As CPS prepares to close a record number of schools, the fate of students and communities is in question.
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Teachers tell Department of Ed about RESPECT
By: Rebecca Harris / March 19, 2012
Members of the Advance Illinois Educator Advisory Council met with a federal “teacher ambassador” on Tuesday to give feedback on a 12-page draft proposal for the RESPECT Project, a proposed $5 billion grant program for states and districts that aims to sever the links between teacher pay and years of service and broadly restructure the teaching profession.
“Our goal is for a national conversation about the RESPECT Project to serve as a catalyst for remaking teaching on a grand scale,” the proposal states.
Many told Dexter Chaney, a Ryerson Elementary assistant principal who received a Teaching Ambassador Fellowship with the U.S. Department of Education, that they were optimistic the government’s plan could attract more students to the teaching profession.
“Our best and our brightest never go into education,” said Terri Goggin, a teacher from Greenville, Ill. “If you ask them what they want to do, it’s never education.”
Several praised the “apprentice” or “resident teacher” model, which would require new teachers to spend a full year getting hands-on experience in a school before becoming responsible for a class of their own.
“I see new teachers walk into my building and I think, ‘They should not be in there alone,’” said Evanston teacher Anne McKenna, recalling the challenges she faced in her first years.
However, others questioned the plan’s practicality, noting that it might actually make teaching less attractive – or pull the best teachers toward administrative duties, preventing them from having a positive effect on students.
“It seems like that’s going to be another layer of administration,” said Carol Broos, a retired Northfield teacher. The best teachers, Broos said, urgently need to be teaching rather than performing other duties.
In the face of the education system’s entrenched way of doing business, it is not clear whether a grant program can spur the type of dramatic change that the RESPECT Project is aiming for.
“How are you going to keep this grand vision from becoming a morass of details?” said Craig Lindvahl, a teacher from Effingham County, Ill., noting school systems’ propensity for regulations and procedures.
The proposal’s general outlines have already drawn praise from the American Federation of Teachers and the National Education Association, but many of the specifics could be controversial.
What’s more, the RESPECT Project’s future is not firm yet. In a tight budget year, it could be easy for its planned $5 billion in funding to be slashed to a fraction of that, or even eliminated altogether.
Its goals include:
*Raising the bar for admission to and graduation from teacher preparation programs, and for allowing teachers to keep their jobs
*Requiring success in a year-long paid residency before new teachers have a class of their own
*Configuring schools and classrooms “based on students’ needs and teachers’ abilities, rather than on traditionally prescribed formulas.” For instance, there could be smaller classes for students who are behind, or larger classes where veteran teachers work together with newer ones.
*Expanding the use of technology and support staff to allow for higher student-teacher ratios
*Grouping students based on ability and knowledge instead of age, and adapting the length of the school day and year based on individual student needs. “For teachers, this means that the hours of instruction might vary depending on the student population,” the proposal states.
*Doing away with punch-clocks and instead, asking teachers to work “professional weeks and days” (including time for planning, reflection, collaboration, and training) with many working year-round. “In some cases, time spent on duties out of class might far exceed the amount spent in the classroom,” the proposal notes.
*Merit pay for teachers, based on their responsibilities, student performance, results of classroom observations and feedback from students and peers.
*“Dramatically increasing potential earnings for teachers” in order to attract top students into the profession. The proposal outlines a sample salary and role structure for teachers, based on teachers’ performance, responsibilities, and whether they teach in high-need subjects and schools:
Resident teachers: $20,000
Provisional teachers, who are in their first 2 to 5 years after the residency (the equivalent of today’s untenured teachers): $35,000-$50,000
Professional teachers: $65,000 to $120,000
Master teachers, who coach part-time, and teacher leaders, who work part-time in school or district administration: $80,000 to $150,000
*Doing away with punch-clocks
*Doing away with punch-clocks and instead, asking teachers to work “professional weeks and days” (including time for planning, reflection, collaboration, and training) with many working year-round. “In some cases, time spent on duties out of class might far exceed the amount spent in the classroom,” the proposal notes
Exactly HOW LONG is "far esceed" ??? 7 hour day plus 7 more hours? 14 hour day?? all year??
