knife to the fight that was imposed on us. Our spokespersons include some of the nation’s greatest education experts and social scientists.

Although I object to the ideology of the contemporary reform movement, scholars who embrace it are very skilled in their fields (such as economic theory and data modeling) and reasonable. The ones who I have communicated with merely don’t know what they don’t know about actual schools and systems. Had they seriously contemplated the social science of the Johns Hopkins Everyone Graduates Center and the John Thompson: Where Are the Scholars in This Age of Disruption? | Diane Ravitch's blog:

21 Concerns about Special Education and Competency-Based Education

21 Concerns about Special Education and Competency-Based Education:

21 Concerns about Special Education and Competency-Based Education

 As most know, Competency-Based Education (CBE) is being pushed into schools for all students, including those who have special needs.

Before I go on, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development looked at 15 –year-olds and their computer use in 31 nations and regions.They found that reading and math scores on the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) were lower for students who used computers more, rather than those who used technology less in school (OECD, 2015). How computers are used in the classroom matters.

One U.K. study indicates there are online barriers for students with dyslexia in an e-learning environment (Woodfine, Nunes, & Wright, 2008).

Online instruction has a place in the classroom. But putting students with disabilities online for the bulk of their schooling does not make sense. That seems to be the intent of CBE.

Indications are that CBE leaves something to be desired for students no matter what proponents tell us. Shouldn’t that give21 Concerns about Special Education and Competency-Based Education:

The Supreme Court Case Against Teachers' Unions Could Have a Far-Reaching Impact - Pacific Standard

The Supreme Court Case Against Teachers' Unions Could Have a Far-Reaching Impact - Pacific Standard:
The Supreme Court Case Against Teachers' Unions Could Have a Far-Reaching Impact
If the Supreme Court overturns Abood, will the middle class suffer?

People for and against unions hold up signs in front of the Supreme Court building on January 11, 2016, in Washington, D.C. (Photo: Mark Wilson/Getty Images)

Earlier this month, the Supreme Court heard arguments in the case of Friedrichs v. California Teachers Association. The case—which was brought by veteran fourth-grade teacher Rebecca Friedrichs and nine other California teachers, andorganized by the libertarian-leaning Center for Individual Rights—asks the Courtto overturn the 1977 Abood v. Detroit of Education ruling in favor of the constitutionality of mandatory union fees. There's a dearth of data available on how the elimination of mandatory union fees would affect union membership, but a ruling in favor of Friedrichs and her fellow petitioners at least has the potential to shrink public-sector union budgets around the country, which has troubling consequences for an already-struggling middle class.

While the Abood decision concluded that so-called "agency fees"—payments that non-union member public sector employees are required to dish out to unions to cover their portion of the union's collective bargaining expenses—were legal, it also determined that non-union employees must be permitted to opt out of any fees that were dedicated to a union's "political activities." The California teachers in the Friedrichs case are arguing that everything public-sector unions do is, in fact, political, and that agency fees thus constitute a violation of their First Amendment rights.

"In this era of broken municipal budgets and a national crisis in public education, it is difficult to imagine more politically charged issues than how much money local governments should devote to public employees, or what policies public schools should adopt to best educate children," the teachers' lawyers write in the opening brief. "Yet California and more than twenty other states compel millions of public employees to pay hundreds of millions of dollars to fund a very specific viewpoint on these pressing public questions, regardless of whether those employees support or benefit from the union's policies."

Only 11.1 percent of American workers in 2014 were unionized, as compared to 34.8 percent of workers in 1954.

If the Supreme Court rules in favor of Rebecca Friedrichs and her fellow teachers, which legal analysts currently expect it to, public-sector unions will no doubt have to trim their budgets, although it's not clear by how much. Unions argue that eliminating mandatory agency fees will create an incentive to opt for free rides: Union members, no longer subject to mandatory union fees, would be able to quit their unions, saving themselves hundreds of dollars a year, but still benefit from The Supreme Court Case Against Teachers' Unions Could Have a Far-Reaching Impact - Pacific Standard:

Perdido Street School: Goodbye And Good Luck

Perdido Street School: Goodbye And Good Luck:
Goodbye And Good Luck

This will be the last post at Perdido Street School blog.

I have been blogging for ten years at various sites.

For reasons that have been brewing for some time now, I have decided ten years is enough.

I can no longer give the blog the kind of attention I have given it in the past and so, I've decided it's time to shut it down and move on.

Thanks to all the readers and commenters over the years.

