It is about student achievement, right?
Well, one would hope.
Sadly, that doesn’t always (usually?) seem to be the case. From Detroit… Detroit News Editorial: “Detroit Federation of Teachers should make school district a model of change.“
In an editorial board interview this week, he noted that the current teacher contract has about 43,000 words in it — none of which includes the phrase “student achievement.”
Sad, but not entirely surprising.
The Editorial Board of the Detroit News adds, “That kind of contract must be replaced.”
And they’re absolutely right. Let’s put the focus back on the kids- and let’s expect them to succeed.
A must read: teacher accountability?
A long article, but well-worth the read. As Joel Klein and New York City struggles to improve the city’s schools, they face an uphill battle (to say the least) with the teachers union.
From The New Yorker: The Rubber Room: The battle over New York City’s worst teachers.
A few highlights (or should we say low-lights?):
Neither the Mayor nor the chancellor is popular in the Rubber Room. “Before Bloomberg and Klein took over, there was no such thing as incompetence,” Brandi Scheiner, standing just under the Manhattan Rubber Room’s “Handle with Care” poster, said recently. Scheiner, who is fifty-six, talks with a raspy Queens accent. Suspended with pay from her job as an elementary-school teacher, she earns more than a hundred thousand dollars a year, and she is, she said, “entitled to every penny of it.” She has been in the Rubber Room for two years. Like most others I encountered there, Scheiner said that she got into teaching because she “loves children.”
“Before Bloomberg and Klein, everyone knew that an incompetent teacher would realize it and leave on their own,” Scheiner said. “There was no need to push anyone out.”
And:
I asked the woman for her reaction to the following statement: “If a teacher is given a chance or two chances or three chances to improve but still does not improve, there’s no excuse for that person to continue teaching. I reject a system that rewards failure and protects a person from its consequences.”
“That sounds like Klein and his accountability bullshit,” she responded. “We can tell if we’re doing our jobs. We love these children.” After I told her that this was taken from a speech that President Obama made last March, she replied, “Obama wouldn’t say that if he knew the real story.”
It’s definitely an eye-opening read. There are so many wonderful teachers out there, and they too should reject a system that tolerates incompetence and rejects consequences for failure.
Education as “The Way out of Poverty”
This one is definitely worth a read. Michelle D. Bernard, president and chief executive officer of the Independent Women’s Forum and Independent Women’s Voice, shares “The Way out of Poverty,” in Sunday’s edition of The Examiner.
School Choice Virginia Chairman Chris Saxman has made the point before that :
Education is the first rung on the ladder of success for any citizen. As Thomas Jefferson said, “If the children . . . are untaught, their ignorance and vices will in future life cost us much dearer, in their consequences, than it would have done, in their correction, by a good education.”
Ms. Bernard echoes this point, and emphasizes the need for an improved and reformed educational system so that edducation can be a much-needed ladder out of poverty for many kids in this country.
For years, the poor have found the way out of poverty blocked by their lack of access to an excellent education. As individuals, and as a nation, we have a moral responsibility to make sure that education can be the ladder out of poverty.
American education has long been highly stratified. The wealthy send their children to exclusive private schools. Members of the middle class purchase more expensive houses in better neighborhoods to get their children into good public schools.
The poor are left with the educational dregs: Schools where learning is minimal, violence is the norm, and survival is the main objective.
A lucky few win scholarships for their children or save enough money to enroll their children in parochial schools. Most poor students, however, have no choice butto suffer in schools that simply do not work. And many activists of all races, ethnicities, and religious backgrounds who spent years angrily — and justly — challenging the notion of a “separate but unequal” public K-12 education system have remained largely silent about this scandalous situation.
Yet early civil rights activists knew that education was the great equalizer and the key to advancement. This is precisely why one of the principal targets of desegregation was education.
Poor people around the world recognize the centrality of education to advancement. Ask a child walking barefoot for miles to get to a simple classroom in any developing nation what he or she wants, and the response will be an education. The impediments to progress in these nations are far greater than in America, but they know, like we do, that the essential first step in getting ahead is education.
Obviously, not all schools in impoverished neighborhoods fail. Many dedicated teachers do their best in trying circumstances. But they are fighting an entire system seemingly organized to prevent learning and punish achievement.
The problem is not money. Spending does not correlate with academic achievement. Indeed, many of the worst public schools spend the most. They face enormous social problems, of course, yet there are private schools in underserved communities that confront the same difficulties and do far more with less.
