"A great teacher can offer an escape from poverty." Really?

Using some of those Harvard econometrics from Raj Chetty, Obama precedes the ridiculous "escape from poverty" contention with this emerging statisti-meme:

We know a good teacher can increase the lifetime income of a classroom by over $250,000.

Even if this speculation could be practically demonstrated, which it can't, here's what it would mean.

So divide the $250,000 by 25 kids to a classroom (next year you can add 5 students to this number), then divide that by 45 years (next year add 5 years to that number), and you get a grand total of $222 per year per child.  An "escape from poverty"?  That won't even buy you an annual subway ride from the Bronx to Manhattan, much less an escape from poverty.

By the way, $222 is what Newt Romney made every 5 minutes last year from his interest income of $22 million. So yes, Mr. President, do say more about income inequality and how teachers offer an escape from poverty.  We're all listening.

WaPo's Strauss Calls Out Testing Industry Stooge and Colleague, Jay Mathews

How sweet it is.

LA Teacher Discovers Secret to Higher Test Scores!

Letter below to LAUSD superintendent posted at Anthony Cody's website:

Dear Dr. Cortines,

You have decided to make Fremont teachers reapply for their own jobs as part of a "reconstitution," implicitly blaming them for the shortcomings of their school. You have also opened the hiring at Fremont to other aspirants.

I am a teacher at Marshall High. I helped our Academic Decathlon team gain top scores in Art for several years, including a second place finish. Several dozen of my English students have succeeded at the challenging AP Literature test. Virtually all of my students pass the English CAHSEE, including many special education students. I have helped my school meet its AYP/API targets with some consistency.

If you are looking for teachers to spearhead success at Fremont, perhaps my record would recommend me as a promising candidate.

If so, you may be curious to learn why I am not still teaching at Fremont. You see, I taught at Fremont for five years before choosing to leave for Marshall.

I left some time after Fremont was assigned a principal unequal to the task of governing it. When we teachers requested an effective leader, our demands ignited an ugly fight that lead to many months of chaos. I wound up a victim of stress and disillusionment. I left the school over ten years ago when I became convinced that LAUSD either couldn't or wouldn't govern it effectively, and when the anxiety of the fight began to damage my home life.

My experience might be instructive for your efforts.

In the first place, it would seem to show that the shortcomings at Fremont cannot be laid at the door of its teachers. If you judge Fremont's current teachers a failure on the basis of their students' test scores, then by the same criteria I was a failing teacher when I left Fremont. Yet when I transferred to Marshall, my new students attained much better test scores. If you imagine this was due to some personal transformation of my teaching, I invite you to transfer me to a high school whose students have a higher average socio-economic status than Marshall, where I suspect yet another personal renaissance awaits me.

Secondly, my experience might lead you to wonder how Fremont loses so many excellent teachers and potentially excellent new teachers each year, and whether administrative efforts to retain these teachers might be more productive than your current attempt to drive teachers away.

If you are inclined to pursue this possibility, my experience suggests that you are uniquely placed to get results. One thing alone would have sufficed to keep me at Fremont: effective leadership. Consistently excellent leadership would retain many more fine teachers at Fremont. The high turnover of principals at Fremont over the last two decades indicates that LAUSD has failed to lead Fremont effectively in the time since I left. It is your responsibility, not that of teachers, to make sure that Fremont never again lacks for sustained excellent leadership.

Finally, if you follow through with your plan to interview current teachers for their own jobs, you might ask yourself what kind of teacher would both volunteer to teach at Fremont in the first place and also remain there for years. I am a creative, intelligent and capable teacher. I was deeply dedicated to Fremont, and especially to its students. I have deep and fond memories of these students to this day. These traits were not enough for long-term success in the environment LAUSD created at Fremont.

It humbles me to consider what personal qualities I would have needed to have remained. I hope you can summon that same sense of humility as you interview veteran Fremont teachers. Perhaps some of these teachers just feel stuck at Fremont. But you need to know that many more of these veteran teachers have special qualities that keep them at Fremont, and that most new teachers will inevitably turn out to lack such qualities. I wonder if you truly have any idea of what a Fremont teacher needs to succeed in the long term.

I understand that over half of the Fremont teachers have decided to leave rather than interview for their jobs. They are clearly upset at being blamed. If you do not reverse course and regain the trust of these teachers, you will do grievous harm to the institution you are trying to help.

You need the best teachers at Fremont. Who else has demonstrated that they can do the job they do?

Best regards,
Scott Banks

Indiana's Corporate Education Reformers Get An Earful from Educators

Sanity breaks out in Indiana. From WISH-TV reporter, Deanna Dewberry:

. . . .University education leaders say a good teacher must have both a mastery of the subject he's teaching and knowledge of children and how they learn.

That's why university education leaders, those who teach teachers how to teach, say they oppose Dr. Tony Bennett's Proposed Rule Revisions for Educator Preparation and Accountability or REPA. Educators argue the proposed rules will erode the quality of preparation of teachers and administrators.

