April 26, 2010 06:49 PM UTC
Will Colorado move to the head of the class?
77 Comments- by: DavidThi808
( – promoted by Colorado Pols)
Senate Bill 191, the Tenure Reform Bill (officially the Great Teachers and Leaders Bill) is the hot bill in the legislature this session. And it is by far the most important bill for the future of our state long term. So I sat down with Senator Mike Johnston to get his take on the bill (I’m interviewing someone from the CEA next week on this).
Q: I commented about the large number of lobbyists just outside the Senate chamber while they were in session.
A: Senator Johnston replied that he appreciates having the lobbyists and others here to discuss the bill with. First because he finds that when he discusses what the bill truly does, and doesn’t do, “a great deal of the fear is allayed.” And those discussions have also lead to “some great improvements to the bill.” He spoke very highly of the CEA and how he has made this a collaborative effort with them. He spoke to the fact that they do not agree 100%, but that it has been an effort together to improve the bill.
My $0.02: This is how a citizen legislature is supposed to work, and in the case of Mike, he is using this robust discussion to both improve the bill and to insure people truly understand what it will do. Working through something this complex where it will bring about significant change is difficult to do with all the stakeholders, but it is critical to do so to create a bill that will bring about significant improvement and will get the people that have to implement it to do so well.
Q: Why did you shoot for this Senate seat?
A: He started off teaching and found that he could positively affect kid’s lives for the hour he had them in class. So after a number of years he stepped up to be a principal where he found he could positively affect kid’s lives for the school day he had them at his school. He then got involved in education policy, both in Obama’s campaign and at the state level as he’s seen that at this level he can positively affect kid’s lives in all our schools.
Q: Why did you introduce this bill?
A: “When you look at schools across the country and see what they’re doing, the successful ones, they have two things in common. One is they attract and keep great people, and the second is they’re relentless about setting really high goals for kids and using data all the time to monitor how kids are doing.” He also discussed how the research shows that the top two items that have maximum effect in the school is first the child’s teacher and second the school principal. That all the other items like class size, etc. is rounding errors compared to the impact of these first two items. And the principal impact is primarily their insuring they have quality teachers.
Q: How important is this bill.
A: The most important bill for this state. This bill will determine if we have the leaders and workers to keep this state competitive. We have to grow our future. If we don’t pass it, we will “perennially disadvantage Colorado in the talent pool with other states.” Without this we will have the same or decreasing number of kids prepared for work, prepared for college, etc. Businesses in Colorado are already having to hire in people from out of state because of our existing K-12 system.
Mike also discussed how some states are stepping up to fix their K-12 systems. As this happens, the states that climb out of this mess will be the economic future of this country. And he wants Colorado leading that future.
Senator Johnston at this point said what I think is the single most important argument for this bill – “we hold these truths to be self-evident that all are created equal… no matter what place you live in or how much money your parents make or what the color of your skin is. Whatever public school you walk in to in this state, you’ll walk out college ready.”
Mike then discussed how this is an issue of global competitiveness and national security. That “we’re beginning to lose that engineering edge that we kept for so long.” He has a clear picture of how we’re now competing world-wide, and it requires a strong K-12 system to be competitive with other countries. He had an interesting observation that one of the key signs of a declining empire is that we have to import our best thinkers. And if we lose the edge we presently have, it’s very hard to get it back.
My $0.02: This is where Senator Johnston made the two key arguments for the critical importance of this bill. First, this is fundamental to the American Promise, that no matter who you are, you have an equal chance to be successful in this country. At present, that promise is a lie to every child in a sub-standard school. This bill delivers on the fundamental promise of what it means to be America – and does so to every child.
Second, that the world is now competitive on a global level, that the needs for educated workers is ever increasing, and that without this change we will fall behind not just other states, but other countries. At my company we sell world-wide and interact with programmers world-wide. We’re still a generation ahead here in the U.S., but other countries, P.R.C. and Eastern Europe in particular, are catching up fast not just on numbers of highly educated workers, but on numbers of very innovative people.
The Boulder area has the highest percentage of high-tech workers in the country (Silicon Valley has a larger total, but a lower percentage). Colorado has a shot at being the green energy center of the world. We’re in a very good position. But if we don’t improve our K-12 system we will piss away our existing advantage.