How much higher can Illinois raise the bar to ED school
In September of 2010, the Illinois State Board of Education (ISBE) severely increased the required passing scores for the Illinois Test of Basic Skills that is required for teacher certification, leading to a 77% failure rate for all aspiring teachers across the state of Illinois. The raise in the score was not based on research and in fact, a panel of experts suggested a different score, which would have had less of an impact on the passing rates but would have maintained rigorous standards.
Overall, the number of candidates who passed the exam dropped from 85 percent inprevious years to 22 percent in September after the cut score was increased. Three percent of black test takers passed, down from 56 percent, and 7 percent of Latinos, down from 68 percent before the cut score increase. The results of the February 2011 administration of the Basic Skills Test were:Out of 1,484 White students, only 490 passed all four subtests. Out of 234 African-American students, only 25 passed. Out of 212 Hispanic students, only 28 passed. Out of 66 Asian students, only 16 passed.
So how much higher does Dexter Chaney want it to go? Mr. Chaney graduated from the University of Houston College of Education and in 2010 the average ACT score of an admitted undergraduate was a composite score of between 20 and 25. According to public testimony before a subcommitted of the Ilinois General Assembly made by Maureen D. Gillette
the Dean of the North Eastern Illinois University College of Education and a board member of Illinois Association of Deans of Public Colleges of Education there are students with ACT scores in the low 20s who are failing this test. Would Dexter Chaney or many of his fellow students from the University of Houston have passed this test if they were required to take it?
Rod Estvan
basic skills
WHy dont we make the ISBE heads take the test and wh not CPS board too!!
Research says: Higher cut scores hurt kids!
Higher cut scores are not at all correlated to student achievement.
They do however indicate a higher likelihood of leaving the area or the teaching profession entirely.
So high cut scores actually correlate to negative student outcomes in the long-run.
But hey, if it makes the teaching force younger, more temporary, and whiter, ISBE, Advance Illinois and the DoEd seem satisfied.
Teacher Prep
I completely agree with the idea that teacher preparation programs need overhauling. First year teachers are thrown into the classroom not knowing what they're doing and figuring it out along the way. It may take several years before this teacher is an effective instructor, and by then hundreds of students will have spent time in his/her ineffective classroom not learning as much as they could. I love the idea of a 1 year residency (this should be AFTER student-teaching) as well as the 2-5 year provisionary period, BUT...these teachers need continuing education, evaluation, and SUPPORT!
Trojan horses
In spite of the fact that merit pay for teachers has been debunked by experts in the fields of workplace motivation and HR, the politicians still seem to think it's a silver bullet. Could it be due to the fact that "merit" will be determined in part by student progress as measured by VAM, known for only being successful at costing a lot while providing no useable data? Add to that the increase in class size as made possible by aides and technology, another wealth extraction scheme. Why not just invest in more good teachers and smaller class sizes, a known and established best practice? Also, look at the salary of resident teachers, 20K /yr. How are you going to attract the best of the best to teaching if your first years salary requires you to live in your car? How much faith are we to have in a system that believes that it's graduates are so likely to fail that they are only worth 20K their first year? One of the biggest "entrenched" problems of the "system" is the profiteers and politicians who are completely unqualified to make decisions on how to improve it.
CPS teachers
If the CPS teachers cared about students, they would permanently remove all disruptive students!
All disruptive students should be sent to a special school for disruptive students!
marcsimschicago@gmail.com
Wheat and Chaff
Mr. Sims,
First, it is not up to teachers to remove disruptive students. That is under the purview of CPS policy, ISBE, state legislators, and the courts. Of course, charter schools are not subject to any of those same rules.
Second, your idea is exactly the direction CPS is moving via privatization of the public resource of education.
Magnet schools and charter schools select their students (through a variety of test and non-test mechanisms) and the "undesirables" end up at or are sent to neighborhood schools around the city. What, you say there is no general enrollment school in your neighborhood? It's been closed and converted to a charter which enrolls 65% of its students from outside the community? You'll just have to travel further to get to a school that will accept you. Good luck.
