How to Learn Nothing from the Failure of VAM-Based Teacher Evaluation

The Annenberg Institute for School Reform is a most exclusive academic club lavishly funded and outfitted at Brown U. for the advancement of corporate education in America. 

The Institute is headed by Susanna Loeb, who has a whole slew of degrees from prestigious universities, none of which has anything to do with the science and art of schooling, teaching, or learning.  

Researchers at the Institute are circulating a working paper that, at first glance, would suggest that school reformers might have learned something about the failure of teacher evaluation based on value-added models applied to student test scores. The abstract:

Starting in 2009, the U.S. public education system undertook a massive effort to institute new high-stakes teacher evaluation systems. We examine the effects of these reforms on student achievement and attainment at a national scale by exploiting the staggered timing of implementation across states. We find precisely estimated null effects, on average, that rule out impacts as small as 1.5 percent of a standard deviation for achievement and 1 percentage point for high school graduation and college enrollment. We also find little evidence of heterogeneous effects across an index measuring system design rigor, specific design features, and district characteristics.

So could this mean that the national failure of VAM applied to teacher evaluation might translate to decreasing the brutalization of teachers and the waste of student learning time that resulted from the implementation of VAM beginning in 2009? No such luck.  

 

The conclusion of the paper, in fact, clearly shows that the Annenbergers have concluded that the failure to raise test scores by corporate accountability means (VAM) resulted from laggard states and districts that did not adhere strictly to the VAM's mad methods.  In short, the corporate-led failure of VAM in education happened as a result of schools not being corporate enough:

Firms in the private sector often fail to implement best management practices and performance evaluation systems because of imperfectly competitive markets and the costs of implementing such policies and practices (Bloom and Van Reenen 2007). These same factors are likely to have influenced the design and implementation of teacher evaluation reforms. Unlike firms in a perfectly competitive market with incentives to implement management and evaluation systems that increase productivity, school districts and states face less competitive pressure to innovate. Similarly, adopting evaluation systems like the one implemented in Washington D.C. requires a significant investment of time, money, and political capital. Many states may have believed that the costs of these investments outweighed the benefits. Consequently, the evaluation systems adopted by many states were not meaningfully different from the status quo and subsequently failed to improve student outcomes.

So the Gates-Duncan RTTT corporate plan for teacher evaluation failed not because it was a corporate model but because it was not corporate enough!  In short, there were way too many small carrots and not enough big sticks.

 

Why Parents Want Their Kids to Stay Out of Teaching

This year's annual PDK/Gallup Poll of public attitudes toward public education found for the first time a majority of American parents unwilling to advise their children to become teachers:

Two-thirds of Americans say teachers are underpaid, and an overwhelming 78% of public school parents say they would support teachers in their community if they went on strike for more pay, according to the 2018 PDK Poll of the Public’s Attitudes Toward the Public Schools. 

Even as most Americans continue to say they have high trust and confidence in teachers, a majority also say they don’t want their own children to become teachers, most often citing poor pay and benefits as the primary reason for their reluctance.

Here are just a few of the good reasons that the majority of parents have made the right call:

• The level of teacher demonization for student test score performance over the past twenty years turned teaching into a pressure cooker that stews teachers and students before blowing up schools entirely.  In order to increase the number of corporate charter schools and other "choice" options, politicians and corporate reformers cynically designed No Child Left Behind in 2001 to "hold accountable" schools and teachers for not reaching federally-mandated proficiency targets that were known at the time to be impossible to achieve by the vast majority of children across America.

• Over the past two decades, corporate reformers and politicians have put in place teacher evaluation schemes that are invalid, unreliable, and unfair to teachers.  Untold numbers of teachers have lost their jobs as a result, even as many other teachers fled to other career fields to escape the unrelenting pressure.  Those who have stayed now focus on producing test scores by any means necessary in order to survive evaluations, which, in turn, results in moral breakdowns, nervous breakdowns, and miseducated children.