Q: One argument is that you can’t reduce a teacher’s performance to a single grade for the year. Yet teachers reduce the efforts of their students to a single grade for the year. Why shouldn’t this work for teachers?
A: First he said that this is a question that the bill opponents have not spoken to. Second he listed out how the bill uses multiple measures to determine the effectiveness of each teacher – it won’t be a single CSAP score. He then summed it up beautifully – that the bottom line is a student needs to walk out the door May 30th knowing more than they knew when they walked in September 1st. We spend 42% of the state budget on education because we think we can make kids smarter.
Q: If this bill is effective, it will lead to the firing of bad teachers.
A: Mike first said that he thinks the number of bad teachers is very small. And he then brought up the spot-on point that those teachers are in two groups – those that can and & will improve with the right incentives, and those that even with the incentives either can’t or won’t improve. And he then said that those that don’t improve, we all agree should not be in the profession.
He also pointed out that there is nothing in the bill that requires the dismissal of a single teacher or principal. It just makes it possible. And it gives you an evaluation tool to make a fair evaluation of each teacher and principal. And at the same time there are strong protections in the bill “to protect against arbitrary & capricious dismissal.”
My $0.02: This is where we will determine if the bill is effective – and in three ways (I’m adding one to Mike’s list). First, no teacher is perfect. Even for the superb teachers, this will provide feedback on how effective they are at their job. Virtually all teachers will use this as an aid to improve on the job they do. And it will help determine what level of students and what classes a teacher does best in. All teachers will improve with the measurement systems.
Second, if the sub-standard teachers find it a major incentive to improve. If we see significant improvement in student outcomes over the next couple of years in most classes that previously had sub-standard improvement, then we have a giant win – for both the students and the state. This is gigantic.
Third, the key measure is if we see tenured teachers and principals fired. This is key both because there is no true incentive if no one is fired, and we have children left in sub-standard environments if the ones that can’t/won’t improve remain in their job. This is how we will know if the bill wrought real change. If firing a teacher remains virtually impossible, or even extremely difficult, then this bill will be a wasted effort and we will need to try again.
Q: The students taking “son of CSAP” have no dog in the fight. Should we make the CSAP score impact a student’s grade?
A: He supports this idea. One of the first points he brought up is the tests need to be turned around faster. Right now they are taken in March and you get the results in August. That’s way too late to use in the class the student was in. Mike would like to see the grades turned around in 3 weeks so the results can be used in that class. Then it can be part of the child’s grade.
Q: How does this impact PRO-COMP (DPS system)?
A: No impact – PRO-COMP will be Denver’s system to implement the requirements in this bill. They may have to add a couple of small tweaks, but it should be no significant change. And Denver will use PRO-COMP, they do not have to have to add a second system.
Q: The number 1 influence on how a student does is the mother’s educational level (more than the teacher). Can you do anything to improve this?
A: Senator Johnston lead off with a superb answer – that getting this right means the next generation of children will have mother’s with a much higher educational level. And that resolves this issue – in 20 years. As to trying to improve this today, he had a really interesting response – “when we have 8 to 4 perfect, and every kid walking in the door is getting an outstanding education… then we can go start telling parents how to parent.” I asked if almost perfect would be enough as you’ll never hit perfect, and he said yes he would settle for that. He also talked about the parent partnership items in the bill, how some schools have parent contracts, and other efforts to draw in parents.
My $0.02: I think it speaks very well of Senator Johnston that he understands how this is a very hard problem and it will take a generation or two on some parts of this (at which time we will have new problems). And it also shows an amazing level of humility (for a politician) that he is not willing to tell others what they should do until we can lead by example with the schools running well. That’s a very strong point.
The Bill
Personal story: Many years ago I was on a school district committee in Plano Texas. We were on an evening tour of some schools where we walked in one classroom and you could tell from the empty classroom that the teacher was sub-standard. A couple of the committee people mentioned that and the school principal commented that this teacher was a dead year for kids – but she should be retiring in 4 or 5 years.
No child should face a “dead year” in school.
How important is this bill? Name another bill that has had every living Governor come out in favor of it? This bill is where we determine the long-term future of our state. With it Colorado will increase its economic position in the world. We will increase the number of high-paying quality jobs in industries that haven’t even been invented yet.
