Yesterday, Secretary of the Commonwealth William Galvin transmitted to the state legislature An Act to Promote Excellence in Public Schools. The proposed initiative, if passed, would make necessary changes to state law to ensure every public school in Massachusetts gives effectiveness a more prominent role than seniority in decisions regarding teacher assignments and layoffs. This very concept not only has significant support from Massachusetts voters (with a recent UMASS Amherst poll showing 85% of voters approving), it is a critical next step to closing the achievement gap and providing every child in Massachusetts, regardless of their background or zip code, access to a great education.
Massachusetts has always been a leader in public education; we had the nation’s first public high school and consistently rank high on national and international assessments. Yet, we still have incredible inequities within our schools. The large achievement gaps that separate low-income students and students of color from their peers clearly demonstrate that we are failing too many of our kids in too many of our schools.
Massachusetts is my home. I was born and raised in Fall River, and I have always been proud of the strong value our Commonwealth places on education. As the first person in my family to graduate from college, I experienced the power that a quality education has to change students’ lives and increase their chances to succeed. And in my years as a teacher in one of the nation’s toughest school districts, I saw firsthand the power that teachers have to transform kids’ lives.
After graduating from Boston College, I taught 6th grade math and science in East Oakland. One of my students entered my classroom years behind his peers and far behind where he needed to be to succeed. To cope with the embarrassment of not being able to read, he would often act out in class, which led many adults in previous years to give up on him. I couldn’t accept that. Instead of writing him off, I pushed him, encouraged him, told him he would succeed, and raised his and my expectations for what he could become. And he rose to the occasion. In just one year, he grew academically at an astonishing pace, proving to himself and the school that he could achieve. If he had continued down that path, with a great teacher pushing him to achieve every year, he would have been back on track with his peers in just a few years. Unfortunately, the school system failed him. He wasn’t pushed, wasn’t supported, wasn’t challenged, and as a result, he’s no longer with us. He suffered the same fate too many of the kids we fail face when he dropped out of school and his life was taken at a young age due to gang violence.
I hold the story of this child – a young person who had a real chance to succeed if adults in the school system hadn’t failed him – close to me every day as I advocate to improve our public schools. He proved that if we give children a chance, and push them to be the best they can be, they can achieve.
That’s why I am proud of the work Stand for Children has done since 2003 to improve public schools across the Commonwealth, including leveraging more than $1.35 billion for our public school classrooms and helping to pass health benefit reform legislation, allowing communities throughout Massachusetts to save millions of dollars that helped to save teachers’ jobs, upgrade classroom technology and ultimately build better, improved schools for Massachusetts’ children.
I am also proud that Stand for Children launched the Great Teachers Great Schools campaign last fall, a statewide effort to ensure every child in Massachusetts has access to an effective teacher. An Act to Promote Excellence in Public Schools is the centerpiece of the Great Teachers Great Schools campaign. If enacted, the initiative would ensure public schools put performance first when deciding which teachers to retain during layoffs and create clear, consistent and fair guidelines for public schools across the Commonwealth for assigning and retaining teachers.
Yesterday, as Secretary Galvin prepared to transmit the initiative to the State House, we launched a new website for the Great Teachers Great Schools campaign to inform, engage and mobilize voters to take action on this important issue. I invite you to learn more about this campaign at www.greatteachersgreatschools.org, where you can watch a video that features parents, teachers and school leaders from Massachusetts speaking about the significance of putting performance first in teacher assignment decisions.
Now that the initiative has been presented to the legislature, lawmakers have an opportunity to do what an overwhelming majority of Massachusetts voters support – ensure our schools promote and recognize teachers based on performance, not just seniority. Whether a teacher started 25 years ago or yesterday, we should show them the respect they deserve for mastering their craft and getting results for all children. In passing the changes to state law in the proposed initiative, lawmakers will ensure no child spends another minute in a classroom where they are not learning, living up to the longstanding and deeply-held Massachusetts value of providing a great education to all children.
I look forward to working with our elected leaders, parents, teachers, students and advocates in the coming months to accomplish this for our kids. Please join us – to learn more, get involved and take action, please visit the Great Teachers Great Schools website today and help us achieve this victory for all children in Massachusetts.
That sure is a nice press release — the best money can buy. How about some facts, not just bold text?
This initiative is only on the ballot because paid signature-gatherers were stationed outside supermarkets, post offices, etc. When asked about this initiative, they said it was “for teachers”. Most teachers oppose it.
Not just teachers. This dog’s-breakfast of proposals has elicited negative reactions from every group involved in public education, from the secretary of education, the Mass. PTA, the Mass. secondary school administrators’ association, as well as major teachers’, school librarians, and college instructors’ associations. Administrators don’t like it. Parents don’t like it.
“Stand for Children” had the opportunity to submit many of these proposals when the state Dept. of Education was designing the new evaluation protocols. They chose not to do that. They ignored the process despite repeated invitations. Now they want to spike new legislation before it can even be tried.