• Targeted mass killings in schools with weapons of war threaten the safety of all school personnel and children.  Growing numbers of politicians and corporate lobbyists make the case for arming teachers in schools, and kevlar book bags are now prominent on schools' mandatory supply lists for parents.  Who can blame college students and their parents for thinking of their safety and that of their children?

• In an effort to make teaching teacher proof and to reduce the number of teachers, corporate reformers and politicians continue to deprofessionalize the field with lucrative programs that turn over significant and increasing amounts of student learning to screen time governed by computer algorithms.  

• The metastasizing of the corporate cancer known as "rigor" has turned schools into training grounds for the increasingly alienating and disaffected corporate adult workplace.  Teachers are expected to function as efficiency-driven managers who increase the bottom line (test scores), and their own creativity and ingenuity have been sacrificed on the alter of standardization and quantifiable results that ignore the sociological and psychological realities of children.  

• Teachers have continued to lose economic ground to other career fields over the past decades.  With a wage gap larger today than it was in 1980, teachers work two jobs to maintain some semblance of middle class living standards.

Gates Teacher Eval System Comes Crashing Down

Chalk this one up to another bad idea from the Gates Foundation.  The bad news: the former Gates stooge, Elia, is now running New York schools into the ground. 

From the Tampa Bay Times:

The news came in an email this week from superintendent Jeff Eakins to more than 260 "peer evaluators" and mentors who form the core of the system.

It also arrived as the once-cordial relationship between the district and its teachers union imploded Thursday. The two sides walked away from each other in anger as talks over a salary agreement for the current school year broke down.

Eakins announced in his email he has formed a committee to transition away from the once-touted Gates program, and said a number of employee groups would be on the panel.

Unlike the complex system of evaluations and teacher encouragement that cost more than $100 million to develop and would have cost an estimated $52 million a year to sustain, Hillsborough will likely move to a structure that has the strongest teachers helping others at their schools.

Eakins said he envisions a new program featuring less judgemental "non-evaluative feedback" from colleagues and more "job-embedded professional development," which is training undertaken in the classroom during the teacher work day rather than in special sessions requiring time away from school. He said in his letter that these elements were supported by "the latest research."

That's a radical departure from the classroom observations carried out by full-time evaluators who rated the teachers according to a rubric, or scorecard. Bill Gates, the founder of Microsoft, and his wife Melinda funded the project and others in U.S. cities through their philanthropic organization.

They hoped the system would create a hierarchy of teachers who could be paid based on their skills. Struggling teachers would be given assistance or, in the worst cases, fired or counseled out of the profession.

The foundation was expected to contribute $100 million through 2016, but instead paid $80 million. It is unclear to what extent the organization will continue to be involved in Hillsborough or whether it will forward any more money to the district.

The school district, meanwhile, has spent well beyond the $100 million it pledged, although some of the money was for related projects including a principal training program.

READ MORE: How Hillsborough County's Gates grant became a budget buster

Among the selling points Hillsborough made back in 2009 when securing the Gates foundation's support: a close working relationship between district officials and the Hillsborough Classroom Teachers Association. District leaders praised and promoted the union at public gatherings, and assured teachers that members were equal partners in designing the system.

The Gateses hoped the newly developed systems in Hillsborough and elsewhere would result in all students — especially those with the highest needs — getting quality teachers.

But in a report published Sunday, the Tampa Bay Times showed the project fell short of many of its goals and cost more to sustain than the district could afford.

Lower-income schools continue to hire the newest and least qualified teachers. Test scores are still measurably lower for poor and minority students. And Hillsborough's graduation rate now lags behind other large counties in Florida.

As it rolled out the Gates-funded system, the district agreed to a new pay plan for teachers that added $65 million a year to payroll costs. That amount does not include more than $12 million in performance bonuses, which are now required by state law.

Despite those costs, which were revealed during the summer, the teachers union entered this year's negotiations with hopes of getting raises for teachers and classroom aides, who earn as little as $9.12 an hour.

Negotiations were suspended as district officials grappled with news that they were spending down too much of their reserves.