If this bill does not pass, then when do we address this question? Yes this bill, like health care reform, is a leap in the dark. If effective, it means significant change in our educational system. But any bill to fix our K-12 disaster (and it is presently a disaster for Colorado) will be a leap in the dark. With that said, there has been a lot of work done to make this bill as good as possible. And it will be tweaked in the following years as we see it in action.
I understand why many in the educational system oppose it – change is scary. But I ask of you the following – why did you go in to teaching? What is that fundamental core reason that drew you to a job where most of your day you talk to no other adults, where most parents show up only to complain, and where you have to somehow draw kids in who would rather be doing something else. Fundamentally the decision to be a teacher makes no logical sense. For all of you that were drawn in to educate children, to help them grow up to make full use of the incredible potential each child has – this bill is important. No, not important, this bill is essential. Every child that had a “dead year” before your year makes your job that much harder, and frustrating. This bill will eliminate that. With this bill the children entering your classroom will be better prepared. I think this is change that you should embrace.
And to the legislators opposing this bill I have two questions. First, do you think the economic future of Colorado is imperiled by our existing K-12 system? (If your answer is no – you’re an idiot.) Second, what’s your alternative to avoid the economic decline we are facing with our existing system that you are introducing as a bill this session?
Podcast: Mike Johnston Interview
as long as it insists on not supporting K-12 education financially. As the parent of a DPS student, I hope we can improve, but realistically, until we support K-12 education financially, Colorado is engaged in a race to the bottom.
We can’t just sit around waiting for the Feds to throw us some money. The emphasis on all of this Race to the Top funding has been a distraction from the the real issue.
I think it would be a mistake to change our education law to conform to something the Federal government wants our laws to look like so we can get a one-time payment of funds.
We should be looking for long-term sustainable ways to fund K-12.
Then the Washington D.C. district would be the best in the country as it has the highest per pupil funding. Money matters but it’s not the key issue for success.
No kidding.
The problem is that we rank very near the bottom in terms of funding K-12, and we are rapidly headed to the bottom in terms of performance. Look at states like NJ, CT, MA, etc.–they fund K-12 far better than we do and, shock, they PERFORM far better than we do.
Obviously funding is not the only issue, but without it we have zero chance of significant improvement. I think funding is analogous to critical mass–there has to be a certain amount before it matters. Below that point, the only question is at what rate we continue to decline.
I think a lot of voters take the view that with a screwed up system, there is no point in putting more money in. But if we implement significant systemic change, then I think there will be a willingness to increase funding. That’s what happend in DPS with PRO-COMP.
With that said, it will take a series of steps. Put in place real change, ask for a bit more. Show that change in action, ask for a bit more. She significant improvement from that change, ask for a lot more.
The schools had guaranteed increases for years with their TABOR exception and look what it got us.
If they improve, give them a little more money. If they improve a lot, give them more money.
Pro-Comp is a merit pay system. It is not a “no tenure,” system. It presumes tenture, Johnson’s bill will destroy the Pro-Comp system.
Can’t Pro-Comp be used to do the measuring, with this bill just adding the item that teachers who consistently accomplish nothing in the classroom are let go? That would add to Pro-Comp, but not destroy it.
Or is there something in the bill that would negate part/all of Pro-Comp?
ProComp is basically an incentive program. Teachers and principals, as I understand it, develop an annual set of goals for that teacher; and, if the goals are met, then the teacher gets a merit payment. The goals may include a certain increase in student achievement/CSAP scores. Also, there are incentives for teachers who choose to teach in low-performing schools.
The tenure bill, as I understand it, calls for the teacher to be evaluated on a standards set by the district/state; not developed between teacher and principal.
The Denver Board of Education is now engaged in a vigorous debate over the LACK of an effective system of evaluation to measure teachers’ performance. The now predictable 4-3 vote on the Denver BOE centers on the question of making teacher placement policy BEFORE there is a new evaluation system in place. The four say yea; the three say no.
I thought your interview was excellent. I have many problems with this bill; but, I have many problems with public education as it is practiced in DPS. So, I do not see this bill addressing those problems.
And a very important one, but your point about DC having the highest per pupil funding is a little off; look at DC, it doesn’t take a genius to figure out why they are doing so bad. The homes, parent involvement, class size etc., all come into play.
Wanna guess what their success rate would be if their funding wasn’t so high?
both left and right, this is the issue.
