"From 1 struggling school to another; Many ousted in Boston teach at troubled sites" July 05, 2011|By James Vaznis, Globe Staff
More than half of the teachers pushed out of seven underperforming schools in Boston last year now work at other low-achieving schools across the city that are also under pressure to improve, according to a Globe analysis.
The 96 teachers are among 186 who departed from the schools last summer after Superintendent Carol R. Johnson asked them to reapply for their jobs, a move that angered many of those instructors and led to a dizzying movement of teachers through the city.
In many cases, principals at the underperforming schools filled vacancies by luring away talented teachers from other city schools, which then often filled their new openings with teachers who had left underperforming schools.
So school in Boston is nothing more than a shell game, huh?
Johnson initiated the staffing changes in an effort to reenergize the underperforming schools and also to help the city land more than $20 million in federal school turnaround grants. To qualify for the money, at least half of the city’s 12 state-designated underperforming schools had to dismiss at least half their staffs.
The move seared into the public psyche the idea that schools were rife with bad teachers, and raised questions about whether reshuffling teachers would benefit the underperforming schools to the detriment of other schools.
With a lot of help from the agenda-pushing media.
It’s not clear what the impact has been in moving staff out of the underperforming schools and into other low-achieving schools. The first official barometer will be MCAS scores from this spring, which will not be available until the fall.
Johnson emphasized that no one should draw quick conclusions about teachers merely because they came from an underperforming school.
“Just because a teacher didn’t return to a turnaround school doesn’t mean they are ineffective teachers,’’ she said....
Do they teach you double talk, kids?
The process may have caused some schools to take teachers they did not want. The union contract requires the School Department to set aside some job openings for teachers who will be losing a position because their school is closing, reducing staff, or, in the case of some underperforming schools, changing staff.
Research on the practice of making sweeping changes in staff and leadership is mixed. While several studies have concluded that a change in school leadership can be instrumental in turning around a school, research into widespread replacement of teachers is scant, making it difficult to draw conclusions about the strategy’s effectiveness....
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"A shift from NEA on teacher evaluations; Echoes Mass. vote tying assessments to student growth" by Martine Powers, Globe Correspondent / July 6, 2011
A new policy from the country’s largest teachers’ union affirming for the first time that student achievement must be a factor in evaluating teachers validates the controversial evaluation criteria approved in Massachusetts last week, local education officials say.
When your own union won't back you up what good are they?
The National Education Association, with more than 3.2 million members, passed its new policy Monday at its annual representative assembly in Chicago. The union’s stance followed a 9-2 vote by the Massachusetts Board of Elementary and Secondary Education last week asserting that public schools in the state must incorporate student achievement as a significant element in evaluating teachers and administrators.
“What [the NEA] did at a national level is very consistent with what we did here in Massachusetts,’’ Paul Reville, the state’s secretary of education, said yesterday. “I like to think that Massachusetts may have played a leadership role in the NEA’s policy.’’
Paul Toner, president of the Massachusetts Teachers Association, the state’s largest teachers union, said the NEA’s resolution demonstrates that the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education’s decision was in line with sentiments around the country. By approving the policy, he said, the NEA gives credence to the idea that standardized tests can be one of many methods to measure teacher effectiveness.
Segun Eubanks, director of teacher quality for the NEA, said policies of Massachusetts, along with similar policies in other states, were read very carefully by members of a working group who crafted the NEA’s stance over the past six months....
Richard Stutman, president of the Boston Teachers Union, said he believes the NEA’s new teacher-evaluation guidelines are part of a regrettable trend. Although he believes that an “amorphous tie-in’’ between student performance and teacher evaluation is valuable, he worries that this policy will encourage state governments to institute more standardized tests in more subject areas as an easy way of assessing student growth.
“Policies like this promote standardization that isn’t productive for teaching students how to think,’’ Stutman said.
Good thing that is not what schools are for.
Schools are for indoctrinating and inculcating youth to turn them into obedient little automatons.
Rob Weil, director of field programs in the educational issues department at the American Federation of Teachers, which represents teachers in Boston, declined to comment specifically on the NEA’s new policy. Generally, he said, those participating in the education debate fail to recognize that standardized testing results cannot be applied in evaluations for the majority of teachers, either because their subject area does not have standardized tests, or because the tests are not administered yearly.
“Sometimes, people blow the value of standardized testing out of proportion,’’ Weil said.
Massachusetts is one of more than a dozen states that have approved policies mandating the use of student achievement measurements in judging teacher quality.
Kate Walsh, the president of the National Council on Teacher Quality, said she believes the NEA’s new policy was a step in the right direction but does not give enough credence to the importance of student performance measurements. That, she said, is because of the union’s long-term unwillingness to support standardized testing as a means of assessing teacher quality....
“To stay in the game, to stay credible, the NEA really doesn’t have much of a choice,’’ Walsh said....
I'm sick of the union-bashing.
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Also see: Why Schools Don't Educate