When talks finally resumed, the union asked for support workers' hourly wages to increase in three phases until they started at $10.77. For teachers, the union wanted everyone to advance a pay year and get an additional $1,000. For the highest-paid employees, the union asked for a 2 percent bonus.

Both sides described the proposal as a first step.

But Thursday's bargaining session was over almost as soon as it began. Mark West, the district's employee relations manager, said because of the district's budget difficulties, he would have little to offer anyone, including the support employees.

"I'm glad you're comfortable leaving your employees living in poverty," union executive director Stephanie Baxter-Jenkins shot back.

"I'm not saying I'm comfortable," West said.

Not long after, Baxter-Jenkins told the district's team, "You might as well just go."

While West spoke of the district's financial difficulties, Eakins did not mention money in his email about the Gates program.

Instead, he cited new research that suggests it is better for teachers to help one another than to mark each other down on scorecards.

"By bridging current research with the knowledge gained from the last six years, we will build an even stronger support model for our students and teachers," he wrote.

"Specifically, this transition will enable highly effective teachers to sharpen their teaching skills as they work directly with students every day. … Both teachers and students will benefit from the collegial relationships that develop over time."

Eakins did not mention the Gates situation, or the Times report, in a four-hour televised School Board meeting Tuesday. But in his email, he said "newspaper articles, social media and the general buzz" around the Gates grant had moved him to address the peer evaluators.

He drew on his own years as an elementary school teacher to praise those who took part in the experiment.

"My peers challenged me to reflect on my practice and provided indispensable guidance starting on my very first day in the classroom and continuing throughout my teaching career," he wrote.

Contact Marlene Sokol at (813) 226-3356 or msokol@tampabay.com. Follow @marlenesokol.

The text of Eakins' letter:

Dear Peers and Mentors,

I wanted to reach out directly to you and bring clarity around HCPS teacher support and evaluation. Between the newspaper articles, social media and the general buzz around the Gates Grant, it seems to me that you deserve clear and timely communication about your role in our district. We learned much from the Gates initiative. And, during my first 90 days as your Superintendent, I visited many schools in our district, observed amazing teaching practices, and listened as many of you shared your own experiences with me.

First, thank you. Thank you for embracing your role as Peer or Mentor and making a personal and professional commitment to growing our teachers. I value your work because as a former teacher, I personally benefited from my fellow teachers' experiences and feedback. My peers challenged me to reflect on my practice and provided indispensable guidance starting on my very first day in the classroom and continuing throughout my teaching career. Lesson planning, classroom management, the challenging parent conference, assessment; you name it – I knew my peers were just down the hallway with the support and feedback I needed to get better. I grew professionally by relying on an expert's feedback. Over time, I returned the favor and benefited tremendously from mentoring the newest teachers at our school. So, I understand the immense value of your role in our district.

As we, as a district, come to the end of the funding portion of the Gates Foundation grant, the goal must be how we take the value that you bring each day to your roles, combined with any lessons learned, to create an even stronger system of support for all instructional staff that can be sustained over time. We should be able to capitalize on the following:

1. The great feedback provided by teachers and leaders.

2. The training that has been delivered around the evaluation rubric, teacher feedback, and the administration of evaluations and observations.

3. The capacity of expertise that has been built among our peer evaluators and mentors regarding observation, evaluations, and teacher feedback.

We should also look at the latest research in the area of evaluation, teacher feedback, and professional development. Much of the latest research points to job-embedded professional development and non-evaluative feedback from colleagues as the mechanisms which create a quality professional growth environment within organizations.

So, armed with all the expertise that we have gained over the last six years, along with current research around best practices, I convened a committee last Thursday made up of classroom teachers, resource teachers, peer evaluators, mentors, school leaders, student service personnel, district leaders, and representatives from the Classroom Teachers Association. I asked the committee to do the following:

1. Review all components of our current evaluation and teacher support system.

2. Develop possible models for teacher support to include:

• Non-evaluative systems of support by colleagues.

• Fully released intensive system of support for teachers who need it the most such as brand new teachers, new teachers to HCPS, and struggling teachers.

