MA Wildcatters Earn Big Dividends After 3 Day Strike

 From Jacobin:

A wildly successful, illegal three-day strike by the Andover Education Association (AEA) in November has reverberated statewide for educators in Massachusetts.

The lowest-paid instructional assistants got a 60 percent wage jump immediately. Classroom aides on the higher end of the scale got a 37 percent increase.

Members won paid family medical leave, an extra personal day, fewer staff meetings, and the extension of lunch and recess times for elementary students.

Andover is twenty miles north of Boston, and the strike involved ten schools.

For ten months and twenty-seven bargaining sessions, the Andover School Committee had insisted that none of these demands were possible. But by the end of the first day of the strike, they had ceded many items. By day three, they agreed to almost all of the union’s demands.

Public-school workers can’t legally strike in Massachusetts — but Andover’s is just one of a series of school unions that have struck over the last four years, defying the ban, and in some cases paying heavy fines as a result.

The Massachusetts Teachers Association is pushing for legislation that would legalize public sector strikes after six months of bargaining. . . .

Resist Backdoor Charter Expansion by DESE in MA

In 2016 the citizens of the Commonwealth overwhelmingly beat back a plan for charter expansion.  Even though 62 percent of MA voters said NO to more charters, the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) is shepherding through a plan to expand charters in New Bedford and Haverhill.  

The cost to public education would be astronomical. In Bedford, for instance, charter expansion would cost the public schools another $15,000,000 each year that the system cannot afford. Haverhill public schools would have to dish out another $3,000,000 for charter expansion there.

The coziness between DESE and the charter industry can be linked to DESE's partnership with SEII, the charter promotion think tank at MIT. 

DESE has provided an email address for public comment on the proposed charter expansions.  The deadline for comments is December 3.  Please offer DESE and Commissioner Jeff Riley your thoughts. Write: charterschools@doe.mass.edu

Corrupt Charter Astroturf Group Pays Record Fine in MA

Last year white Alice Walton, New York hedge fund whales, and other Wall Street parasites poured $19 million into an effort in Massachusetts to increase the number of charter schools in the state by eliminating the state cap.  With the help of paid actors and parents who don't know or don't care that their children are being brutalized daily in the charter cultural sterilization camps, large rallies were staged on Boston Common to make it appear that black and brown folks were demanding more charter schools.

The voters of MA weren't fooled.  Tired of having their public school funds go to corporate predators posing as educators, the citizens turned back the charter industry effort in the November referendum.

Now it seems the corrupt shenanigans by the charterites have been exposed.  Be sure to follow this link to the list of contributors, which include some of Governor Charlie Baker's top hands:

A wealthy New York organization that poured $15 million into last year’s unsuccessful ballot question to expand charter schools in Massachusetts was hit Monday with the largest fine in state campaign history after officials found the group was illegally hiding the identities of its donors.

Families for Excellent Schools-Advocacy, a nonprofit that was the single largest funder behind Question 2 in Massachusetts, was slapped with a $426,466 fine, the largest in the 44-year history of the state Office of Campaign and Political Finance.

The group was also forced to reveal its donors — showing it was anonymously receiving major checks from two Baker administration officials and numerous wealthy contributors from the world of high finance in Massachusetts, New York, and other states. . . .

This Is What Union Power Looks Like in MA

MTA members show union power; DESE rescinds proposals linking licensure to educator evaluation

MTA President Barbara Madeloni and Vice President Janet Anderson sent the following message to MTA members on Friday, November 14:
 
We did it! In recent days, thousands of you have contacted state education officials to express your opposition to linking your license to your evaluation. MTA members sent e-mails, spoke out at DESE’s “town halls,” organized building meetings and made plans to attend upcoming DESE meetings in Malden and Bridgewater.

Today, the commissioner of education released a letter that says: “… we are rescinding the draft options that link licensure to educator evaluation.”
Our message — Union Strong — is making a difference.

While the immediate threat is lifted, there is much more to be done to make sure state officials hear what educators think we and our students need.
Here's the background on the licensure story.