When it comes to improving the public education system my children and grandchildren depend on, I am non partisan.
I support this bill.
NEWSMAN
and it took tenure reform to bring you back 🙂
Yep, this is the ultimate all-partisan bill.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/…
There are two things I do in a typical class. One is teach students how to apply certain techniques to solve concrete problems, in order to prepare them for the problems we will ask on the test, and hopefully to prepare them for future courses. I know students will forget many of them immediately upon finishing the final, but I hope they will at least have an idea of how to look things up and have a sense of what’s true and why it’s important.
The other thing is motivation. I tell stories about the history of the subject, or tell jokes at my own expense, or explain how they might have thought of this idea on their own, or pause and see if they can figure something out on their own, or prove carefully why something works. All of this stuff is irrelevant to my students, since it doesn’t help them get good grades on the homework or the tests. Yet it’s the thing that’s fun. It’s the stuff that isn’t in the textbook, it’s what I can bring to the class that nobody else can in quite the same way. And I imagine that a few students will really appreciate this stuff because of what I did. When I inspire a student, that’s where it happens.
Which paragraph is more important for a good teacher? Depends who’s doing the evaluating. If the class is structured so that you have a lot of material and no free time in the class, and the only evaluation of the teacher is how well the students do on that test, then the logical consequence is that everything the teacher enjoys about teaching will be eliminated, and all teaching will become rote and tedious, and the best teachers will be the ones who get their students to memorize the techniques on the exam. (See for example my comment in the Monday Open Thread.) What reward is there for a teacher in such a system?
I was particularly offended by two of Johnston’s comments:
The first because, um, obviously a teacher impacts a child’s life even when they don’t have face-to-face contact, while some bureaucrat looking at a spreadsheet really has no impact on any particular child’s life. The second because everyone knows that parents are the biggest impact on a student’s education, and imagining that you can substantially improve education without changing the parents’ involvement in any meaningful way is really, really stupid. If a teacher assigns homework and the parent doesn’t give a shit whether the child does it or not, it does not matter in the slightest what the teacher is doing in the classroom. That child will not learn.
P.S. Dave, regardless of my disagreements with you or Johnston about these policies, I think this interview was very well done.
First off thank you for the nice P.S.
On your item (2) in class where you work to get them motivated (and interested), I think that is very important. But I also think that is reflected in the scores because a motivated interested student puts in the extra effort to better understand the subject.
I also agree with you that more attention needs to be paid to getting the parents on board – on that I differ with Senator Johnston.
There are some parents who don’t know how to be involved–we should work to get them more involved and give them the tools to bolster their areas of self doubt (many parents who are uneducated themselves are self conscious about their education level and take deference to authority to the point of inaction).
However, there are some parents who just don’t care about education. I know it sounds strange, but I’ve seen it in my own family. With these students, I believe it is in society’s interest to find gap filers for these kids.
In our district, to balance the budget we removed the positions in each school that were responsible for getting parent involvement. We’ve had heavy cuts in the admin, too. The bottom line is that our bottom line sucks.
Good interview, and good discussion.
I also suspect we all are more on the same page than it might appear from the discussion.
I went and read “Learn More About the BIll” and saw language such as this: “Every principal is evaluated by fair and valid methods, at least two-thirds of which are determined by the academic growth of students and the demonstrated effectiveness or increase in effectiveness of their teachers.”
Who could disagree? It’s just figuring out what fair and valid are and how to measure them.
The same thing in this bill. I understand that teacher effectiveness is reflected only in student achievement. And I am not sure how that achievement is assessed. Is it CSAP? Other standardized measures?
“Whatever public school you walk in to in this state, you’ll walk out college ready”
“when we have 8 to 4 perfect, and every kid walking in the door is getting an outstanding education”
I guess politicians have to talk that way. But there isn’t any reform or system that is going to result in every child being college ready or getting an outstanding education. So that means the real goals are different than the stated goals. Which always makes me antsy.
I asked would he settle for almost perfect as we’ll never hit perfect. And he immediately replied yes. So as you said there’s slogans and there’s reality. But Senator Johnston did immediately agree that reality was less than the slogan.
I would make a crappy politician. “Everyone to the ramparts! My bill will improve things 17% over ten years.”
He really believes in college readiness, it’s what he set for a goal when he ran MESA.