“Work with” leaders, parents, teachers? Stand has a long record of ignoring and working against us.
Much of the savings that Stand engineered through breaking promises with teachers has been plowed into more clipboards and binders, more administrative overhead to deal with the systems that Stand likes to implement. “Great teachers”? Those who can become great teachers are leaving the system because Stand has them under constant attack.
Stand for Children is the vehicle chosen by the 1% to move into education — but that’s more completely mentioned elsewhere. (See here and here). They’re best-known for a video from Illinois wherein the chapter president bragged of essentially buying the process and busting the unions.
I’m not a paid lobbyist who used to teach a while ago. I am in the classroom daily. This latest billionaire effort is designed to cripple schools, make public education a career choice of last resort, and divert more money to the 1%. My kids can’t afford it.
school committees to that list. It was a hot topic on at our statewide conference in the fall.
I certainly agree much more often than not with teachers and their unions, but frankly it does sometimes seem that they are against anything that might evaluate their performance or use such evaluations in staffing decisions. I cannot think of any logical reason like something arbitrary like how long you’ve been there be given more weight than how well you do. In fact I could imagine an opposite correlation where newer teachers do better because they have most recently been trained whereas more senior teachers could be too set in their ways.
The commonwealth already had the chance to do what the title says, and is doing it. Several months went into drafting new regulations on evaluation, public comment, presentations, the whole deal. Teachers, administrators, parents, etc., were all part of it. Those new regulations just came into force, a final result brings in student work, student assessments, and multiple measures to evaluate teachers on a yearly basis, all done with the support of the teacher unions. (Mind you, it costs a bundle to do all this, and the state is refusing to fund the changes — which means fewer teachers in classrooms, more administrators and quasi-admins.) Much of what “Stand for Children” claims to want to do, was done. Yet during all the process, “Stand” stood aloof and refused to participate.
Now they want to blow the whole thing up with a new system that doesn’t frankly make much sense. Since they couldn’t write the new regulations without teachers or education experts participating, they stormed off in a snit and started writing checks so they could buy themselves an initiative petition.
about this ballot initiative is that there are already regulations in place. As Sabutai says, Stand for Children had a seat at the table, they offered NOTHING. Instead, they’re doing what they did in Illinois, attempting to buy education policy.
Here’s a link to an MTA press release. It has come links for sourcing. It was a big deal when MTA President agreed to using test scores in evaluations. The Globe had a news story on it, but this is all I found.
The new thing seems to involve the unions, which are organizations that exist primarily to protect the jobs of teachers, including those that can’t, won’t, or don’t teach.
As long as teachers unions function more like the UAW than the BBO, I don’t trust them to have any input into evaluation. When it comes down to choosing between kids and the guy who “teaches” by having kids take turns reading aloud from a textbook, and hasn’t changed a handout or test since the Reagan administration, the kids lose. Every. Single. Time.
could be let go without cause during the first three years on the job.
Most teachers don’t have a problem with evaluation. There are a couple of problems, however, to consider: 1) Administrators lack the time to do the job right, which is why it doesn’t get done. Doing more evaluations will take time and money. 2) If you think the talent pool in teaching is shallow, dive into the talent pool for administrators. It’s also a small pool. In my area, the same people keep applying for the same jobs. Unlike business, administrators are not promoted for past performance. They can be trained to do teacher evaluations, but you can end up with clowns evaluating clowns. The assumption is that the administrators are better than teachers and will do a good job at evaluating.
The other question begged by the Stand for Children initiative is the supply of teachers. It is a mistake to think that we can fire our way into a better teaching cadre. At desirable systems like mine, we probably could, but in systems like Springfield, you can’t. A significant number of good teachers leave. Half of my department in my school taught there. The conditions suck. The real stinkers should be fired in the first three years, but the average and slightly below average should be remediated. A lot of bad teachers in underperforming districts are ineffective because they were hired with no experience or are teaching out of their subject area. You can enter any classroom that will have you if you pass the MTEL and your subject matter test. This happens all the time in urban districts. You can fire them, but you’ll just replace them with the same kind of candidates–unpromising ones or ones who will leave for better working conditions.
So how is this initiative supposed to put a great teacher in every classroom?
How is it better than the regulations that the people of Massachusetts–as opposed to Jonah Edelman and his hedge-fund cronies–put together?
Can you debate as well as you can write a press release?
Massachusetts has the best-performing public schools in the US, as measured by NCLB NAEP test. By far.
In international testing, if Mass was considered a separate country, it would rank something like third in the world, tightly clustered at the top with Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Singapore.
And adjusting for Mass’ high cost of living, our schools are actually cheap. In fact, Mass residents pay a lower percentage of income to the state compared to residents of most states.
We’re already getting fantastic results at a reasonable cost. Why mess with it? The rest of the US should study what we do and copy it, instead of screwing with it and attacking our teachers.