Twenty-five days ago, MTA received notice of licensure changes proposed by DESE that would connect performance evaluation to license renewal and advancement. These proposals and the façade of voice given within the DESE “town halls” exposed the deep disconnect between educators and the department. Union members spoke out resoundingly. Several members of the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education joined us in telling the commissioner they opposed this licensure plan.

The decision announced today is a good start, but other aspects of proposed licensure changes are still unsettled, and the disconnect between educators and DESE remains.

The commissioner has invited us to “continue the conversation.” Let’s do just that by showing up in Malden on Nov. 19 and Bridgewater on Nov. 20 to tell our stories, speak our truth, and reclaim public education.

Here are the details of the meetings next week:

DESE-sponsored Town Halls on Licensure

Wednesday, November 19
4:30-7 p.m. (arrive at 4:15 p.m.)
Malden High School
77 Salem Street
Malden

AND

Thursday, November 20
4:30-7 p.m. (arrive at 4:15 p.m.)
Bridgewater State University
Crimson Hall – Dunn Conference Room
200 East Campus Drive
Bridgewater








Even as we move forward with our plans to make our voices heard, this is a moment to celebrate our strength and acknowledge the hard work of our members on this crucial issue. So thank you, and let’s keep up the fight!

In solidarity,
Barbara and Janet

MTA Responds to Corporate Teacher Licensure Plan by DESE

MTA Position Statement on DESE’s Performance-based Licensure Plan

The Department of Elementary and Secondary Education is floating a series of dangerous proposals that would link your license to your evaluation and/or student performance measures. The MTA is strongly opposed to all of the options outlined by DESE – and to any proposal that would tie an educator’s license with the state to his or her school- and district-based evaluations or student performance measures. 

On October 20, DESE released “Design Principles and Policy Options” for a “reimagined license system.” DESE has contracted with TNTP¹ and the Keystone Center² to hold “town halls,” ostensibly to get stakeholder feedback on these options. Members who attended the first session reported that the conversations were controlled and participants were not given the option of challenging the faulty premises being promoted by DESE. Meanwhile, DESE plans to issue proposed policy changes in the spring of 2015 and to have built a “performance-based licensure system” that includes “a link between licenses and district work assignments” by October 2015.

The policy options include a number of ideas about how to change the licensure system for those entering the profession as well as for those who are already licensed and experienced teachers. Based on a preliminary analysis, the most alarming proposals are the three options for “License Renewal and Advancement for Teachers” that are the subject of this position statement.

All three options, called Models A, B and C, would link license renewal and advancement to performance as determined by different means. We urge MTA members to demand “none of the above” as an option. Here are some highlights.

Model A: One provision: “License A automatically renewed for all educators with summative performance ratings of at least Proficient each year and at least moderate student impact rating each year.” 
 
In other words, the Student Impact Rating – based on MCAS growth and DDM scores – could be used to deprive you of a license to teach and drive you out of public school employment forever if that rating was less than “moderate.” What happened to the state’s promise that these questionable, yet-to-be-implemented ratings would only be used to help determine the length of an educator’s growth plan? Such a provision would make the high stakes attached to mandated tests even higher. Why would DESE even consider this option at a time when educators and parents across the state are saying that there is already far too much emphasis on standardized tests? How does this benefit students?
 
Model B: One provision: “If educator fails to demonstrate to the state [emphasis added] progress towards growth identified in the Educator Plan, the license may be conditionally extended for one additional year if LEA [school district] or its designee(s) provides additional coaching.” 
 
In other words, DESE – which claims it doesn’t have enough staff to regularly answer routine licensing phone calls – could be given the job of analyzing the plans of some 80,000 educators for the purpose of determining whether they have made progress toward meeting their goals. How many millions of dollars would this cost and, cumulatively, how many thousands of hours would teachers have to spend complying with such a requirement rather than teaching students? Why should the state have any role whatsoever in reviewing or analyzing an educator’s locally developed growth plan? How does this benefit students?
 