• Job-embedded professional development.

• Site-based Teacher-Leaders who support both students through great instruction and teachers through timely observations and feedback.

• Model and/or Demonstration Classrooms where our most effective teachers can share best practices with other colleagues.

3. Identify a Peer and Mentor from the committee to serve as a liaison between Peers/Mentors and the committee.

The goal in HCPS would be that all teachers and instructional staff are afforded daily work environments where students' needs drive their professional development and highly effective experts are available to give them the guidance and feedback just at the time they need it the most.

Our district needs your expertise more than ever as we embark on the next phase of teacher development and support. By bridging current research with the knowledge gained from the last six years, we will build an even stronger support model for our students and teachers. Specifically, this transition will enable highly effective teachers to sharpen their teaching skills as they work directly with students every day and promote job-embedded professional development that aligns with the needs of the school. Both teachers and students will benefit from the collegial relationships that develop over time. Ultimately, this professional network will serve as the building blocks for a strong school and district culture.

The committee plans to meet over the next two months in order to draft structures for our teacher support system. I know what we have learned from the past will continue to guide us in the future. Your work serves as a strong foundation and supports our district's vision of preparing our students for life.

Thank you,

Jeff Eakins, Superintendent

Hillsborough County Public Schools

Teachers in High Poverty Schools Get Lower Evaluation Scores

Did you ever believe that using test scores to evaluate and reward teachers could be a disincentive to teaching in high poverty schools?  You were right.

From Chicago:

Teachers who score the lowest under the district’s relatively new evaluation system are overrepresented in schools with the highest concentration of poor students, according to a new report that looks for the first time at how teachers’ scores correlate with characteristics such as student poverty, teacher race and school climate.

Issued Tuesday by the University of Chicago Consortium on School Research, the report shows that 30 percent of teachers with the lowest observation scores teach in the district's highest-poverty schools, while just 9 percent teach in lower-poverty schools. Conversely, more than a third of the best-scoring teachers work in lower-poverty schools, and just 6 percent are in the district's poorest schools.

That means students who attend the poorest schools are not only “more likely to be taught by teachers with the bottom scores on observations, they are also the least likely to be taught by teachers who have the top scores.”

Teachers at higher-poverty schools who scored in the top 20 percent on their observations also scored “substantially less” than teachers in the top 20 percent at low-poverty schools. And differences in evaluation scores persisted even after controlling for teacher experience levels and credentials.

Researchers say, however, that they don’t know whether the discrepancies reflect true differences in the quality of teaching or that it’s just harder to be effective or get high marks in higher-poverty schools.

“They may reflect that it is harder to get high scores in unorganized, chaotic schools or in schools with few resources or instructional supports for teachers, as other studies have shown,” the report notes.

Past research has shown students in higher-poverty schools often receive more scripted instruction and test prep — instead of the kind of deeper learning that earns higher evaluation marks — and that teachers prefer to work in schools where they’re more likely to be effective.

The researchers expressed concern that the rating system could create disincentives for working with disadvantaged students and have ramifications for teachers of color.

“If minority teachers are more likely to work in contexts where it is difficult to get high ratings, the composition of the workforce itself could be affected by the personnel decisions based on evaluation scores,” the report states. “This is especially true for African American teachers, who disproportionately teach in higher-poverty schools.” . . . .

Gates Moves to Take Over Teacher Education, Part 1

The 2011 video below tells much of the story about the insignificance attached to research and scholarship by the corporate foundations that are trying to buy up university teacher preparation programs.  The woman on the left (in more ways than one) is respected scholar, Deborah Ball, whose scholarship and leadership as Dean of Education at University of Michigan adds the policymaker patina and research-vetted veneer to get the required respectability that the Gates Foundation is seeking to institute nationwide.

Watch the five minute clip below, and you will see Ball providing a rational, detailed overview of the work to be done on teacher improvement, and watch as she gets shut down when the Education Sector questioner steps over her to hear from the corrupt Kate Walsh, who, on cue, is there to promote the solution from the three states that were already in 2011 using value-added test scores to evaluate teachers.