This proposal would not strengthen education, would not be a move away from factory schools and abandoning those who struggle. Ultimately, the measure of a school and a school system is lifting all boats, and ensuring the dignity of those who teach and those who learn. Stand for Children does not do this. Human beings are NOT widgets to move down the line.
A little over five years ago, I went through several job interviews with Stand for Children but instead took a great job at Health Care For All. I was very disturbed by a few things that came to light during my interviews with Stand.
First, as a former student member of the MA Board of Ed and former leader of the State Student Advisory Council, I had a keen interest in organizing students themselves. SfC flatly told me that organizing students was not and would not be a part of their strategy. They had their reasons, but I believe that it is impossible to make good policy without the participation of the people being affected. An education reform group that ignores student voices is not worth much in my book.
Second, at the time SfC organized exclusively in Boston’s wealthy suburbs. They intentionally focused organizing efforts on wealthier moms with time to volunteer and money to donate. It seems they’ve expanded from that base, but probably not that mindset.
Third, Edelman’s ego seemed inappropriate for the kind of leader an advocacy organization needs. I thoroughly enjoyed the damning videotape that came out years later because it matched very closely my experience with him.
I’ll need to do my research on the ballot question. I’m scared of another Unz Initiative fiasco.
As a former member, I can tell you that we in Worcester kept asking when Stand was going to organize the more urban sections of town. Not yet, we kept being told. It wasn’t until the blow-up over the Ed Reform law (when Stand attempted to tell their now well-informed and well-trained to self-advocate parents what their position would be) that suddenly urban Worcester started to get attention (while the more suburban areas of town entirely dropped out). Many of those suburban areas you’re familiar with their being in have groups that have fallen apart or voted themselves out of existence (I run into former Stand members all the time in ed circles).
I’d argue that in addition to not listening to students (and agreed on your premise there), they stopped listening to parents several years ago as well.
They tried it with ministers from African American churches. Stand for Children got what they wanted in Illinois, but not with the minsters’ help.
Umm, you apple pie smells great! Who doesn’t like apple pie and recognizing teachers based on performance. But I do have a few questions about what kind of apples you are using…and how exactly do you (or the ballot question) judge teacher performance?
Do you judge performance based on the test scores of students? Thereby increasing the already intense pressure to “teach to the test”? Or is performance based on the “evaluation” a teacher gets from the principal? If so, would one of the criteria be, “how much does this teacher make and can we make up our budget cuts by firing the more qualified, but expensive teacher?”
You see, “seniority” is such a dirty word…I’m sure it tested well in your focus groups. But a synonym for “seniority” is “experience” and what we need to experienced professionals to teach our children. Frank Luntz would be very proud of your wordsmith.
One thing that utterly infuriated me about this article was the Oakland teaching anecdote. What rubbish!!!! I’m a teacher and had my first student killed in june of 2004. Should I blame myself? or maybe all of his teachers are collectively to blame. I do not believe this story. Was the author in this kid’s classrooms previously witnessing teachers “giving up”. And then afterward he performed miracles, only to have the student have to go into another incompetent teacher’s class – which led to his death? What? This is absolute garbage and transparently self serving. The author has no respect for teachers or the teaching profession and is blatantly lying about his experiences to serve his own interests. I guess it’s the fire department to blame for that firebug in California. That sentimental anecdote took place when the author was fresh out of college. Trust me when I tell you this as an educator – when you are fresh out of college you are green and inexperienced – you do not know what you are doing as a teacher; that comes with experience and having a teacher with more seniority (veteran) show the ropes.
This guy’s ego is as big as his lies. Bottom line – younger teachers are cheaper – not better. Seniority protects children’s right to have experienced teachers. Otherwise, why not just hire all the cheap newbies to save cost. Better yet let’s just ship all of our teaching jobs to India and China and have them save all of our at risk youth from gang violence. gimme a break.
This is the LAST thing that should be done. Let’s look to countries that are actually improving education and rank among the highest in the world. What are they doing? They’re giving teachers freedom in the classroom, real time to make lesson plans, expecting them to have advanced degrees and then paying them a salary that reflects that.
This proposed race to the bottom solution is no solution at all.
There are plenty of public schools that are doing well right here in the good old U. S. of A. Why not spend Bill Gates’ money studying what makes those systems work and see what might be transferred to failing systems?
The answer, of course, is improving public education isn’t their goal. Outright attacks on public education don’t work, so instead we have institutions like Stand doing the dirty work to undermine public education, all in the name of the children.
Groups like this attack the unionized public school teachers so that they can bust them up, fire them, and replace them with intimidated, desperate towel boys and girls who will work cheap.
Then, as the public schools go down because they have fired the qualified people and replaced them by tired, browbeaten servants (who need 2-3 other jobs to survive), parents will be offered vouchers.
In Massachusetts, most of the vouchers will go to Catholic schools, because of the demographics of this state. These Catholic schools could end up demanding that parents become or remain Catholic and attend Mass in order to get schooling for their children. Something similar to this is happening in the UK.
They also may end up teaching authoritarian “values” to the students who are a captive audience.