The problem is the system. The public school monopoly is organized for the benefit of political constituencies, not families. Administrators, politicians, and teachers unions all put themselves before students. Money is spent on bureaucracy rather than teachers. Jobs are protected irrespective of how badly teachers perform. Administrators and teachers alike dismiss parents’ concerns and resist parental involvement — other than to ratify whatever the system has decided.
These are our children
“Bottom line is these are our children, they are disadvantaged children, and they often return to our public schools,” said Jean Clements, president of the Hillsborough Classroom Teachers’ Association. “I want them to get the best possible education, wherever they get it.”
Yes, you read that right folks. The St. Petersburg Times reports the head of a local Florida teacher’s association putting kids first- not matter where they go to school. Kudos to Ms. Clements for standing up for children and education, and not getting caught up in the politics of school choice and where families choose to educate their kids. And kudos to the Hillsborough County schools and teachers’ union, who have joined forces with a nonprofit Florida voucher group in an effort to provide additional training to private school teachers who serve some of Florida’s scholarship students- among the county’s most economically disadvantaged children.
It is wonderful to see a community coming together and finding common ground on education. As we have noted before, this isn’t a matter of pitting public versus private, home school versus charter school- it is about ensuring every child gets the best education possible and giving them every chance to succeed.
Red-herring shell games?
Yesterday we shared with you the first part in our examination of some of the arguments made by opponents of school choice. In the recent article, “A parent’s right to choose,” we saw several arguments made opposing choice, so today we wanted to take a look at another of these false claims.
“It’s all a red-herring shell game… The people who are pushing choice are the ones who want to be able to send their kids to schools where they have some control over who their kids get to play with, what kind of community the kids are associating with, and they apparently want to turn their backs on their own community school instead of doing the hard work of making sure that the schools that their kids are zoned to go to have the resources and high-quality teachers and kind of administrative support that they deserve to have.
As we did yesterday, we agree – in part. Most people pushing school choice DO want to be able to decide where to send their kids to school and have some control over the kind of community where their kids are being educated rather than having that decision dictated to them by government bureaucrats. And why shouldn’t they? Shouldn’t parents be able to decide if they want their kids in safe schools so they can learn without fear of violence? Shouldn’t parents be able to choose a school where their child isn’t bullied or threatened? Shouldn’t parents be able to choose a learning environment where other students share a passion for learning? It doesn’t seem like that radical a notion to us.
Perhaps some folks are not aware of some of the problems that exist in many schools in Virginia- problems that aren’t so simple that they can just be fixed with more money. Perhaps she is unaware of a growing gang problem in many public schools- even in some elementary schools.
And yet there seems to be a disdain for parents who would want to be a bit more cautious in the “community the kids are associating with.”
This is not about people turning their backs on their own community school – this is about kids and education. As we noted yesterday, there seems to be some distractaction going on from the real issues by focusing simply on schools, rather than the real goal: education.
Parents should not be criticized or faulted for wanting better for their children, for wanting to put them in an education environment where they can thrive, for wanting them to be safe when they leave home every day. It is a shame that some folks would attack those parents for wanting better for their kids.
As in the arguments we examined yesterday, they always seem to manage to bring things back around to their excuse about needing more “resources,” or more accurately, “money.” But as we pointed out yesterday, more money is not always the answer.
Kevin Chavous, a former member of the Washington, D.C., City Council who now heads up the group Democrats for Education Reform and serves on the Board for the Black Alliance for Educational Options points out, again, that the focus here should be education.
“It’s not the money. It’s what you do with the money,” Chavous said. “Funding and fueling a bureaucracy does not ensure that children are going to be educated. And that’s the ultimate goal. The ultimate goal isn’t so many dollars for public education. The ultimate goal is educating children.”
And he’s exactly right. The ultimate goal in any discussion of education reform should be educating the children. We think the only “red-herring shell game” being played here is by the opponents of choice, and their attempts to prevent real efforts for meaningful education reform and more parental choice in education.
Best for kids or best for bureaucracies?
Our apologies for being a little late in posting this letter to the editor of the Washington Post, from Chris Braunlich, Vice President of the Thomas Jefferson Institute for Public Policy. Mr. Braunlich has been closely involved with School Choice Virginia from the beginning, and here he explains “Why Virginia Needs Charter Schools.”
Charter schools are an important part of a vibrant system of parental choice in education. As we have argued many times, education should not be limited to a one-size-fits-all model. A diverse state, with students with diverse learning styles and interests, requires diverse educational models to give every student the right environment they need to succeed.