Thanks especially to Arthur Goldstein at NYC Educator, who got me started at this all those years ago, and thanks to my blogging buddies Norm Scott at Ed Notes Online, Sean Crowley at B-Lo Ed Scene, James Eterno at ICEUFT blog, Brian at Port Jefferson Station Teachers Association blog and Chaz at Chaz's School Daze.

The battles in education these past ten years have been brutal and we have seen our profession transformed into something barely recognizable from when I first started teaching fifteen years ago.

Common Core, teacher evaluations tied to test scores, EngageNY scripts and drive-by Danielson observations have ensured that many of us are teaching by numbers if wish to remain in our jobs for any period of time.

If you're a reader of this blog, you know that all the "change" we hear that is happening in education - from Cuomo's Common Core Task Force "reforms" to the changes NYSED Commissioner MaryEllen Elia says we'll see out of the State Education Department, is just so much window dressing.

The instructional focus of the Common Core remains.

The bludgeon of the Endless Testing regime on individual schools remains.

For many teachers, teacher evaluations tied to test scores remain.

The unions have run ads lately touting change, but quite frankly, there is no change  - just more of the same with minor tweaks.

Thankfully there is a parent-led pushback movement in Opt Out that continues to terrify the politicians and educrats, that continues to keep them off balance and on the defensive.

I must admit, I don't have a ton of optimism for any positive substantive change coming to public education in the near term, but if any does come, it will be as a result of the Opt Out movement and all the tireless folks there doing the work to end the Endless Testing regime.

When I first started blogging, the corporate education reform movement was in the ascendant, with no real pushback to them in the media or politics.

Despite the media narrative of the "powerful teachers unions," the unions never really tried to counter the reformers - they instead  collaborated with them on teacher evaluations, Common Core, Danielson, streamlined contracts and the like.

But the Opt Out movement has become that pushback and therein lies the hope I have for the future of public education - that parents, along with teachers, will take back their schools from the corporate reformers, the educrats, the consultants, the edu-entrepreneurs and the bought-off politicians.

If there is any bright light in the maelstrom of deform that we inhabit these days, it is the advent of a parent-led movement against the powers that be and their corporate backers to transform schools into one size fits all factories and children into interchangeable widgets.

On the union side, there are many great folks pushing back against the union leaders in the AFT, NEA, NYSUT and UFT, trying to end top-down unionism and make the unions more representative of the views of the rank and file.

In NYC, that movement is led by the people at MORE and before I go from the blogging scene, I want to say that I fully support the MORE candidates in the coming UFT elections and hope that we can finally get some people into the UFT leadership who fight for teachers and the teaching profession rather than sell us and it out piece by piece.

And with that, I say goodbye and good luck.

Detroit's troubled schools fight to write a new chapter - Yahoo News

Detroit's troubled schools fight to write a new chapter - Yahoo News:

Detroit's troubled schools fight to write a new chapter

Teachers and parents filed a lawsuit Thursday over the state of the schools. They're seeking local control after years under a state-appointed emergency manager.

The pictures of Detroit schools infested with patches of mold and dead rodents, with crumbling buildings sporting leaky roofs and buckling floors, have horrified from parents nationwide.

Those conditions, plus overcrowded classrooms, classes taught by uncertified teachers, and declining pay, have long been a concern for teachers. But because of the outrage over children in nearby Flint, Mich., being poisoned by lead-tainted water, the cries from Detroit are suddenly resonating with a wider, more responsive audience.

After more than a decade of losing enrollment and amassing debt largely under state-appointed emergency managers, the Detroit public school district could be on the verge of writing a new chapter for itself – one in which educators, students, and parents insist on taking back control of their destiny.

Recommended: Take Action:Seeking progress and innovation in education

Through a series of “sickouts” that forced more than half of schools  to close in recent weeks, teachers “have effectively made the argument that we’re seeing a lack of accountability,” says Thomas Pedroni, a professor at Wayne State University in Michigan who has studied the impact of education policies in Detroit and the state. “There are a lot of signs ... that a lot of this could have been prevented if [the schools] had democratic oversight.”

The Motor City isn’t the only urban district where years of state takeover have failed to bring about promised improvements. From Chicago, to Newark, N.J., parents and teachers have been mobilizing to restore power to elected school boards. The era of “accountability” reforms, they say, has reduced their children to test scores and dollar figures and taken away the democratic notion of schools being accountable to what the community values in education.