Model C: One provision: “Educators may renew a license by completing (or demonstrating) any two of the following:
 
• Recommendation from the employing LEA for license renewal
• Satisfactory results based on Student Feedback through a survey or other means
• Successful and Effective Parent Engagement….”
There are eight bullets altogether, but the first three give an idea of the direction. Under this model, the yet-to-be-implemented student feedback systems could play a role in determining whether you keep your license. This is a perversion of the stated purpose of obtaining student feedback. Why would DESE want to further undermine the validity and usefulness of an evaluation system that is already subject to deep and sustained criticism by educators? How would students benefit?
 
We strongly oppose all three models under consideration by DESE. 
 
• Linking licensure to evaluation is wrong. No other profession links job performance with licensure. Of course, the license of any professional can be pulled for grievous offenses, but not for employment-related performance reviews. Evaluations relate to educators’ employment status, not to their licenses. Linking performance measures to licensure puts vocal and activist teachers – indeed all teachers – on notice: Be careful or you will not only lose your job, but the ability to teach in Massachusetts.

• The state’s role is to determine if an educator is qualified. The appropriate role for the state is to determine whether an aspiring educator has met the education, training and experience requirements for obtaining a license and whether a practicing educator has met the professional development requirements for renewing a license. To link licensure to job performance would further extend the state’s reach into the choices educators make in the classroom.

• Too many mandates on top of too many mandates. It is outrageous that these proposals are being made at a time when even top state education officials have acknowledged that the state and federal governments have imposed too many mandates and new initiatives on educators. State Education Secretary Matt Malone has described the current mandate madness as akin to educators “trying to drink water from a fire hose.” And yet now the state is proposing a controversial new mandate that is strongly opposed by the field – with no clear explanation of why it is so urgent to impose these burdens at this time or how students will benefit. Stop the mandates! Let us teach!

October 22, 2014

---

¹TNTP was found by Michelle Rhee in 1997 as The New Teacher Project.

²The Keystone Center has been mostly an environmental and energy consulting firm, with Dow Chemical, Monsanto, Dupont, Duke Energy, Pacific Gas & Electric (the utility company in the movie Erin Brockovich), Coca-Cola and General Mills as clients. Keystone is becoming a player in education issues. Will it have equivalent corporate sponsors?

Citizens Boot Common Core Out of Town

Democracy in action!   from the Tewksbury Town-Crier:

October 11, 2014 9:07 am

By Lisa Kennedy-Cox News Correspondent 

TEWKSBURY – By a vote of 82 to 51, Tewksbury passed a non-binding resolution to boot the Common Core State Standards out of town. The last matter of the eventful meeting, Article 17, engendered animated discussion, mostly in favor of the measure.
Article 17 sought to do away with the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) and associated testing known as the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC). Residents were up in arms over the issue, the majority expressing their concerns about the program, some vehemently.

One such resident is Ruth Chou, the article’s proponent, who remains adamantly opposed to the Common Core on the grounds that education of children in grades K-12 should not be mandated by the state but should be a decision made locally.

Confusion and anger around the issue swirled as residents came forward one after another to express their opinions. Some sought to quash the Common Core, others railed against the PARCC test and over-testing children in general. Many of the residents are against what they call a “one size fits all approach” feeling that their children will be educationally ‘short-changed’ and that CCSS is “moving education in the wrong direction.” As one resident put it, “Results are not guaranteed. People of Tewksbury deserve more than Common Core.”

Warren Carey spoke against the article, stating that a Town Hall Meeting was not the proper venue for the issue, that “This is not the place to work this out. Don’t come here where people don’t understand.” Instead he advocated for the proponents to put it on a ballot for the annual town election in April so that more residents could weigh in on the matter.

Questions around vague information added to the complexity of the issue. Where does Common Core come from? Who developed the curriculum and why?

Superintendent Dr. John O’Connor, spoke on the topic first, expressing his surprise and the School Committee’s surprise about the article being placed on the special town meeting warrant without any overtures to the board that sets educational policy in town. Further, he noted that under Massachusetts General Laws, town meeting has no authority over curriculum choice. That responsibility lies with the five-member school committee, all elected to serve three-year terms.