Sadly, the Virginia Education Association- the teacher’s union- continues to stand opposed to giving students and families educational choices. We believe that all teachers want their students to be successful- so why is the union that supposedly represents these teachers standing in the way of educational choices that could help all students to succeed?
Mr. Braunlich writes, in part:
Particularly disappointing was Ms. Boitnott’s preoccupation with arguing what’s best for bureaucracies, rather than what’s best for kids. She cited a recent Rand study but ignored its conclusion that charter high school students are eight to 10 percentage points more likely to enroll in college than their traditional public school counterparts.
Last year, more than 17,000 Virginians did not graduate on time. Among at-risk students, nearly 30 percent of students disappeared between ninth and 12th grades. In places such as Petersburg, more than 40 percent of all students dropped out.
Quality charter schools have demonstrated effectiveness in helping those students succeed. Shouldn’t the teachers union focus on bringing quality charters into the commonwealth, rather than finding new excuses to keep them out?
Video: An Educator Speaks Up for School Choice
School choice = right-wing plot? We think not…
In today’s Washington Examiner, Robert Holland examines the debate over school choice in the District, and the fate of the DC Opportunity Scholarship Program in Running out of rationales to oppose D.C. school vouchers.
Washington, D.C. is about as politically liberal a city as there is anywhere in the United States. President Barack Obama rolled up a 93 percent landslide win over Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) to garner D.C.’s three electoral votes last November. The District has never come close to going Republican since the 23rd Amendment gave its residents the right to vote in presidential elections beginning in 1964.
So if school vouchers are part of a right-wing plot to take down public education, as teacher union leaders often insinuate, this method of advancing school choice ought to be despised by the vast majority of D.C. residents.
To the contrary, the latest public opinion poll on the issue shows 74 percent of D.C.’s registered voters view favorably the federally funded program that provides vouchers of up to $7,500 to 1,700 needy children to enable them to attend private schools.
Moreover, nearly eight in 10 parents of school-age children in D.C. oppose ending the vouchers, which are officially called D.C. Opportunity Scholarships.
Over the past week, we have been reporting on the impressive support from DC parents and residents generally for this program. A bipartisan group of Senators, led by Senator Joe Lieberman, have now introduced a measure to save and expand the program because, as the Senator said,
“This is not a liberal program or a conservative program, but a program that puts children first.” “And I am proud to say that it’s working.”
And isn’t that what we should all be trying to do? Support programs that are working for our children? Education is not about Republican versus Democrat, conservative versus liberal, left coast versus east coast. It is about finding solutions for our children’s education- even when those solutions may upset the status quo.
Monday School Choice Headlines
Last week it was DC parents… this week, another survey shows that Kentucky voters strongly support school choice.
The Wall Street Journal takes a look at Teachers Unions versus Students in:
And we have talked before about school choice being much broader than a debate of public versus private, but about creating a wide range of options that allow families to find educational options that will best meet their children’s unique learning needs. In Colorado, school choice legislation is allowing that.
School choice and teachers
Most of the time when we discuss school choice, we talk about options for students and their families. But what about school choice for teachers?
Allison Kasic at the Independent Women’s Forum takes a look at our current one-size-fits-all model of education and the impact that has on teachers.
Education is the second largest industry in the United States, but unlike other professions, teachers have fewer options when it comes to their career track. Consider the choices that most people get to make in their careers: employees can choose to specialize in a certain area, to work for a large or small company, or perhaps weigh a higher salary vs. a more flexible schedule. That simply doesn’t exist on a large scale for teachers. Just as most students attend an assigned, government-run school, most teachers are employed by those same public schools.
Such a cookie-cutter system creates few choices for teachers. Within a given district, salaries, administrative set-up, and curriculum are mostly the same. Schools rarely compete to attract and retain the best teachers. Except for the minority of teachers that gain employment through a private or charter school, teachers are largely trapped within a one-size-fits-all system.
She goes on to explain how choice would benefit teachers- and that would be an added benefit for students as well.
Parents should take note. Having a good teacher has been widely documented to improve the results of students. Parents and students would be better much served by an education system that rewards good teaching (through policies such as merit pay), rather than a failing system that demoralizes and frustrates teachers.
The key to such an improved system is more choice. Most of the debate about school choice has centered on the policy’s impact on students, but teachers would benefit from greater freedom and a more diverse education marketplace as well.
We know that a free market with choice and competition improves the quality of products in our daily lives.
Teachers unions should recognize that a more robust education marketplace would be good for their members as well as students. Unfortunately, to date they have been on the wrong side of this issue.
This article is definitely worth a read, and for more information, visit IWF’s Women for School Choice Program.
