Education | Pedagogy » Fight Back Against Mass Firing of Teachers

Source: http://www.doksinet An injury to one is an injury to all – sign petition in support of Rhode Island teachers Fight back against mass firing of teachers Across the nation, we are seeing efforts at all levels of government to use standardized testing in ways that are harmful to students and unfair to teachers. In Texas, for example, we have seen this phenomenon recently in Houston ISD, where the school board changed local policy to allow the firing of teachers based on a much-hyped but highly questionable "valued-added" methodology--a methodology that serious scholars consider unfit for use in high-stakes employment decisions. As the fight over implementation of that Houston ISD policy goes on, drawing national attention, national news stories also have focused attention on a new extreme of bad education policy that has cropped up in Rhode Island. There the teachers of Central Falls High School have been fired en masse--all 74 of them--not because their students

have failed to improve but because they havent improved fast enough. According to a state report written last April, the high schools reading and writing proficiency have gone up 22% and 14% respectively over the past two years. There is no criticism in the report of teachers efforts, skills, or dedication to their job or their students. The report also stated: "Because so many programs have been abruptly terminated, many teachers desire a formal program evaluation system to ensure that the strengths and weaknesses of programs are properly examined in the future before changes are made or new programs are implemented. Students share this concern" As for next steps, the report suggested, "Take the time to celebrate as a learning community the accomplishments, successes, and positive changes that have taken place over the past few years." Like Texas teachers, the teachers at Central Falls high School have dedicated themselves to helping their students achieve. But

they face a terrible situation created by a superintendent who has chosen mass firing rather than following a collaborative path of proven reforms that would truly benefit students. Fausto Barbosa, parent of a Central Falls High School student, said, "Our kids have developed a bond with their teachers. They have great relationships with them and they trust them. To separate them from their teachers now, just as test scores and student performance is improving, is unconscionable. The whole process has been devastating--not just to our kids, but to the entire Central Falls community." Sign a petition to show that you stand with the Central Falls High School community, students and teachers. More information is available online at www.CentralFallsKidsDeserveBettercom Whether we live and work in Texas or Rhode Island, we all have a stake in the fight against this deadend strategy of scapegoating teachers, destroying school communities, and failing to fix systemic problems in our

schools. Another fight looming to keep class-size limits If there was any doubt that we could expect another attempt to undercut state class-size limits in the 2011 legislative session, that doubt was eliminated recently. At the first 2010 interim hearing of the Texas Senate Education Committee, several superintendents, asked senators to “relieve” them of the alleged burden of complying with the 22-to-1 pupil-teacher Source: http://www.doksinet ratio for grades K-4. Sen Dan Patrick, the Houston Republican who serves as vice-chair of the committee, announced that he will try again next session to do what they asked. Last session the Alliance’s state affiliates opposed Patricks attempt to water down class-size limits by replacing the classroom-specific limit in state law with an average limit across multiple classrooms. In the end, Patricks 2009 bill was itself amended to the point where it simply made it a tad simpler for districts to seek a waiver of the class-size limit. In

fact, such waivers have never been hard to come by. But superintendents said they want even the waivable class-size limits in current law to be weakened further. Patty Quinzi, Legislative Counsel for Texas AFT, one of the Alliance’s affiliates, served notice that Texas AFT will vigorously oppose any such effort. She said: "As this committee examines cost drivers, we urge the committee to be mindful of the key school reforms that the legislature has implemented in the past. These must not be surrendered to false economies in the name of achieving efficiency at a time when the state seeks to educate ever-increasing numbers of high-need students to a standard of career readiness and already faces high dropout rates. Altering a vital reform such as class-size limits would undercut the progress the state has already made toward reaching the goal of career readiness for all students. Small classes create classroom conditions that afford students the opportunities to actively

participate, learn, and achieve socially and academically. Small classes also allow teachers to teach in safe classrooms where our students can learn. The state cannot expect to achieve career readiness for all students if districts are expected to do it on the cheap. "In the upcoming 2011 session, the goal should indeed be to ease the financial squeeze on school districts--not by undercutting valuable reforms but by properly funding our schools. That means not only covering the cost of enrollment growth and inflation but making significant improvements in funding to help students meet rising state and federal expectations and standards of achievement. School districts also should have additional capacity to make local budget decisions to improve programs that address the needs of the local community." North East ISD school board acts to RIF 103 employees Monday night, the North East ISD school board acted on the reduction in force (RIF) they approved last October. The