Assistant Superintendent Brenda Theriault-Regan spoke later in the meeting. She has worked on the development of the Massachusetts Curriculum Frameworks, which incorporates Common Core standards, but goes further to maintain the high expectations Massachusetts currently demands. She stated that the MCAS test has outlived its usefulness, as it was not designed to assess college or career readiness. She added that the Common Core State Standards, developed in 2010, “are not a cookie cutter approach.” Further, the Massachusetts Curriculum Frameworks does include Science and History not just Math and English, despite some proponent’s comments to the contrary.
Resident Bob McKenna told the board, “I wish the school committee would consider what the parents are thinking.”

A standing vote found 82 in favor with 51 opposed to the slightly amended article. . . .

Are You Listening, Mitchell Chester?

by Tracy Novick in the Worcester Telegram:

In his opening-of-school letter to school districts, Massachusetts Education Commissioner Mitchell Chester commented: "I'm committed to understanding the concerns about the amount of testing that is occurring in Massachusetts schools. I plan to initiate a study of federally, state and locally required assessments and their uses in our schools. As I meet with professional organizations and visit schools in the year ahead, I look forward to hearing from you on this topic and others."

At her first meeting this past week, new Massachusetts Board of Education chair Margaret McKenna took the commissioner up on this welcome, raising concerns on the amount of standardized testing and test prep that is taking place in schools across the commonwealth.

As these concerns were followed by like concerns raised by other board members, Mr. Chester was quick to retort that districts were choosing this level of test prep.

That doesn't sound like a commitment to understanding.

In order to understand the concerns around overtesting, the commissioner is going to have to listen.

He's going to need to listen to students like Board of Education student representative Donald Willyard, who reported at the meeting that students at his school had already spent the better part of a week taking a practice test.

He'll need to listen to students as young as kindergartners who know that they dare not make noise at recess, or sing during music class, or applaud a classmate's presentation during MCAS time.

He'll need to hear from students whose language abilities do not match their math abilities, yet who are assessed in a language not native to them.

He'll need to listen to students who have fewer field trips, less recess time, less developmentally appropriate activities, all due to the almighty MCAS.

He's going to need to listen to teachers, like the teacher who last week told parents that she has to cram a year's worth of social studies into half a year "because we don't have time; we have to focus on reading and math."

He'll need to listen to teachers who each year watch their students struggle over directions that don't make sense, multiple choice questions that don't have a correct answer, and written assessments so structured that they stilt true expression — and are powerless to fix any of it.

He needs to hear from teachers who have slashed units and activities that were engaging and enlightening, as everything stops for test prep in March and May.

And he should listen to teachers whose livelihoods, in defiance of all relevance, will eventually be tied by state regulation to student test scores.

He's going to need to listen to parents, like those who wonder how it is that a test that assesses reading suddenly means the school library is off limits. He'll need to hear how frustrated they are by the enormous time sink of assessments: of days spent on MAP, of substitutes in for teachers doing Dibels, of weeks and weeks of time for MCAS.

He'll need to hear from parents whose children are inappropriately assessed by MCAS, whose schools have undergone upheavals around test scores, whose children come out the night before testing begins, in tears and with upset stomachs.

He's going to need to listen to principals, whose jobs we know now depend on MCAS scores. He'll need to hear of faculty meetings that have become nothing more than data sessions, of choices parents make based on school level, of the difficulties of managing a school that essentially goes into lockdown during testing time. He needs to listen to those whose entire careers spent educating children now stand or fall based on which kids might have had a bad day testing.

He's going to need to listen to superintendents, whose jobs now also depend on MCAS scores. He'll need to hear about the tensions of districts whose schools are now pitted against each other, rather than seeking out the students each can best serve. He needs to hear about the constant push on whether each child is "on track for MCAS" at any given point in the year. He should listen to the pressures to create District Determined Measures for teachers that are affordable, meaningful, and not standardized bubble sheets.