However, that doesn’t mean that, despite his good intentions, the bill couldn’t be hijacked (not saying this has happened).
It’s just that anyone who knows kids or was a kid knows that no teacher, no matter the system or the budget, could produce 100% college-ready kids. People are not pieces of steel to be machined (and even in manufacturing, it isn’t possible to never have a flaw). Some kids aren’t interested or developmentally ready – even if they are intelligent and not addicts or ill or whatever.
do we really need a society in which every kid is college-ready? No other country (even ones we idolize for their educational system) produces this result.
As long as you pay car mechanics well, there’s no shame in a kid doing that instead of becoming a math teacher.
Certainly not everyone needs or wants to go to college. I was thinking that a kid who is “college ready” is a kid who is well educated and prepared for whatever they do next. But an alternative path like Vo-Tech (do they still have Vo-Tech?) might well be better for some kids.
A kid who graduates from High School who is not College ready is not going to be able to pass the classes to be a car mechanic, plumber, electrician, etc. Even those jobs now require an educational level equivalent to being able to go to college.
Granted there are jobs that don’t require this. But they tend to be minimum wage and I think we should try to get all kids to a level where they can get jobs better than that.
I agree with your point and wish to add another: Just because you don’t want to go to college NOW doesn’t mean you won’t at a later date. For example, the kid that aspires to be a carpenter today may aspire to become an architect in a few years. If they graduate high school college-ready, they have a better shot at doing that.
being a car mechanic is a complex job and requires training, and in jobs that are increasingly technical, much of the training happens in a classroom. While there is plenty of “hands on” much of it occurs in a classroom, just as you’d find on a college campus.
My brother was lousy at school and he joined the Air Force to become a jet mechanic, because he felt that he would fail in college. When he got there he found that he spent a ton of time in a classroom.
While he loved his career in the Air Force (24 years), he wished that he had done better in high school because it would have equipped him with the tools to do better at the start of his career.
The Military is the model we should follow, they know that every kid, even the ones who do not work in traditionally technical jobs need to be “college ready.”
Being “college Ready” doesn’t mean you should go to college.
What does college ready mean? You know you have to have a certain IQ before the military will take you.
It is a functional test and every kid (DD excepted) coming out of high school should be able to meet some standard on a similar test. All the test really measures is “are you educable. The ASVAB is purposely broad to handle a broad range of learners.
The ASVAB currently contains ten sections:
* Word Knowledge (WK)
* Arithmetic Reasoning (AR)
* Mechanical Comprehension (MC)
* Shop Information (SI)
* Automotive Information (AI)
* Electronics Information (EI)
* Mathematics Knowledge (MK)
* General Science (GS)
* Paragraph Comprehension (PC)
* Assembling Objects (AO)
* Verbal Expression (VE)
We can’t use the ASVAB scoring system, but we can use a similar test.
As far as I know, DDs are not “excepted,” in evaluating school achievement or graduation rates. Furthermore, the people taking the ASVAB are self-selected. The army is not testing the general population. Until recently, the military was taking anyone without a high school diploma or a GED.
Let me make this clear, I am not against nationally normed achievement tests for graduating seniors. I am arguing that there is a “hidden” population in our public schools of students who are intellectually handicapped and whose performance should not be evaluated in the same way as students with normal IQs. ( I do think this population is entitled to be educated to the height of their ability and that teachers). But I am wary of statements like 100% of graduating seniors should be college ready. That is crazy.
I don’t disagree with much of what you are saying, and certainly not with the intensity you seem to disagree with me.
In another thread I indicated that I thought DD’s needed a special measuring system.
There is a shadow population of developmentally disabled students who need to be excluded from any evaluation of how well our schools are doing and how effective our teachers are. That is not happening now. So we get wild statements about every student leaving high school should be “college-ready.”
I am not advocating for the dd in these exchanges here. I am trying to get a consensus on what a fair evaluation of teachers would be. I argue:
1) DD is a special population with special needs and different educational outcomes. Including this population in any overall evaluation of education distorts the results.
2) I might also add the same stands for the English Learners. Students who do not speak English as a first language are also a very special population. Including them in any overall evaluation of education also distorts the results.
3) We should NEVER compare our educational outcomes to those of Britain and Europe, Japan or China. These countries begin to triage their students early on. Only a small percentage go on to high school and they are the smartest of the smart.