"undesirables"
Thanks D. R.
Chicago Public School’s middle class education model doesn’t work for thousands of CPS students. A middle class education model presumes that students have educated parents that are helping their children prepare for college.
Do you think there should be a different education model for the "undesirables"?
Advance Illinois Education Advisory Committee
Who are they? Who decided that they were expert enough to be education advisors? Is there any other profession that has to be put up with this kind of interference from self-proclaimed experts? Do doctors have politicians deciding on how colleges of medicine should operate or have their pay tied to their cure rate? No, policy makers rely on doctors to tell them what they need to know to make regulations. Of course, the Surgeon General in this country is traditionally a doctor, but the Secretary of Education needs only to be a basketball player
experts
1) Unlike every other professional field, many people have a variety of experiences in education.
2) You don't have the rigorous and necessary training of doctors. In fact, on average teachers were below average college students.
3) Most CPS schools can hardly be called successful. That's not the fault of the teachers, but you can't blame outsiders for not granting you status as authority on school improvement. Go build an highly successful school for low income urban students and you will be listened to as an expert.
Public vs. Private Education
I have been an educator for 37 years, the first 8 in parochial schools (plus attended them as a student). Excellent education is available in MOST of the State of Illinois to any student that wishes to have one, whether public OR parochial.
The issue is mostly districts with high poverty rates. Until our society fixes that problem, we will always have problems in public schools. Black & Hispanic American students consistently outscore other students in African or Hispanic countries. Asian-American students compare favorably w/other Asian country's students. What other country has the demographic mix that we do?
We have problems in Illinois schools, but some of the reforms passed will help; other problems will not go away since the same politicians rushing to reform schools have put our state in a horrible fiscal bind. What does THAT tell you?
Always Good For a Laugh
What a hoot to read commenters like the one above ("Go build an highly successful school...) when they solemnly pronounce their whimsical statistics: "In fact, on average teachers were below average college students."
Keep those analyses coming. Teachers in Chicago need lots of humor to keep their spirits up as self-appointed pontificators like the Advance Illinois Education Advisory Committee do their song and dance routine.
Trojan Horses
Bull's Eye!
Whimsy
Whimsy or not, there are reasons as to why "outsiders" are deciding the future of CPS schools. Reason Number 1 should have been :"We are your employers, and we don't like the schools". We elect the people who hire the people to improve the schools. Usually not successfully.
When a parent works two jobs to NOT send their children to CPS school, they're not likely to look at that districts employees as school experts.
I'm not arguing what's fair or best, just reality.
But I will argue that many teachers seem to reflexively reduce the school reform argument to good teacher/bad teacher. People can be in favor of changing schools, and against CTU positions, while still believing that most CPS employees do a professional job often under difficult conditions.
It seems that nothing will ever be simple when considering the issues concerning public education in Chicago.
Huh?
It's not the teachers who are reducing the argument about reform to good teacher bad teacher, it's those who have no background in education other than the knowledge that they can exploit "reform" for profit or ideological gain who have chosen to turn this myth into a takeover tactic. They use also use this tactic to drive teachers into defending their actual ability to teach and their job security in general so they can better lie that this response is all about defending bad teachers. When it comes to electing people to improve the schools, I would greatly prefer an elected school board since theres a far better chance that a board that answers directly to the people will listen to them. At the moment we have a mayor who claims the election gave him carte blanche to do whatever he wants in spite of the opposition of so many of those who elected him. CTU positions are those of the majority of their membership. Teachers, probably more than any other union members, are the union. The myth of the union/union leadership being somehow separate from it's members is another construction of those who would deceive parents/communities in the furtherance of their profit based takeover agenda. Denying teachers the ability to speak with one voice by having a strong union is key to this. When any teacher can be fired at will for any reason including political ones and especially questioning/challenging the powers that be, then ALL students lose. If these outsiders had any real interest in improving schools, the first thing they would do is push for lower class sizes in all schools, the one of the primary things that make the private schools their own children attend superior. Instead, you hear just the opposite from them, that class sizes can be much larger if we use "technology", a double dip if ever there was one. They also push absurd levels of testing as a way to improve education, another thing that their own children easily do without. Testing and "technology" remove money from schools. How is it that so many countries that have better schools than we do avoid these things like the plagues they are and we are told to embrace them as our saviors? Common sense, when driven by lies rather than being informed by facts and truth, is nothing more than a delusion imposed by those who would exploit the ignorant for their own gain.