He's even going to need to listen to school committee members, faced with the local consequences of the unfulfilled promise of 1993. He'll need to listen to those who pass budgets we know to be undercalculated at the state level, even as districts remain, as they say, accountable for student test scores. He needs to hear of the frustration we have that the full, rich curriculum we know should be offered to our students too often boils down to two numbers in a chart in the paper.

The little-known truth is that the achievement gap was closing more rapidly prior to the passage of No Child Left Behind and mandated assessments in multiple grades. The biggest gains on closing educational gaps took place when we were focused on closing other gaps, during the War on Poverty.

The real choice before Massachusetts this coming year is not MCAS or PARCC. It is whether we will continue down a road that drills and kills all love of learning and engagement, while not closing the gaps we know exist in our system. Our oft-touted reputation as leader of the country in education demands that we choose a different road.

That, Mr. Commissioner, is what you need to hear.

Are you listening?

Tracy O'Connell Novick is a member of the Worcester School Committee.

Union Leadership that Teachers and Children Can Believe In--Really!

from the Globe, where the editorial board's head is about to explode:

NORTHAMPTON — Don’t make the mistake of talking about “teacher training” to Barbara Madeloni.

“Oh, please don’t use the word training,” she chided a reporter. “We educate teachers. We don’t train them. We train dogs. And I love dogs.”

Beacon Hill better get used to that sharply pointed, confrontational style.

The 57-year-old former psychologist turned teacher won her race by openlycriticizing the current union president, Paul Toner, for his record of negotiating with — rather than fighting — officials on the development of teacher assessments and the Common Core, a set of national education standards adopted in Massachusetts and 43 other states.A self-described social justice activist from the liberal college town of Northampton, Madeloni was until recently a complete unknown in political circles. But her upset election last month as president of the 110,000-member Massachusetts Teachers Association has already jolted lawmakers and officials worried about the dawn of a more adversarial relationship with the state’s largest union. . . .

How's that RttT Working for You, Massachusetts?

Massachusetts has been on the corporate education bandwagon since 1993 with the coming of MCAS, and in recent years the corporate PR machines have made the world aware of how much further ahead MA is in the international testing derbies and on NAEP.  

Last week's appearance of new NAEP scores gave us a chance to have a fresh look at where MA stands in relation to the other states.  Even though the CorpEd pols in MA do not acknowledge the fact, we should point out that MA started far ahead of the national average in reading and math (both 4th and 8th grade) in 1992, when the last generation of testing accountability got underway.  Since the 1990s, in fact, MA has gained nothing on the national average score in 4th and 8th grade reading and math, while gaining 11 points in 8th grad math and 3 points against the national average in 8th grade reading.

The latest NAEP results come just a month after the CorpEd's official organ in MA, the Boston Globe, printed an op-ed by Tom Payzant and Elaine Weiss entitled "Race to the Top: Good for Mass, but a Mismatch Overall."  If the 2013 NAEP scores provide at least a tiny indicator of how good RttT has been for MA, we'd have to put aside Payzant and Weiss on this one.  Massachusetts lost ground between 20011 and 2013 in 4th grade (-4) and 8th grade (-2) reading, held its place in 4th grade math, and lost 2 points in 8th grade math.  In fact, MA lost more ground than any other state since 2011.

Two days ago, the MA Secretary of Education, Matt Malone, gave a brief talk followed by a Q-A at UMass Dartmouth.  I was there to present some of the findings from TMoE, and since I had been engrossed in the NAEP data last week, I came with a question, which I had the opportunity to ask:

This year there is a new contender for the top NAEP honors--the Department of Defense schools.  They are nearly half minority, over half qualify for free or reduced priced lunch, they have a 35% annual mobility rate, over 90 percent of parents have only a high school degree.  

DoD schools were exempted from NCLB and RttT, and they have had no MCAS equivalent used to close schools or keep students from graduating. Without NCLB or RttT, they have had

• no corporate tutoring,
• no segregated charter schools,
• no AYP,
• no school closure and staff firing,
• no coerced adoption of Common Core,
• no unscientific growth models,
• no teacher evaluation based on test scores.