You might say, Walsh was focused on the pre-determined outcome, even though Ball was pretending that the process that she was trying to initiate would somehow have an effect on that outcome.



Now four years later, Ball has completed her lengthy research, even though those same models used in Tennessee, Louisiana, and North Carolina remain the systems that CorpEd in Michigan seeks to emulate.  Even so, the elaborate plan was hijacked by a state senator last summer, who had the audacity to insist that teacher evaluation remain a local issue, rather than a state or federal one.

Undeterred, however, corporate foundation money continues to pour into Dr. Ball's operation at U of M.  This time, however, the focus is on revamping teacher preparation.  That will be the focus of Part 2.

TeacherMatch: Matchmaking Towards a Corporate Hell?

 

by Ken Derstine at Defend Public Education!

July 6, 2015
Last updated: July 16, 2015

TeacherMatch: Matchmaking Towards a Corporate Hell?

by Ken Derstine at Defend Public Education!

July 6, 2015
Last updated: July 13, 2015

In Philadelphia, all new applicants to the School District of Philadelphia must create a login and apply through a corporate portal called TeacherMatch.

All across the country, school districts, such as Chicago, are outsourcing their hiring of personnel to a private firm called TeacherMatch. This hiring method takes away community control of who staffs schools and gives the control to a private corporate entity.

In their About page, TeacherMatch would have us believe that four teachers just happened to spearhead “the design and implementation of a comprehensive hiring and professional development plan involving thousands of teachers.” They were so successful “that the U.S. Department of Education used it to shape their multi-billion-dollar school improvement program.”

There is no hint on the website of who the funders of TeacherMatch are, but it is full of “great teachers” corporate education reform jargon. And doesn’t their logo “Because Teachers Matter Most” sound like the preppy talk of StudentsFirst? TeacherMatch is a collaboration with the Northwest Evaluation Assocation that describes itself as a “global not-for-profit organization” which “offers educational products and services”. Once again, nothing about who the funders are for NWEA but its website describes it origins.

Back when NWEA was established in 1977, paper-based testing ruled. So founders Allan Olson, George Ingebo, and Vic Doherty pioneered new ways to measure student growth using an empirically-derived scale based on Danish mathematician Georg Rasch’s Item Response Theory model. Their solution—our NWEA RIT (Rasch Unit) scale—accurately measures student growth term-to-team and year-to-year.

NWEA built from this model and developed MAP, Measures of Academic Progress in 2000. The MAP led to protests at Garfield High School and a boycott of the MAP in Seattle in February of 2013 that was the beginning of the Opt Out Movement.

If you look at the TeacherMatch Advisory Board, it includes Charlotte Danielson, head of Framework for Teaching, which is “a comprehensive and coherent framework that identifies those aspects of a teacher’s responsibilities that have been documented through empirical studies and theoretical research as promoting improved student learning.”

The Framework is used by the Gates Foundation-funded Measures of Effective Teaching, or MET. The Gates Foundation has given at least $335 million to “promote effective teaching” including $45 million for MET.

In its November 19, 2009 press release for these grants the Gates Foundation stated:

Important partners in this effort are the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) and the National Education Association (NEA) and their affiliates in the participating communities.

"This process has been a thoughtful, deliberative, collaborative way to understand—and then design and implement—systems that improve teaching and learning. These districts, working with their unions and parents, were willing to think out of the box, and were awarded millions of dollars to create transparent, fair, and sustainable teacher effectiveness models,” said Randi Weingarten, President of the AFT.

“Collaboration and multilevel integration are important when it comes to transforming the teaching profession,” said NEA President Dennis Van Roekel. “These grants will go far in providing resources to help raise student achievement and improve teacher effectiveness. Our local NEA affiliates are working daily to help improve the practice of teaching,” added Dennis Van Roekel, President of the NEA.