administration recommended that 57 teachers, 3 central office personnel, and 43 classified and operational employees be RIF’d, with a projected savings of $6.8 million Employees will be notified on Thursday The Alliance’s sister local, the North East AFT, was the only organization that has spoken against the RIF. They suggested alternatives to the school board in order to avoid a RIF, including increasing the tax rate through a Tax Reauthorization election and/or cutting middle management through attrition. However, the school board chose not to act on those suggestions. New research exposes weaknesses in Texas accountability system Dr. Ed Fuller, a highly-regarded independent education researcher who used to work for the State Board for Educator Certification, has come up with some new findings that expose enduring weaknesses in the states supposedly "reformed" accountability system. At a hearing of the Texas House Public Education Committee, Dr. Fuller’s discussion

of those Source: http://www.doksinet findings drew keen interest from lawmakers weighing the need for a further course correction in the states test-driven system of school ratings. Fullers preliminary point was that the state lacks any credible measure of achievement growth that would give due credit to schools for students gains. Just looking at the percentage of students at a school who reach the passing standard on state achievement tests does not measure student growth, he said. His next point struck at the heart of the unfairness in the current accountability system. The strongest predictor that a high school will be rated academically unacceptable, he said, is the low performance of its incoming students on achievement tests in middle school. After adjusting for demographic differences, he said, a high school is seven times as likely to be rated low-performing if its incoming students scored significantly below standard in math as eighth-graders. "These [low-rated high]

schools cant control which kids come in," he said, and "there is no system to provide resources for these schools to do anything different," yet they are held to exactly the same accountability expectations as the schools with less challenging student populations. Speaking about external charter schools, Fuller said his research also shows "were exacerbating the problem with charter schools, . " He analyzed six external charter middle schools, focusing on the best-known charter schools, with exemplary accountability ratings, that often are held up as models for what all traditional public schools could and should accomplish. Fuller found that these external charter schools earn those high ratings because they do something the traditional public schools cannot easily do--the external charter schools shed low-performing students. From sixth to eighth grade, he said, as many as 40 percent of students leave these external charter schools, and those who leave are

overwhelmingly low-performing students. "What you see is a systematic pattern of lower-performing kids leaving charter schools and going back to district schools." Fuller found "huge gaps" between the high average math scores of the students who stay in these external charter schools and the low average scores of those who leave. Because of this "sorting mechanism," Fuller concluded, "we have a different system then for charter schools and neighborhood schools." While the exemplary external charter schools he studied disproportionately keep their highest-performing students, their neighboring traditional public school are taking all comers, so "youre exacerbating the concentration of low-performing kids with no system to compensate for that." Rep. Scott Hochberg, Democrat of Houston and vice-chair of the committee, noted a further implication of this "filtering process," as he termed it, that leaves exemplary external charter

schools with a select student population. When a student leaves a traditional public school, he said, that student typically is counted as a dropout, unless he or she finds some alternative educational setting. But when a student leaves one of these high-rated external charter schools, the student typically goes to a traditional public school and is therefore not a dropout. The point again is that external charter schools "are operating under different accountability systems even though technically theyre operating under the same one," as Fuller put it. Rep. Donna Howard, Democrat of Austin, observed that the thrust of Fullers research is not to disparage the exemplary charter schools but simply to point out that traditional public schools end up with larger numbers of low-performing students, while the accountability system "is not set up to help with the situation were creating." Indeed, Fuller replied, "We havent adjusted the funding or the

expectations" to account for the filtering that leaves the traditional public schools with greater challenges. "We dont have any system for looking at Source: http://www.doksinet the inputs.and we have no incentive for principals or teachers to go those schools," Fuller said, so the lowest-performing schools also tend to end up with lowest percentages of teachers certified and properly trained in the subjects they are assigned to teach. Fullers bottom line: "We havent addressed the inputs to make the accountability system work fairly." Commissioners Decision overturning a termination helps define law on use of physical force with students Sometimes, the good guys win one. Such is the case with last years decision by the Commissioner of Education in the matter of Earthly v. Fort Bend ISD (Docket No 040-R20209, April 2009), in which the Commissioner overturned the school boards decision to terminate teacher Derrick Earthlys term contract for alleged use of

excessive force with a student and for failure to comply with a directive to release the student from restraint. At the recent University of Texas School Law Conference in Austin, the case was cited as an important precedent that school districts lawyers should advise their clients about. Texas AFT and the Fort Bend Employee Federation, Texas AFTs local affiliate in Fort Bend ISD, provided Earthly with expert legal representation in this precedent-setting case on teachers immunity from disciplinary proceedings under state law. Section 220512 of the Texas Education Code says a school district is prohibited from bringing disciplinary proceedings against a professional employee for using physical force to the extent that the employee reasonably believes is necessary to enforce compliance with a proper command issued to control, train, or educate the child. In Earthlys case, the teacher used physical force to break up a fight and then restrain a student in self-defense. Earthly, a coach

and physical-education teacher, was escorting his students to the gym when an older, bigger student started chasing and striking at one of his students. Earthly pulled the older student away, only to have the student turn on him and attack him. Earthly instructed the student to leave, but the student kept intentionally bumping into and pushing him. Only after Earthly had the student under control did the districts police officers and administrators arrive on the scene. Fort Bend tried to fire Earthly for violating its policies regarding physical force. Even though an independent hearing examiner determined that there was no just cause for termination, the school board altered the hearing examiners findings and fired Earthly anyway. Earthly appealed his termination to the Commissioner, who reversed the school districts decision. In ruling for Earthly, the Commissioner cited the immunity from disciplinary proceedings that the law provides to teachers under such circumstances. The

commissioner held that the district has the burden of proving that a teachers use of force was not justified, and he further held that the district had not met this burden. The commissioner said neither district policy nor an administrators command could override a teachers right to use reasonable force under Section 22.0512 Even after the Commissioner ruled in Earthlys favor, the Fort Bend ISD appealed to district court in Fort Bend County. But the district judge upheld the commissioners decision Enrollment trends in Texas public education That public education in our state is a huge enterprise should come as no surprise to anyone who has been paying attention. Even so, some of the numbers in the Texas Education Agency’s latest update of ten-year enrollment trends in the states public schools are truly eye-opening. The TEA data show a dramatic increase in the percentage of economically disadvantaged Source: http://www.doksinet students--a subgroup growing twice as fast as

overall enrollment. The enrollment of bilingual, English as a Second Language, and Low English Proficiency students also has been rapid. TEAs study covers the period through 2008-2009, when enrollment reached 4,749,571 students in elementary and secondary education. That total was 201 percent higher--some 795,137 students more--than enrollment in 1998-1999. The average rate of growth was 19 percent per year. That may not sound like a whole lot, but its the equivalent of adding an Austin ISD or a Fort Worth ISD every biennium. Its also much faster than the national average growth in student enrollment. The 20-percent rate of Texas enrollment growth contrasts with a rate of 8.1 percent nationwide over roughly the same period The ten-year growth rate for economically disadvantaged students in Texas was a stunning 40.2 percent--twice the overall state enrollment growth rate In 1998-1999, the number of economically disadvantaged students was 1,915,481. By 2008-2009, it was 2,686,259, or

56.6 percent of all students To put the challenge posed by these numbers into sharper perspective, consider this: Economically disadvantaged students accounted for nearly all--some 97 percent--of the rapid increase in overall enrollment in Texas public schools over the ten-year period. Another measure of the challenge our schools face is the rise in the number of students receiving bilingual or ESL services. That population grew by 582 percent over the decade, while the number of students identified as Limited English Proficient grew by a similar 50 percent. The increase in enrollment of Hispanic students closely correlates with these bilingual/ESL/LEP results. The number of Hispanic students rose by 748,385, or 49 percent, over the ten-year period. Just over 94 percent of total enrollment growth for the past decade was accounted for by this rise in the Hispanic population. With 94 percent of overall growth coming from within the Hispanic subgroup and 97 percent of growth accounted for

by economically disadvantaged children, it is clear that a huge number of students were likely to fit into an overlapping group tending to have especially high, compounded educational needs. And indeed the TEA study shows that fully 873 percent of students within the bilingual/ESL/LEP population were also reported as economically disadvantaged. Meanwhile, there was one high-need group in our state that showed a decline in share of student enrollment. The percentage of students served in special-education programs fell from 12.2 percent in 1998-1999 to 96 percent in 2008-2009 (454,517 out of 4,749,571 students). The national trend went in the opposite direction over roughly the same period, as participation in special education increased to 13.6 percent of all students in the United States as a whole by the 2006-2007 school year (versus 10.7 percent in Texas that year) The full TEA report on ten-year enrollment trends is posted online at

http://ritter.teastatetxus/research/pdfs/enrollment 2008-09pdf