Even without all these corporate ed "advantages," DoD schools have a smaller percentage of "below basic" students than any other state, including MA, and they have a higher percentage of students at "proficiency."  Plus their minority-white achievement gaps are smaller than MA.  

My question, then: what are the benefits of MA's 20 years of corporate education reform that could not have been achieved without it and its accompanying pain, punishment, disruption, and divisiveness?  And can we expect another 20 years of more of the same corporate reforms?

Mr. Malone's did what most good politicians do by answering a question that he, doubtless, would prefer to have been asked, rather than the one I put to him.  He began his response, however, with a claim that DoD schools depended largely upon charter schools to educate our DoD employee's children.  And then he asked me where my accent was from, and told me that he thought I must be nice guy.  

I can live with the patronizing attitude--I have become accustomed to parochial and pedestrian yankee yokels being surprised that Southerners wear shoes, but I can't let the charter claim go without pointing that there are exactly seven (7) charter schools among DoD's 224 schools.  As a good Southerner, I thanked Mr. Malone for his answer and wished him well.  My impression: he ain't no Horace Mann.

Here is an important study of DoD schools from 2001.

Opportunity to Let MA DESE How You Feel about Common Core Testing Plan

Instructions below for getting on the agenda.

• November 18, 2013, 5-7 p.m. - Department of Elementary and Secondary Education, 75 Pleasant Street, Malden (Meeting Notice Posted: 11/13/13, 9:05 A.M.)
• November 19, 2013, 8:30 a.m. - 1 p.m. - Department of Elementary and Secondary Education, 75 Pleasant Street, Malden (Meeting Notice Posted: 11/13/13, 9:05 A.M.)

The Board of Elementary and Secondary Education welcomes public comment on matters within its purview. Accordingly, the Board makes available a maximum 30-minute period at its regular meetings for persons in the audience to address the Board for no longer than 3 minutes. Written material of any length may be submitted. Preference will be given to persons who seek to address the Board on specific agenda items for the upcoming Board meeting. Agendas for upcoming Board meetings are generally posted 5 days prior to the meeting at www.doe.mass.edu/boe/docs/. Persons wishing to speak are strongly encouraged to submit their request before the day of the meeting; contact information is provided below. Preference will be given to those who submit requests by 5:00 p.m. on the Thursday preceding the regular Tuesday meeting. If time permits, the chairman will allow members of the public who have not contacted the Department in advance to speak in the public comment period; those individuals must sign in prior to the start of the meeting. The chairman may limit the number of speakers due to time constraints and may increase or reduce the time allocated per speaker. While there is no requirement to submit written testimony, a speaker who elects to do so should submit 15 copies of the testimony prior to or at the meeting for distribution to Board members. Requests to address the Board, written testimony, and other inquiries may be transmitted by mail, e-mail, fax, or telephone to: Massachusetts Board of Elementary and Secondary Education, 75 Pleasant Street, Malden, MA 02148, Phone: 781-338-3102, Fax: 781-338-3770, E-mail: boe@doe.mass.edu.

The Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education, an affirmative action employer, is committed to ensuring that all of its programs and facilities are accessible to all members of the public. We do not discriminate on the basis of age, color, disability, national origin, race, religion, sex, gender identity, or sexual orientation. Inquiries regarding the Department's compliance with Title IX and other civil rights laws may be directed to the Human Resources Director, 75 Pleasant St., Malden, MA 02148, phone: 781-338-6105.

From my own 3 minutes of comments a while back on the eve of Massachusetts teacher evaluation scheme based on test scores:

Public Testimony on Massachusetts Teacher Evaluation Proposal

Jim Horn, Schools Matter

April 27, 2011

For the teachers who are growing our future today and can't be here, I speak against this latest plan by the Business Roundtable to further cripple our public schools, to more profoundly objectify our children, to pull apart the teacher-child relationship built on caring and trust.

This new corporate reform represents a well-funded form of bullying at the highest levels, not by elected officials or their appointees, but by unelected oligarchs whose hostile ideology threatens a takeover of public institutions in order to control steerage of an economy whose jobs they have shipped abroad, where children who can’t read or write work for slave wages to make the goods that Americans once made.