The same emergency manager in charge of Detroit Public Schools (DPS), Darnell Earley, was the emergency manager over the city of Flint when it switched its water source. Whether or not he was at fault in that situation, Professor Pedroni says, it has helped people “connect the dots” and rebel against GOP Gov. Rick Snyder and his appointees.

The Detroit Federation of Teachers (DFT), the teachers' state and national unions, and several parents filed a lawsuit Thursday to try to force Mr. Earley’s resignation, restore local control, and accelerate fixes of health and safety-code violations in the schools.

One judge had earlier drawn a connection to Flint, when Earley sought to save $3 million a year by cutting down the number of engineers responsible for overseeing school boilers. Codes require at least one boiler operator at each school building, but the change would have reduced it to one for every five schools. “[Flint] has taught us that when we place financial expediency over basic and critical public health needs, we reap what we sow.... Let us not have the next headline to go national be: ‘Detroit Schoolchildren Injured and Killed in Unattended Boiler Explosion,' " Judge David Allen wrote in his ruling.

Recommended: Take Action:Seeking progress and innovation in education

Governor Snyder has acknowledged that the current school system isn’t meeting the needs of Detroit’s families. With many parents opting for charter or private schools for their kids, enrollment has dropped from 150,000 in 2004 to about 46,000. The district’s long-term debt now tops $3.5 billion. The percent of funding that goes to the classroom has dropped from 58 percent to just under 47 percent since 2009. That compares with a 61 percent average in the state during the Detroit's troubled schools fight to write a new chapter - Yahoo News:

Related Stories

1. Teachers' union sues Detroit schools, demands removal of emergency manager Reuters
2. Problems in Detroit, Flint show rift over emergency managers Associated Press
3. Are Detroit school unsafe? Mayor considers teachers' concerns Christian Science Monitor
4. Detroit mayor: Dead mouse, cold kids, bad floor in schools Associated Press
5. Dozens of Detroit schools close due to teacher protest Associated Press

 

Education reform’s devious blame game: The charter school movement doesn’t want you to know it’s failing - Salon

Education reform’s devious blame game: The charter school movement doesn’t want you to know it’s failing - Salon.com:

Education reform’s devious blame game: The charter school movement doesn’t want you to know it’s failing

Insiders finger Wall Street for misspent funds and schools' poor performance. It's all part of a new PR strategy

Charter schools, which have been criticized for grabbing billions in taxpayer dollars with promises to reinvent public education using corporate efficiencies and values, are finding themselves under fire from industry insiders who are saying that these hyped market-based reforms don’t work.

The criticism comes in the wake of scandals by some of the sector’s biggest for-profit players that have given the industry a bad name. But the remarks appear to reflect a new public relations and lobbying strategy, where allies of non-profit charter operators are blaming their for-profit brethren as a way to duck political fallout, avoid scrutiny for many of the same practices and to boost their market niche.

“National for-profit charter school operators have increasingly been in the press lately and not for good reasons,” begins a January column by lobbyist-consultant Alex Medler on EducationPost.org. “Based on how often for-profit operators embarrass the charter sector, many are willing to say it’s time to ban them.”

Medler is not merely referring to investigative reports in 2015 that found hundreds of millions of dollars was misspent or missing. Nor is he referring to studies that show online charter school—the industry’s fastest-growing sector—are dogged by dropouts, poor academics and last fall’s stock price collapse of K12 Inc., the nation’s largest online charter operator. It has approximately 90,000 students enrolled in entirely Internet-delivered instruction in more than 20 states.

He is referring to all those threads and a more basic one: “hubris” that the marketplace and all its vaunted know-how could fundamentally transform public schools and improve learning.

“For-profits mistakenly assumed that inefficiency leads to bad schools,” he wrote. “They thought national scale and business savvy would allow them to outperform the competition. Chalk it up to outsiders’ hubris, but any school leader will tell you that running good schools is much more complicated than getting operations to fit together efficiently.” Medler added that state and local laws governing how public schools are to be run also confounded these would-be reformers. “Both the profit and quality quickly evaded most of them.”

Not News To Longtime Charter Critics

These comments are not coming from longtime charter foes like advocates for traditional public schools, but from an industry lobbyist-consultant. But Medler, who goes on to argue that non-profit charter schools are a healthier breed—his field’s new talking point—is not alone in revealing deep doubts about the charter school industry.

In an USnews.com commentary, charter consultant Andrew Rotherman noted that taking charter-related companies public—by selling stock—frequently yields bad outcomes. He cited Amplify, an education technology firm that was resold to private investors by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. “The company grew too fast,” he said and then floundered under “constant pressure of stock prices, earnings expectations and the short-term thinking plaguing public companies right now.”