The foundation will work with the Intensive Partnership sites to ensure that their successes, challenges, and lessons learned are shared widely with school districts and policymakers around the country. Progress will be tracked through common indicators and communicated regularly. 

Just as corporate education reform has based itself on the premise that schools in the United States lag behind the rest of the world, the Gates Foundation has based MET on the premise that teacher quality is “bleak” despite continual evidence to the contrary.

When MET was announced to study “effective teaching” in its November 19, 2009 press release  the Gates Foundation said,

The MET project will enroll 3,700 teachers from a number of school districts around the country and will gather a variety of data, including videotaped teacher observations, student surveys, teacher surveys, and supplemental student assessments. As with the Intensive Partnerships, the MET project represents a real opportunity for teachers to inform the national discussion on education reform. 

On January 6, 2012, NY Chalkbeat reported on the Gates Foundation second report on MET and said,

Though an overhaul of teacher evaluation in New York has been stalled by the failure of teachers unions and school districts to agree on how to conduct it, both the New York City teachers union and the Department of Education agreed to participate in the Gates Foundation study when it launched in 2009. The union helped recruit teachers to join, and ultimately, teachers from about 100 schools signed up to have their lessons videotaped and analyzed.

“It takes the politics out of what’s being measured,” UFT president Michael Mulgrew said when the union first agreed to participate. “Teachers are very frustrated with the political debate. They are always saying, ‘why don’t you just come into the classroom?’ That’s what this is doing.”

Since then, the politics over teacher quality has grown even more heated.

Last summer, a GothamSchools reader who had worked in a school piloting the Danielson evaluation said it was very hard for teachers to be rated “effective.”

Is this collaboration with the Gates Foundation by thousands of well-intentioned teachers who want to be trained in how to be “effective teachers” leading to a system of corporate control of who can be a teacher and what they can teach?

Also see:

Where Obama’s Race To The Top Leads: Chicago, Philly, Miami Public Schools Privatize Teacher Hiring | Bruce Dixon at Black Agenda Report

Turning Collaboration Into a Bad Word | Defend Public Education
 
The Charlotte Danielson Who Is Getting Rich on the Misuse of Intellectual Property | Schools Matter

Turning “Collaboration” Into a Bad Word

Author's Note: This post was originally posted April 12, 2015. It is being reposted in light of the leadership of the American Federation of Teachers and United Federation of Teachers supporting a corporate education reformer for New York State Education Commissioner. 

The president of the American Federation of Teachers Randi Weingarten, offered tempered praise, saying in a statement that while the union was “opposed to high-stakes testing” and grading teachers on students’ test performance, “even when MaryEllen applied it as required under Florida law, she made collaboration her mantra.” - MaryEllen Elia Named New York State Education Commissioner | The New York Times - May 26, 2015

Randi Weingarten and Bill Gates at the 2010 convention of the American Federation of teachers.

The disastrous budget that Governor Cuomo has achieved in New York deepens the attack on teachers and public education. Among its many regressive measures, the budget includes evaluating teachers based on standardized test scores. This is despite the American Statistical Association estimating that teachers affect test scores by a factor of 1% to 14% , and that evaluating teachers by scores may actually reduce quality.

The development of a national teacher evaluation system based on standardized tests has been the ten-yeargoal of The Gates Foundation and The Broad Foundation. Gates wants to bring the data crunching of computer technology to create an automated system for ranking teachers and schools in order to create a two-tier system of education basically based on class differences. Broad wants to bring his business acumen to education, and like a businessman engaged in a hostile takeover, reorganize public education to be more efficient with the ultimate aim of privatizing public education, using taxpayer dollars, for private profit.

This hostile takeover of public education by corporate education reform is unfolding year-by-year, month-by-month. It is based on the economic theories of rightwing economist Milton Friedman. His vision for privatizing education can be seen in this 1995 paper written by him. For understanding of the consequences of Friedman’s economic agenda see Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism by Naomi Klein.

How has corporate education reform been able to advance its privatization agenda with little resistance? How can a program based on private profit over the common good be sold to the public despite the vast number of people opposed to this agenda?