Corporate meddling in schools is nothing new. At the turn of the 20th Century, efficiency zealots insisted that schools operate as efficiently as the Henry Ford’s new production lines. Bolstered by the new psychometrics, and inspired by eugenics, those scientific managers kicked off the first orgy of tabulation in American schools, replete with scandalous IQ and achievement tests used to drive class wedges into the heart of the common school.

It took an economic depression and a world war to end that testing crusade, but it didn’t take long for a similar sorting machine to replace it, and another one after that with a new corporate label—accountability. So for the past 30 years we’ve devoted enormous energies to more sorting the poor by testing, that deform children, debase our ethics, and blow up our public schools, thus leaving urban poor kids more intensely segregated in corporate welfare charter schools built on a chain gang pedagogy that accepts no excuses, not even hunger or homelessness.

Even so, public school teachers of the Commonwealth persist in their noble work of teaching children, and teaching them well despite the unending attacks in the media.

In January, in fact, Governor Patrick announced that our 4th graders tied for first, and 8th graders tied for second on the most recent NAEP tests, having led the nation since 2005. On the 2007 TIMSS international math and science test, our 4th graders ranked second worldwide and 8th graders tied for first. If it weren’t for the bottom quintile of poor kids, in fact, most states’ schools would be ranked among the top countries in the world.

So what is the crisis to be averted this time by making test scores even more high stakes? Beneath the threadbare corporate veil of concern for achievement, we find here a transparent attack on teachers, on academic freedom, job security and autonomy, and on the teacher-student bond as teaching and learning give way even more to testing production. To achieve these goals is essential, however, if children and teachers are to be molded to fit a global economy with fewer local options and more dead end jobs.

One teacher recently interviewed spoke facetiously or cynically (it is hard to tell the difference these days) of how students may soon enter her classroom labeled as “pay cut” or “bonus.” This is harsh, but the reality is that a model that explicitly ties children’s scores to monetary worth creates such an atmosphere. Even effective and empathic teachers will be aware of how individual students may influence their own family’s economic security. Tying teacher pay or job security to test scores will not make teachers more accountable for student achievement, but it will have a deadly impact on the now tenuous relationship at the heart of student learning and growth.

This whole business of using value-added testing to evaluate teachers requires much more research before it can ever be done responsibly. I urge you to heed the National Research Council findings instead of parroting papers by the New Teacher Project or Education Trust or NCTQ, whose funders control both sides of the aisle of that same corporate jet fueled by tax credits. 

Don’t turn children into Pay Cut Sally or Bonus Billy based on their socioeconomic status before they ever sit down at a desk. This is bad policy that threatens to finish off the profession and to turn teaching toward a low-level child management occupation of last resort.

When the disgusted Spanish philosopher Unamuno confronted the fascist General Milan Astray in 1936, he said:

You will win because you have more than enough brute force. But you will not convince. For to convince you need to persuade. And in order to persuade you would need what you lack: Reason and Right in the struggle. I consider it futile to exhort you to think of Spain.

I do not think it futile to exhort you to help preserve the teacher-child relationship in Massachusetts. We are not yet a corporate dictatorship. In the meantime, the teachers, parents, and other active citizens of the Commonwealth are not persuaded. Reason and Right are lacking. We shall continue to stand for Reason and Right and to resist all else.

Broad Disciple with Checkered Past Becomes New MA Ed Chief

Teachers scoring a 2.77 out of 5.0 on the new evaluation schemes proliferating across the U.S.  would face some extra "professional development" to grind out some higher scores next year.  If you are MA superintendent getting that score, however, and if you have been one of Eli Broad's "chosen" rock stars for the past decade, then you could find yourself selected by the governor to become the chief ed official in your state.  Such is the fate of Matt Malone (Broad Class of 2003), who recently escaped the likelihood of being canned by the Brockton School Committee just in time to be appointed Secretary of Education by Governor Patrick. Malone's brief stay in Brockton followed a rocky tenure at Swampscott, where he received a no confidence vote (136-8) by Swampscott teachers.