"Anyone can be a principal without any educational requirements," said Deb Lecklider, Associate Dean of Butler's College of Education.

Opponents argue the revisions greatly reduce the hours needed in education courses and classroom experience. The proposal encourages people from other fields, like business leaders, to become school administrators by granting temporary licenses to those with no education training.

"I think we need to consider the business community and what they have done to the United States of America and where we are with regards to that now and ask ourselves the question, 'Do we really want to turn our children over to these people?'," asked Elise Matthews of the Anderson Community School Corporation.

Matthews' comments were met with thunderous applause at Monday's meeting.

Then, a dramatic moment came late morning.

"We are delivering, as a part of public comment to REPA, 2,480 petitions," announced Jill Shedd of the Indiana Association of Colleges for Teacher Education.

At that point, a half dozen educators carried every petition to the front of the room and stacked them on a table in a dramatic show of what they said is public opposition to the proposals, giving Indiana Department of Education leaders plenty of reading to do.

A few weeks ago Indiana's Governor Mitch Daniels, one of the surviving specimen of the Bush years to successfully find a new political host, was crowing about finishing the work that Bush's old reading czar, Reid Lyon, had dreamed of for so many years--namely, to blow up America's colleges of education, where prospective teachers of the poor are poisoned with democratic dispositions and ethical commitments and caring attitudes and real teaching skills. Here is part of Daniels's rant:

“When the Professional Licensing Board begins starting next week to redefine what is required to get a teaching license in Indiana, the schools of education are going to have to make some major changes of their own. They are not going to need as many people teaching what to me is mumbo jumbo. We’re going to expect students who want to teach spending much more of their time studying the subject they are going to be teaching in the schools.”

Well, it is too early to tell if Indiana's corporate education reformers will prevail, but on Monday they got verbally hammered by a whole bunch of Indiana educators who have some crucial elements of their anatomies and who are no longer afraid to speak the truth to the know-nothing corporate clowns who want to destroy public schools and the teaching profession. From the Courier-Journal:

By Rick Callahan
Associated Press

INDIANAPOLIS — A proposed revamping of Indiana's teacher licensing standards that would reduce the amount of required courses on how to teach drew sharp criticism Monday from educators, with one teacher calling it “a slap in the face.”

The comments came at the last of three public hearings on the plan as more than 250 people filled a hearing room at the Indiana State Library to comment. The proposals by Indiana schools chief Tony Bennett would require elementary education majors to take no more than 30 college credit hours in pedagogy, or how to teach.

Education schools say the Department of Education moved away from dictating the number of classes taken in recent years and should not get back in the business of regulating a college curriculum.

The department says education schools have piled on too many how-to-teach classes and that limits are needed.

Bennett's proposals also would have prospective educators major in a subject area, such as math or English, and earn a minor in education.

Most of the speakers criticized the plan, telling Indiana Department of Education staff members who oversaw the hearing that it had been inadequately researched and would not improve the quality of the state's teachers.

Opponents delivered a foot-high stack of petitions signed by nearly 2,500 teachers, principals and other educators from around the state. They urged the state to hold more public hearings and allow public school stakeholders a chance to help shape the initiative.

Elise Matthews, an Anderson teacher who has taught for 31 years at Anderson Community School Corp., said the proposals, if approved, would leave people without the necessary expertise to teach.

“I think it's another slap in the face. We need to stop slapping teachers in the face,” Matthews said.

Matt Moll, a 10th-grade English teacher at Franklin Community High School, said the state was moving too quickly and without consulting stakeholders in the education community.

“I'm going to tell you the same thing I tell my students who run down the hall: Slow down. Someone might get hurt,” he said.

More than 120 people signed up to speak at Monday's public hearing, which followed hearings that drew hundreds of critics last week in Scottsburg and Rochester.

Bennett has said that elementary education majors need to take more classes in the subjects they'll teach.

But John Ellis, executive director of the Indiana Association of Public School Superintendents, said the proposal was wrongly targeting pedagogy instruction, which he said is crucial.

“You have to know how to teach,” Ellis said. “There are people who are extraordinarily bright, extraordinarily gifted in their areas of specialty but just simply didn't know how to relate to kids.”

Several college educators testified against the proposals, including staff members from Indiana University, Purdue University, Ball State University and Butler University.

Deb Lecklider, associate dean of Butler's College of Education, said many students who are failing classes in Indiana's private, parochial and public schools are low-income, blacks, Hispanics or those with special needs.

“What we don't need are unprepared teachers in our classrooms with that very group of students that need us the most,” she said.

Bennett has said his proposals could save college students money on tuition-based courses.

Department of Education spokesman Cam Savage said the Indiana Professional Standards Board, which would have to approve any changes in the standards, next meets Nov. 18 but will not be voting at that time on Bennett's proposals.

“The board members have indicated that they would like a couple of meetings to discuss possible changes to the proposals,” he said.