James Merriman, the CEO of the New York City Charter School Center, added his voice to the naysayer chorus when he last month told Slate.com, “You can’t make a profit and get good results… any dollar converted [to profits] from being used inefficiently in an inner-city charter school is needed in the school.”

These statements by industry insiders about how free market tenets have not transformed public schools as promised are a notable crack in the propaganda armor surrounding the charter movement. But they also reflect a shrewd political move, where more enduring charter operators—who increasingly seem to be set up as non-profit businesses—are trying to uncouple themselves from their for-profit brethren in the public’s and lawmaker’s eyes.

“Yes, there is a recent trend with representatives from the charter school establishment openly criticizing the for-profits or even suggesting or implying that the for-profit companies like K12 Inc. should be covered under separate legislation (i.e., do not call them charter schools thus allowing remaining charters to distance themselves from the damaging news about online charters that continues to pop up across the country,” wrote Gary Miron, a professor of Evaluation, Measurement and Research at Western Michigan University’s College of Education and Human Development, in an e-mail to AlterNet. “In addition to the link you shared from Alex Education reform’s devious blame game: The charter school movement doesn’t want you to know it’s failing - Salon.com:

Why The Simple Solution To Academic Success Might Be More Recess

Why The Simple Solution To Academic Success Might Be More Recess:

Why The Simple Solution To Academic Success Might Be More Recess

Play is so important.

As schools look for more time to squeeze in math, reading and other academic subjects, a long-time cornerstone of elementary school life has taken a hit: recess.According to national estimates, first graders in U.S. public schools in 2005 averaged just under 28 minutes of recess a day. By grade six, it's roughly 24. 

But an alternate model, inspired by the Finnish system of peppering short breaks throughout the day, hopes to reverse the tide against unstructured playtime by encouraging schools to add back precious recess minutes in order to curb burnout and improve learning.

Dubbed the "LiiNK Project" and founded by Debbie Rhea, associate dean of research in Harris College of Nursing and Health Sciences with Texas Christian University, the program has two arms: A character development component intended to foster intangibles like empathy and self-worth, and a restructuring of recess modeled after Finnish schools. In a conversation with The Huffington Post, Rhea emphasized the importance of the character development curriculum, which is taught through three, 15-minute lessons per week. But it is the call for more recess that has captured national attention.

Participating kindergarten and first grade classrooms aim to give students four 15-minute breaks a day. There are two in the morning and two in the afternoon.

"It's a very basic need for human beings to have these breaks," Rhea told The Huffington Post.

"It's great for the kids, but it's a really good break for the teachers also," she said. Overall, Rhea described the feeling in the classrooms as simultaneously more relaxed and more focused. 

Gail Hutchinson, a first grade teacher with Trinity Valley, a participating private school in Fort Worth, Texas, says the frequent breaks help her young students "get their wiggles out" -- a benefit that cannot be overstated in the context of high-energy six- and seven-year-olds.

"We hit them hard with new skills in the morning, like math, then they go outside for 15 minutes. When they come back in, their brains are ready to absorb again," she said. Her students are more focused during classroom time, because they know they're guaranteed another play break soon.

Transitions in and out of recess were difficult at first, Hutchinson said. The students need to line up, get in and out of any outerwear and settle back down quickly when they come inside. But they picked it up within a month.

"They know, in order to keep having these breaks, we're going to have to work Why The Simple Solution To Academic Success Might Be More Recess:

When it comes to K-12 education, goals of GOP contenders are moot - The Washington Post

When it comes to K-12 education, goals of GOP contenders are moot - The Washington Post:

When it comes to K-12 education, goals of GOP contenders are moot

 To hear the top-tier Republican presidential candidates tell it, on their first day in office, they will shift power over education from the federal government back to states and local communities.

Problem is, Congress already took care of that.

In December, the House and Senate overwhelmingly approved a new law that dials back the power of the federal government when it comes to local classrooms. It marked a profound reset of the relationship between federal and state governments. States, not the federal government, decide curricula, teaching methods, academic standards, what to do about struggling schools and how to define success or failure, among other things.

All but two of the GOP candidates — former Florida governor Jeb Bush and Ohio Gov. John Kasich — are also promising that they will rid the country of Common Core, the K-12 academic standards in math and reading adopted by more than 40 states and the District of Columbia.

The trouble is, the president has no power over the Common Core. States decide academic standards. That has been true for years but was spelled out explicitly in the new federal education law.