The growing Opt Out movement, mainly lead by parents, is the first sign of the growing opposition to the corporate agenda. After a year of being ignored by the corporate media, the Opt Out movement is gaining national attention, much to the dismay of education officials who have signed on to the corporate agenda.

The national leadership of the teachers unions, the National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers, have mouthed verbal support for Opting Out, but they have not put financial or organizational effort into the cause.

A clue to why this is so can be found in a video of a conference of the right-wing American Enterprise Institute held on February 5, 2015. The conference was a series of panels from researchers supporting corporate education reform. 

The conference can be viewed at this video. (The video is more than four hours long and should be downloaded even if you do not have time to view all of it right now.)

A centerpiece of the discussions was the document “Singing from the Same Hymnbook”: Education Policy Advocacy at Gates and Broad. This paper is by Sarah Reckhow of Michigan State University and Megan Tompkins-Stange of the University of Michigan.

 Ms. Reckhow can be viewed at the AEI conference video talking about their paper starting at 16:00 - 27:30.

The “Singing from the Same Hymnbook” paper explains why the leadership of the AFT has been missing in action in the Opt Out movement. On page 12 they detail how the corporate education reformers are deeply embedded in the U. S. Department of Education under Arne Duncan. This is followed by a description of AFT President Randi Weingarten’s collaboration with them to create a teacher evaluation system based on standardized testing.  

What follows is an extended excerpt (pages 17 - 19) from “Singing from the Handbook” about Weingarten's collaboration with the Gates and Broad Foundations to create a teacher evaluation system based on standardized tests.
(Boldface added)

Overall, a pattern emerged wherein Gates and Broad increased advocacy grant funding to groups that gave frequent testimony—defined as three or more appearances before Congress from 2000 to 2012. Advocacy grant dollars to these groups grew by more than $12 million from 2005 to 2010—well above the overall growth in funding for national advocacy groups. The overall increase in national advocacy funding from Gates and Broad was 140 percent from 2005 to 2010, while the funding to those who gave frequent testimony (included in Table 1, page 16) increased by tenfold. This funding growth supports new actors, like The New Teacher Project, as well as the establishment groups, like the NEA and AFT. This suggests that Gates and Broad were pursuing a two-pronged funding strategy: diversifying the voices in the debate and extending ties to the education establishment.

 Yet support for an organization that delivers testimony is not direct evidence of alignment with the foundation’ s agenda priorities. In some cases, increased grant support was channeled to organizations that had already shown support for reforms such as using standardized tests to evaluate teachers or implementing performance pay systems. For example, The New Teacher Project (Editor’s Note: which was at one time headed by Michelle Rhee) released “ The Widget Effect” report in 2009, supporting a major overhaul of teacher evaluation; since 2009, the Gates Foundation has committed $13.5 million in grants to The New Teacher Project. Representatives from The New Teacher Project testified before Congress in 2009, 2010, and 2012. Meanwhile, the president of the Center for American Progress, John Podesta, testified twice in 2007 in support of linking teacher compensation to evaluation systems. The Broad Foundation began funding the Center for American Progress in 2007 and has since continuously supported the Center for American Progress with almost $1 million in grants, including three grants focused on teacher incentives or pay for performance. Meanwhile, the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) has not been traditionally associated with vocal support for overhauling teacher evaluation or linking evaluations to high stakes personnel decisions. In 2010, the Gates Foundation funded the AFT to support teacher development and evaluation programs. Also in 2010, AFT president Randi Weingarten provided Congressional testimony that was relatively supportive of a new approach to teacher evaluation. (Editor’s Note: According to Table 1 on page 16 in this report, Weingarten testified before Congress on teacher quality three times in 2010 and the AFT received $2.4 million from Gates and Broad in 2010.) Weingarten testified in favor of evaluation systems that include inputs and outputs—with outputs including test data. Moreover, her written testimony included the following:

We know that a natural outgrowth of teacher evaluation systems will be differentiated compensation systems. We know from the first-hand experience of our affiliates that differentiated compensation systems developed and implemented with the full support and collaboration of teachers can succeed. 