"Bad Teacher" Distraction
Amen, Chicago Dad.
With Pavlovian brilliance politicians and their minions came up with the phrase "bad teacher." Predictably, people who have never stepped foot inside a public school classroom parrot the phrase to explain away the complex issue of underachieving students. This was necessary in order to get rid of the current teacher pay structure in Chicago because those unfunded teacher pensions look really bad even though the press tends to ignore the 40 years' worth of legislative misbehavior.
Like big cat predators, entrepreneurs quickly caught the scent of opportunity and charged in with organizations and programs that are the "real deal." And for only $19.95 + shipping and handling state and local governments can get education miracle results they desire in order to be reelected.
Of course, shipping and handling is code for whopping big salaries for the do-gooder CEOs. It's purely coincidental that everyone surrounding the money tree seems to know everyone else. Their mutual admiration society high fives are all purely altruistic.
So, a merry little band of favored "educators?" "school experts?" "magicians?" "soothsayers?" trot off to an audience with a “former assistant principal who received a Teaching Ambassador Fellowship with the U.S. Department of Education” (be still my heart) and purport to represent all the teachers in Chicago or is it the Universe?
Where are any ambassadors from any governmental agency anywhere soliciting opinions from current Chicago teachers who are the boots on the ground? There are enough lackeys masquerading as politicians’ assistants to type up a simple query and send it to every teacher in Chicago: “What do you think needs to be done to increase student achievement?”
Let someone gather them in and actually read them. Then you will have a draft proposal, but from the real deal experts.
Holy Crap
After twenty years in public school, including U. of I, I have no idea what you're talking about. Maybe I should have continued with a PhD. ? Are the secret conspiracy theories only revealed when seeking a terminal degree?
I do want to learn more about the "big cat predators". I do feel inadequate, as an elite white guy, without this special knowledge. Silly me wanting poor brown children the same opportunity as mainstream america. We white people should be figuring out how to exploit CPS students!!!
As we elite white people learn from our parents, a worthwhile life is measured by the size of ones bank account at ones death.
Time to get schooled, cs_parent
Since you obviously have not been paying attention, here are but a few pieces from the tip of the iceberg. Based on your level of education and interest, I find it difficult to believe you aren't aware of this, let alone the idea that you can't understand how it could be possible. As an "elite white guy wanting poor brown children the same opportunity as mainstream America", I would think you would not only know of this but actively be fighting against it. Balls in your court.
http://www.schoolsmatter.info/2011/03/gates-document-details-plans-for.html
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/05/04/972949/-Blackwater-In-Law-DeVos...
http://www.theinvestigativefund.org/investigations/corporateaccountabili...
http://www.thefrustratedteacher.com/2011/04/david-l-russell-on-neolibera...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SOBsoUZFae8&feature=player_embedded
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xt9FmMrvJ3A&feature=BFp&list=PLB9DE9B4184...
http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2012/03/05/24darlinghammond_ep.h31.htm...
http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/as-teacher-merit-pay-sprea...
If you just want to read 1
If Levesque's blunt advice sounds like that of a veteran lobbyist, that's because she is one. Levesque runs a Tallahassee-based firm called Meridian Strategies LLC, which lobbies on behalf of a number of education-technology companies. She is a leader of a coalition of government officials, academics and virtual school sector companies pushing new education laws that could benefit them.
But Levesque wasn't delivering her hardball advice to her lobbying clients. She was giving it to a group of education philanthropists at a conference sponsored by notable charities like the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the Michael and Susan Dell Foundation.
http://www.theinvestigativefund.org/investigations/corporateaccountabili...
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