[How the Common Core came to be]

Still, that hasn’t stopped Donald Trump, Sens. Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio, or retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson from telling voters that they will reduce the federal role in education while they also mothball the Common Core.

From a 45-second video released by Trump on Wednesday: “I’m a tremendous believer in education, but education has to be at a local level. We cannot have the bureaucrats in Washington telling you how to manage your child’s education. So Common Core is a total disaster. We can’t let it continue.”

[Fact-checking Trump on education ]

Two weeks ago, Cruz posted a video in which he said, “If I’m elected When it comes to K-12 education, goals of GOP contenders are moot - The Washington Post:

Feds remind Connecticut: Test students or risk losing funding | FOX 61

Feds remind Connecticut: Test students or risk losing funding | FOX 61:

Feds remind Connecticut: Test students or risk losing funding

HARTFORD -- Thousand of students opted out of the statewide achievement tests for the 2014-2015 school year and now millions of dollars in federal funding could be at stake for Connecticut if the downward trend continues when it comes to mandated testing requirements in schools.

Connecticut is one of 13 states to receive a letter from the U.S. Department of Education wanting to know why the testing numbers are down and what leaders are doing to make sure it doesn't happen again this year.

The letter reminded Connecticut on the requirements to test math and language arts, despite the end of the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) program and schools still need to test at least 95 percent of third through eighth grade students.

While the state of as a whole did meet federal standards when it comes to the annual assessments, there were many districts that did fall short.

The new Every Student Succeeds Act that was passed to replace NCLB leaves it up to states on how to handle schools that fail to have the mandated participation but the Feds want to be clear that the assessment requirements still remain.

Many states responded to the letter with plans of improved communication between teachers and parents about the importance of these assessments and some districts even said they would downgrade the schools rating if they missed participation targets with regard to testing.Feds remind Connecticut: Test students or risk losing funding | FOX 61:

The Five R's: Teacher drought hurts

The Five R's: Teacher drought hurts:

The Five R's: Teacher drought hurts

Do I need to run down the figures in the California teacher shortage? Like the drought, it’s been coming for a few years now. And like the drought, we stood by and watched and did little to nothing as the teacher pool dried up.

Most sources seem to think the recession that forced the state to raid the education budget in 2008 onward led to layoffs in the teachers ranks. The dedicated and talented educators who received pink slips found jobs in the private sector and apparently aren’t coming back.

The number of college graduates entering teaching academies and programs is half of what it used to be, according to a report by the Californian Commission on Teaching. It noted that  in 2013 there were fewer than 20,000 students enrolled in teacher preparation programs, less than half the number in enrolled in 2008.

The movement to reduce classroom sizes so teachers can reach more kids with more time to do so is in peril.

Schools are in emergency mode, scrambling for warm bodies to fill the shortage and hiring well-meaning but uncredentialed  and untrained people. Some of them vow to do what it takes to become credentialed but they aren’t there yet.

So what kind of education are our children receiving in those classrooms?

Do you think you’d get an honest opinion from the administrators who hire the temps in training? Are they merely placeholders until we come out of the drought?

The best, most effective teachers are those who are expert in classroom management. No one can teach or learn unless there is control in the classroom. In my opinion, no one should step into a classroom to teach unless they have mastered that discipline. Otherwise, the climate is unstable and that’s unfair to the student and teacher both.

In the meantime, what options are there for school districts to fill the void?

I spoke briefly with George Lopez on Wednesday night at the Alisal Union School District board meeting. He’s a veteran teacher and president of the Alisal Teachers Association. Alisal is experiencing a teacher shortage, too. I asked Lopez what grade he teaches. He’s not in the classroom this year. He’s an instructional specialist, The Five R's: Teacher drought hurts:

ESSA unlocks teacher prep innovation | Brookings Institution

ESSA unlocks teacher prep innovation | Brookings Institution:

ESSA unlocks teacher prep innovation

 A less-noticed new provision in the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) may be critical to unlocking business model innovation in teacher preparation. For decades, voices from both outside and withineducation schools have called for reforms such as greater admissions selectivity, curriculum that is grounded in learning science research, and stronger clinical training in K–12 school settings. But unfortunately, despite the fair amount of consensus regarding needed reforms, schools of education seem to have done little over the last 30 years to fundamentally change their business models to align with suggested reforms.