Weingarten remained strongly committed to the collective bargaining process, but she also signaled a willingness to negotiate pay for performance systems. Weingarten’ s fellow panelists at the hearing were eager to note their alignment with the union leader. For example, Tim Daly of The New Teacher Project observed, “ Secretary Duncan and some of my fellow panelists, including Randi Weingarten, are among those calling for more rigorous evaluation systems that recognize these differences.”

Shortly after Daly’ s testimony, Professor Thomas Kane of Harvard University (and lead researcher on the Gates-funded Measures of Effective Teaching project), commented on Weingarten’ s cooperation with Measures of Effective Teaching: “ Randi Weingarten deserves a lot of credit for supporting that effort, even when it was not easy.”

 Thus, the content of the Congressional testimony suggests that organizations appearing frequently before Congress and receiving foundation funds often provided aligned recommendations and perspectives on the issue of teacher quality—views that also aligned with Gates’ and Broad’s priorities.

Month by month, year by year the conditions in the public schools are being eroded - and it is not only in New York under Cuomo. This is the result of the deliberate policy of starve the public schools, feed the charters in order to advance the privatization agenda while using standardized test scores to close or turnaround schools to charters in low income areas.

The hubris and aggressiveness of the corporate education reformers is because they know there will not be an organized and determined fight against their privatization agenda. This collaboration has been going on for a long time. They know that (unknown to their members), not only is the leadership of the American Federation of Teachers standing down from what a union is supposed to be, they are collaborating with the corporate education reformers.

Also see:

Randi Weingarten: Sleight of Hand Artist - Part 1
Defend Public Education  - April 19, 2015

Randi Weingarten: Sleight of Hand Artist - Part 2
Defend Public Education - April 22, 2015

Which Side Are You On? | Defend Public Education!

CorpEd Assails Opt Out In Desperate Attempt to Protect House of Cards
Schools Matter – April 8, 2015

The odd thing Arne Duncan told Congress
The Answer Sheet - The Washington Post - April 14, 2015
Arne Duncan says, "I didn't say that!" 

Weingarten regrets supporting Cuomo's running mate
Capital - May 2, 2015
Called out on her support for Cuomo's running mate Kathy Hochul, Randi Weingarten expresses regret but wants more collaboration. 

Kathy Hochul: Best Way to Support Public Schools Is By Taking Money From Them, Giving It To Private Schools and Charters - Perdido Street School - May 22, 2015
"This is the same Kathy Hochul that AFT President Randi Weingarten robocalled for during the Democratic primary, claiming she was an excellent advocate for public schools." 

Corinthian Colleges Secretly Funded D.C. Think Tanks, Dark Money Election Efforts
The Intercept - May 4, 2015
"Another gainful employment regulation opponent, the American Enterprise Institute, is listed as a Corinthian creditor. AEI scholars have repeatedly attacked rules, calling them as example of the Obama administration's "crusade against for-profit colleges." Last October Andrew Kelly, AEI's resident scholar on higher education education reform, specifically defended Corinthian and criticized the "Obama administration's bloodlust for such schools."
Who to believe among "experts" on teacher evaluation at Albany Summit on teacher evaluations?
NYC Public School Parents - May 7, 2015
Long-time ties between NYSED Commish Elia, Gates and AFT
Ed Notes Online - May 28, 2015
Cuomo's misguided teacher evaluation plan
lohud - June 5, 2015
A report that NY's teacher evaluation was developed by Thomas Kane, director of Measures of Effective Teaching project for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation between 2009 and 2012.
Hillary's Teacher PAC
Curmudgucation - June 5, 2015
More evidence of Randi Weingarten collaboration with corporate education reform. 

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Ed Notes Online: Turning "Collaboration" into a Bad Word - Ken Derstine at Schools Matter

Substance News: Turning 'Collaboration' Into a bad word...The American Federation of Teachers and the American Enterprise Insitute...'evaluating teachers by scores may actually reduce quality...'