Known as a "rock star" of the corporate reform school movement since his apprenticeship in San Diego as an assistant in the cram-down corporate ed reform dictatorship of Alan Bersin before the deformers were sent packing.  Bersin, too, was once considered a rock star for playing hard and loud, but the folks of San Diego finally got tired of the same tired tune.

One thing is for sure: as long as the corporate lap dog, Paul Toner, remains in charge of the MA Teachers Association, Mr. Malone will have the blessing of the MTA. 

Attention All Teachers: Your Union Leaders Are Betraying You

Last year Paul Toner, the ostensible leader of the MA Teachers Association, surrendered his membership by capitulating without a whimper to the first step in the corporate blueprint to replace tenured and experienced teachers with a new generation of untrained neophytes who will cycle through the system after a two to three year stint.  That first step in that process was to establish a teacher evaluation scheme based on student test scores, and to link job security pay to those test scores.  Toner accomplished this feat without a vote by the rank and file--not even an opinion survey.

This kind of open contempt for the teachers he was elected to represent in 2010 signified a transparent betrayal of teachers and children for the self-aggrandizing goal of cozying up to the corporate foundations and education terrorist organizations like Stand for Children (see Jonah Edelman spill the beans on the real goals of Stand on Children).

Now we find that President Toner has surrendered Massachusetts teachers once more in Step 2 of the corporate education deformers' plan to destroy teacher tenure, job security, and due process .  From Barbara Gordon posted Saturday on Facebook:

This week the Massachusetts Teachers Association's Board of Directors voted to put forward legislation that will end the use of tenure and seniority as the primary factors to use in layoff situations. Instead, the primary criteria will be performance evaluations and "the best interests of the students" with seniority being used only for "tie-breakers."  

This was a "legislative compromise" the MTA leadership worked out with educational terrorists Stand for Children, who had a ballot question that did the same thing and more, ready for the November election. The MTA leadership negotiated this compromise without input or approval from rank and file MTA members. Their position is that there is no way we could have beaten Stand on the ballot question so it was better to compromise and lose seniority rights and involuntary transfer rights than to fight and possibly lose those things and more.  

People are shocked and furious. Does anyone have any ideas for anything we can do about this? They are pushing to get this into the legislature and passed by July 3, the deadline when Stand for Children has to submit the final paperwork for the ballot question. 

We know we might lose the ballot question, but we wanted a chance to fight. If the MTA leadership will not fight for us, where are we? What are we paying our dues for?

And this from Tim Scott:

MTA & STAND FOR CHILDREN: As we know, collective bargaining entails negotiating with our employer over our compensation, hours of work and working conditions (broadly). Under these rules, we often need to organize ourselves to take action to ensure that we strengthen our contracts, while not giving away past gains. 

The current MTA leadership has now decided to take us in a new and very different direction and bargain (secretly in the beginning) with Stand for Children - a private anti-union, corporate front group - not only over contractual issues, but fundamental union rights. Instead of organizing members and allies to fight this aggressive assault by a group notoriously hostile to teachers unions, Toner and company chose to take a pathetic and defeatist stance to enter into "negotiations" with Stand, knowing that teachers rights and the the union's integrity will be significantly damaged.

There is one solution to this problem, and it is the same solution to the problem that NEA and AFT have: the replacement of the duplicitous cowardly union leaders who have sold millions of dues paying union members down the river without a word of protest.  But even that will not be enough, for the new leaders must be chosen from those young men and women who will restore the social justice mission that unionism was once based upon, a mission that advocates for children's rights to read and learn and grow, parents rights to have a say in school matters, and workers' rights to the respect and dignity that is afforded teachers and school staff in other countries as a matter of course. 


There is no future for teachers, children, or parents in having Gates and  Broad control the voices of teacher by buying off phony leaders like Paul Toner. If the teaching profession is to be saved for now and the future, teachers must take back their unions and reclaim the mission that made them a movement of solidarity among teachers, parents, and students.  There is no other choice, and there is no greater calling.


In case you missed Jonah Edelman's confession about Stand on Children, here it is: