Delaware, Tennessee get top honors on Arne's Race to the Top

[madfloridian]

Race to the Top awards go to Delaware, Tennessee

Arne picked the winners.

Delaware and Tennessee won bragging rights Monday as the nation's top education innovators, besting D.C. and 13 other finalists to claim a share of the $4 billion in President Obama's unprecedented school reform fund.

Education Secretary Arne Duncan picked the winners after a team of judges in the Race to the Top competition unexpectedly gave tiny Delaware the highest ranking, with Tennessee close behind. Delaware won as much as $107 million and Tennessee could be awarded $502 million.

Leaders in both states pledged to establish national models for data-driven reform, tying teacher evaluation to student performance in an all-out effort to close achievement gaps.

Georgia, ranked third in the contest, and Florida, considered a favorite to win, fell just short of a threshold for awards that Duncan set himself. More than $3 billion remains in the fund, and they could win some in a future round.

This sentence seems very important to me..why only two were named out of 16.

Duncan's decision to name only two initial winners gives the Obama administration continued leverage to upend the status quo in public education.

This kind of power is something new. I fear it will destroy public education.

When I read this article, I remembered something Eli Broad (rhymes with toad) once said about Delaware.

"WILMINGTON, DELAWARE: A 2006 article states that Broad "plans to virtually take over the Delaware school system in 2007, pending approval from that state's legislature." He backed the winning slate of candidates for the local board of education in 1999 and helped hire the new superintendent. (From http://thebroadreport.blogspot.com/)

His energy was focused on the Christina School District. Their first Broad superintendent was installed in July 2003 ( see Joseph Wise under Jacksonville above). This is what he's doing now. In April 2006, Wise was succeeded by Lillian Lowery (BSA 2004) who served until May 2009. Lowery walked into her position and shortly discovered a huge district deficit. This is what she's doing now. Her replacement was Marcia Lyles (BSA 2006)

BSA means they were trained by the Broad Foundation's Broad Superintendent's Academy. More from the left hand column of the Broad Report.

The "Broad" Effect
If the Broad Foundation plants one of its elements in a school district, it is highly likely they will plant another one along with it, so their influence is maximized.

For instance, an element might be:
- The presence of a Broad-trained superintendent
- The placement of Broad Residents into important central office positions
- An "invitation" to participate in a program spawned by the Foundation (such as CRSS's Reform Governance in Action program)
- Offering to provide the district with a free "Performance Management Diagnostic and Planning" experience

[msongs]

1. it is OBAMA's race to the top actually nt

[Nikki Stone1]

17. Or race to the bottom, actually

It's about syphoning money to hedge funds.

[LisaM]

2. Bye bye public schools

at least if we can't get rid of Arne Duncan.

[woodsprite]

3. My kids go to Christina - Wise robbed the district, then headed south to FL.

The budget shouldn't have been any surprise for Lowery. The public knew about Wise. So far, I'm not impressed with Lyles much either. They replaced Lowery very quietly. Christina continues to get screwed, and my daughter just told me that quite a few instructors may lose their jobs.

My son tells me that the Delaware State test (DSTP) is being replaced by the DCAS (or something like that). It's supposed to be a rewrite of the DSTP that's computer based. His entire elementary education has been geared toward passing Bush's standardized testing. That, along with MAPs, Dibbles, you name it. They get done one set of standardized testing, just to go into another round with a different name.

I love most of my kids teachers (there have been some I would have changed), but the teachers are not being allowed to teach.

[madfloridian]

22. You are so right. Teachers are not being allowed to teach...

and children are not being exposed to real depth in learning. They are only being programmed to have knowledge they are to be tested on. As you say, another round of tests with a different name. Written in proprietary language without regulation of that company. Tested the same way.

[Radical Activist]

4. Paying bad teachers for their seniority is destroying public education.

All of my worst experiences in public schools involved teachers who should have found another job and were getting paid far more than the newer teachers who did a much better job. My experience is typical.
Defending seniority pay for bad teachers isn't strong ground for teacher's unions. The public want reform and unions are better off finding a way to support reform that doesn't result in lower pay and benefits for good teachers.

[PVnRT]

5. Do you oppose higher pay for more seniority in other unions, as well?

[Radical Activist]

6. Do you support automatic raises for positions without a uniform way to evaluate performance?

In most fields there are fair ways to evaluate and remove the few people who don't do their jobs.

[PVnRT]

11. As there are for teachers

You seem to have bought into the mythology that teachers can't ever be fired because the big, bad unions prevent. The unions are there to attempt to guarentee a fair process for doing so. As for evaluations, principals constantly sit in on classes to evaluate their teachers.

Oh, and you didn't answer the question. So answer it.

[Radical Activist]

15. You're making a cookie cutter response

to the argument you're used to hearing. My response was an answer to your question if you think about it.

We should acknowledge that teaching is a career with a high burnout rate. If teachers accept that the public has some legitimate concerns, instead of dismissing everyone as anti-teacher or anti-union, then we could begin finding solutions that benefit teachers as well. I hope that happens. Unfortunately, public discussion usually devolves quickly into what you're doing, which is accusing any acknowledgment of real world problems as being anti-worker.

[laughingliberal]

32. Surely, you acknowledge that not all the anti teacher union activity is pure of motive

There are legitimate concerns on both sides but the anti teachers' unions activities and propaganda is going far beyond trying to address legitimate concerns. You would deny there are anti-worker forces at work in our nation?

[tonysam]

20. In theory, the unions do, but in reality, they don't for individual teachers

That is one of the filthy little secrets in public education.

[Radical Activist]

26. And unions defend their members

sometimes even when that member is clearly in the wrong. I've been in unions long enough to know that's true, so don't bullshit me. It's very difficult to fire most any union public sector employee.

Personally, I would propose offering teachers large bonuses and incentives to retire after 10, 15 and 20 years. That way, the ones who stay are doing it because they enjoy teaching. It could save school districts money on salaries which could then be used to pay more to new teachers. And it would reward people who chose an honorable public service career.

I think the AFT and NEA are reasonable when they sit down with policy makers. But the dismissive and defensive attitude many teachers have when the subject comes up only alienates people who have legitimate concerns.

[MattBaggins]

12. Pray tell could you instruct us on your magical way to evaluate something so subjective?

How do you compare the math teacher to the special ed teacher?

How do you compare a teacher with kids from 60K+ white kids to a teacher with 5 kids who barely speak English?

So what you support is a system of good old boys with the teachers that golf with the superintendent on the weekends getting the money.

You are comparing apples to oranges if you think performance evaluations for say a plumper can be compared to something as fluid as teacher performance. Not to mention there is no outcry at all about parent accountability and if you really want a scapegoat look no further then them.

But my rant is worthless anyway. Teachers are easy targets so fuck em.

[Radical Activist]

16. How about some suggestions from NEA and NFT?

I'd be happy to hear what teachers say about how to do fair evaluations. Instead, when this subject comes up, I hear the same canned response I'm getting on this thread.
1) Stop picking on us teachers
2) The parents are to blame anyway

That doesn't accomplish anything and it minimizes the very legitimate concerns parents and students have.

[LanternWaste]

23. Nor do baseless charges

"That doesn't accomplish anything"

Nor do charges based on anecdotal evidence without any semblance of a resolution. There are indeed canned responses aplenty, and they seem to come from more than merely one direction...

[Radical Activist]

25. Has there been a study

about the collective memory millions of people have of those few bad, bitter teachers who treated students like garbage, didn't do their job and should have retired years before? If that study hasn't been done then all we have is the collective anecdotal stories of most Americans.

There are ways to deal with problems in the education system but denying those problems to defend the status quo isn't one of them.

[LanternWaste]

29. six of one and half a dozen of the other.

There have been many studies vis-a-vis the education system. Some go so far as to deny others. I imagine we pick those studies which best validate our own opinions and experiences.

Again, the baseless charges attacking the status quo is little different from any baseless defenses of it. It's merely six of one and half a dozen of the other.

If one presents specific and relevant problems based on objective research and follows that up with possible solutions, I'm all ears. Otherwise, an attack based on little more than anecdotal evidence is a rose by any other name...

[Radical Activist]

30. So if no one does a scientific stufy of a problem then it doesn't exist?

Riiiiiight.

[laughingliberal]

33. Easy targets is correct

And people are happy to pile on until they find themselves in a group next on the list. Americans are so easily propagandized, it's baffling the Republic has made it this far.

[MattBaggins]

8. Did they really involve all these imaginary teachers

or did they involve YOU?

[Radical Activist]

14. Did you read my post or just the subject line?

Because the answer is included in the post.

[roody]

35. Radical activists support labor unions.

[proud2BlibKansan]

10. Your experience is typical for what? Who?

Sounds like you didn't like your 3rd grade teacher. BFD. My 4th grade teacher sucked. Guess what? I survived.

[Name removed]

21. Deleted sub-thread

Sub-thread removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[tonysam]

19. Blah, blah, blah.

What a total bunch of bullshit.

[anigbrowl]

27. I'm with you. Not against unions, but very much against seniority pay.

Seniority pay robs new entrants to any profession of their incentive to excel by focusing on attendance instead of results.

If teachers can evaluate student progress, then we can find a way to evaluate teacher progress. The objections (eg how do you compare teachers who are teaching different subjects) are nonsensical and rely on a lack of critical thinking. You can measure relative improvement of a class over a semester or school year - a class of F students that starts getting Cs consistently is undoubtedly improving, perhaps more than a class of students that are getting Bs and keep getting Bs but not many more As. It's not a difficult concept...in fact it's obvious to anyone with even the most basic grasp of statistics. The kind of grasp that any literate and numerate person should have.

In fact, I suspect that enough people do have such a grasp of statistics and so forth that it might explain why teachers' unions are not getting a whole lot of public backing right now, compared to when they were (correctly) pointing out the lack of fiscal follow-through for NCLB.

[tonysam]

31. More wisdom from an armchair know-it-all.

You know it all about how "good" a teacher is, and how "bad" step pay is because if you're a fucking expert on statistics, that makes you a fucking expert on teaching. You blather about "critical thinking" when you don't even know WTF it is.

You can't measure teacher "quality"; that is subjective, and testing does not mean SQUAT when kids can screw around on tests.

You have NO clue how POLITICAL public education IS and how absolutely unequal the relationship between teachers and administrators is. The teachers are at the complete mercy of ONE person, and that person is not held accountable to ANYBODY. That is why the step system exists--PRINCIPALS CANNOT BE TRUSTED.

YOU CANNOT RUN SCHOOLS ON BUSINESS MODELS. Got that?

[laughingliberal]

34. There has never been one damned thing preventing employers from negotiating contracts which allow

merit pay on top of scheduled increases. The lie has always been that contracted, scheduled increases destroys the ability to reward 'good' employees. Nobody ever said they could not negotiate to give merit raises in addition to scheduled salary increases. Years ago the for profits took over the hospital industry in this country. Prior to that nurses got raises with their annual evaluations and we, periodically at most institutions, got cost of living increases and, occassional, across the board upgrades to salaries. Once it was all about the profit it became merit raises only. I had one job where they did an across the board salary upgrade since 1988. . The 'range' of increase based on 'merit' was 2-4% at most institutions. I worked as the nursing supervisor of an oncology floor at one hospital where I was responsible for the evaluations of my staff upon which their 'merit' raises would be based. My supervisor had to approve them and approve the raises. The evaluation was based on points assigned to each category on which the nurse was evaluated. My supervisor (who I'm not sure knew where the unit was, let along who any of my nurses were) would sit there with her calculator and keep shaving points off the evaluation and recalculating until she got the points down to where the nurse would get only 2%. It was maddening. They would dumb down the evaluations to avoid giving a better raise. Not one of those evaluations, in any way, ever reflected anything like reality related to the job the nurse was doing.

Merit pay is a scam to keep wages low and it always has been. If an employee is not performing to standards there are systems in place for discipline and dismissal. If they are not being followed then that's the fault of lazy administrators. If an employee is performing well enough to still be employeed they should be compensated for longevity as well as merit. At the height of the the nursing shortage in the 80's (back when patient care was a consideration of hospital administrators) I had a Director of Nurses approach me and ask for my help with ideas for nurse recruitment. My answer to her was that she did not have a problem with recruitment. I told her I had seen enough nurses recruited in a 2 year period to staff the hospital 3 times over but that the problem was retention. Starting salaries were routinely upgraded to attract new nurses until the newer nurses were starting at close to the same salaries as those with years of service. The longer term nurses, in turn, would leave for a hospital with higher starting pay. I also told her a little more flexibility in scheduling would be help. Soon after that the hospital instituted retention bonuses and options for flex scheduling. That hospital was fully staffed within 6 months and had happy nurses and consistent continuity of care for the patients due to ending the revolving door. Of course, that was before the for profit model took over which favors short staffing and puts patient care way down the list of priorities. Adequate staffing for good patient care is not profitable.

No one can convince me we are not seeing them move towards the same model for public schools. There's money to be made and supporting good educators and good education is a hindrance to profits.

[proud2BlibKansan]

7. The students in Florida and Tennessee have my deepest sympathy

They will soon no longer be students, but data machines.

[tnlefty]

28. As if that hasn't been happening already and I'm glad that

they, my younger two, don't really have many years left in school. My boys loved to learn and enjoyed school, then came the ramp up to teach to the test and they really haven't liked school for years.

My teacher friends have been stressed and haven't enjoyed teaching for a while.

[Brickbat]

9. Disgusting...I condemn turning education funding into a circus of competition.

[MattBaggins]

13. This competition will devolve into

who ever sucks Duncan's toes the most gets the dough.

[4_TN_TITANS]

18. Great.... we're doomed.

The wife already has plans to up her creds to be able to teach more than just music.

[ibegurpard]

24. oh, just get ready for the next great "reform" effort

still haven't figured out whether it's going to privatizing education or making us all buy investment accounts.