The reality confronting reformers that too often goes unrecognized is that fundamentally transforming teacher preparation is not merely a matter of improving programs and curriculum. As the Clayton Christensen Institute’s research has shown, real change typically requires new institutional business models. To this end, a new provision in ESSA encourages states to authorize new teacher preparation programs that circumvent the challenges of institutional deadlock.

Overcoming teacher prep programs’ resistance to change

The heart of the challenge of reforming established teacher preparation programs is that their business models discourage change. For example, many reformers call for teacher preparation programs to improve the quality of their outputs through higher admissions standards. But many prestigious institutions, such as Harvard and Yale, where selectivity is the norm across all programs, have either limited the scale of their teacher preparation programs to instead focus on education leadership and academic research, or have eliminated their schools of education altogether. The rankings-focused business models of selective colleges and universities lead them to prioritize higher-status leadership and academic training over the lower-status professional work of training new teachers. In contrast, the business models of non-prestigious state university systems are aligned with producing large numbers of teachers to serve the public good. But these same business models also sideline efforts in improving teacher quality for the sake of maintaining high volumes of graduates and low operational costs in order to provide positive revenue sources for their parent institutions.

Most states’ policies governing teacher preparation reinforce established business models and traditional practices. In order for schools of education to operate legally, issue teaching certificates, and offer their students financial aid, they must demonstrate that they meet the standards set by state departments of education and regional accreditation agencies. Although the standards set by those entities are all well intentioned, they tend to emphasize inputs (such as governance structures, credit hour requirements, and faculty credentials) rather than the quality of their outputs (effective teachers). Thus for established institutions, research and curriculum standards become central priorities because they lead to state authorization, accreditation, and the ability to bring in federal dollars. Meanwhile, these schools inadvertently give secondary priority to efforts to improve teacher quality.

Aligning business models with student outcomes

An alternative way to improve teacher preparation is to build new institutions from the ground up with entirely different business models that are aligned with student outcomes. A few examples of new institutions that have done this include Match Teacher Residency, Urban Teachers, Aspire Teacher Residency, and Relay Graduate School of Education. New ESSA unlocks teacher prep innovation | Brookings Institution:

Pearson exec slams opponents of Common Core as supporters head to court to prevent Mass. vote | NewBostonPost

Pearson exec slams opponents of Common Core as supporters head to court to prevent Mass. vote | NewBostonPost:

Pearson exec slams opponents of Common Core as supporters head to court to prevent Mass. vote 

A video in which a former textbook publishing executive defends the controversial federal Common Core educational standards and says that its creators aim to marginalize teachings of America’s founding principles became public last week, just days before Common Core supporters filed suit in Massachusetts court to stop voters here from deciding whether the state should jettison the standards.

The video, produced by Project Veritas, the self-described guerrilla journalism organization that specializes in producing undercover videos, features former Pearson Education marketing executive Kim Koerber saying, “Dead white guys did not create this country,” and ripping into conservatives who want schools to teach the U.S. constitution.  “You should know a little bit about it,” Koerber says, But “you shouldn’t have to memorize the thing.”

“People that are not educated, Fox TV viewers think that Common Core comes from the educated liberal groups and that’s why they are against it,” Koerber says in the video.

Koerber goes on to say that education should be biased in favor of a liberal agenda because “the progressive bias is the more educated you are, the better you are, and the conservative bias is the less they know, the better they are going to be.”

But contrary to Koerber’s assertions, Common Core is opposed not only by conservatives, but by an unusually bi-partisan coalition of parents, educators, and activists.

Diane Ravitch, a liberal ed reform advocate, says she opposes Common Core because she believes it is developmentally inappropriate and is “designed to enrich big corporations like Pearson and the dozens of other entrepreneurs now sucking public money out of the schools.”

The National Education Association (NEA), one of the nation’s largest teachers unions, has objected to the creation of the Common Core standards without teacher input.

Others object to the program on the ground that it imposes a one-sized-fits-all approach that is not appropriate for all states.

Proponents of Common Core, including Koerber, say they are necessary to equalize schools nationwide, better prepare students for work and college, and help pupils prepare to compete globally.

In 2010, Massachusetts became one of the first states to adopt the standards, which were developed by the National Governors Association.  Like many states, Massachusetts adopted the standards in order to improve the state’s chance of winning a chunk of the federal government’s $4 billion pool of “Race to the Top” money.

Upon implementation, however, there developed a groundswell of opposition to Common Core

- See more at: http://newbostonpost.com/2016/01/28/pearson-exec-slams-common-core-as-supporters-head-to-court-to-prevent-mass-vote/#sthash.ToUqkI2Q.dpuf