4) From an historical perspective, Americans have been screaming about how bad our educational system is since 1957 when the Russians sent up the first satellite.
This bill has some serious cognitive dissonance: it promises better pay for teachers and principals who are leaders but has no money source. Will better teaching magically raise money? Yes, in twenty years, so that’s when the teachers can have a raise?
One of the main arguments for this bill seems to be that we need to be able to fire underperforming teachers. We can do that now, but the roadblocks are not the tenure system but the outrage that is sparked by any removal. Principals are left hanging out there by themselves. You can’t fix that with a law.
It seems like whenever a teacher is fired there are protests and petitions to keep him or her. Perhaps the probation idea would soften the blow – everyone would know it was coming if things didn’t improve. But it sounds like the school systems will need a hatchet man (or more likely a hatchet committee).
Really, when a teacher is removed, there are several reasons. Actual scores of students probably isn’t high on the list. I don’t know, I’ve never seen any research on this subject, but it seems that attitude has a lot to do with it. A teacher who doesn’t get along with the rest of the team and the students and the principal is more likely to be removed. That doesn’t make the teacher a bad one. A different team and this person could be a star. That’s why I argue that we need a more carrot-and-stick approach and, statewide, there needs to be a network (like Craig’s list or something) that gets the right teacher into the right place. It’s more difficult away from the Front Range, but I think it would help everywhere.
In the last 18 years BVSD has not fired a single tenured teachers. In practice it is impossible to fire a teacher with tenure.
and will changing the tenure system improve the education system?
and when you say not a single one has been fired, have none retired early? None changed jobs? I haven’t seen any statewide statistics on this issue. Where do we find this information?
And the parents would have backed the principal. Instead, they were moved out of the classroom and into other positions, like librarian (and made a lousy librarian).
I think a very small number of teachers would ever get fired. But I also think that the possibility would, in and of itself, improve teaching.
for this issue, a good bill would require every community to propose a set of guidelines for employment for teachers to a vote. It would require a minimum percentage of the electorate to vote. Keep doing it until you get out the vote.
The state bill would set base requirements and have incentives built in for communities that also choose to fund their schools at a higher rate.
Poor kids do poorly in school. This is the one undeniable fact that repeats itself in every district in the nation. School reforms are nearly impossible to replicate from one district to the next because at the end of the day the socio-economic status of kids is what really matters.
Parental involvement is what makes a difference for kids. So long as parents have to work 2-3 jobs to pay the bills we’re going to see our urban schools do poorly.
Unless and until we address urban poverty no Ivy League liberal education reformer is going to save our schools. No grand proposal brought down on high from Republic Plaza will prove to be the education magic bullet.
Until we deal with the underlying socio-economic factors we’re just going to continue nibbling around the edges of real improvement.
But I think that we need to strengthen the parts that we can, and that includes improving schools to the best of our ability.
Poverty is causally related to poor school performance and improved school performance is causally related to increased economic standing.
Where do you start? It’s not an easy question and the answer is not either/or. Unfortunately too much of the debate around school performance is focused on scape-goating teachers. When’s the last time you heard a “liberal” education reformer talking about poverty and its crushing impact on our kids?
The mother’s educational level, which is directly correlated in the income level, is the #1 predictor of how well a child does. But talk about a chicken/egg problem – we need to improve our schools so our future moms have a higher educational level.
Mom’s education is independently relevant (even if a Mom completed a single semester of college and then went on AFDC her children would still close the achievement gap).
It is a chicken and egg problem, but because Mom’s are typically our first teachers and the propagators of cultural values (like valuing education), we must recognize the benefits of education beyond the direct benefit to the person going to college.
Developmental disabilities correlate with low educational achievement and low income. A mother may be developmentally disabled, but her children are not. Moms who are DD are limited in their ability to parent, through no fault or desire of their own.
DD is a very real condition; it includes people who have significantly below average intelligence; which is not remediable. Prior to 1974, they were systematically denied access to public education. Now they are entitled to public education, a change which I vigorously support.
However, because they are mainstreamed, they may not be properly identified or supported, outside of school. They also may be exploited, sexually or criminally.
(There are conditions which constitute developmentally disabled which do not necessarily impact intelligence). But, IMHO, expecting a kid with an IQ of 65 to be college ready is the same as expecting a quadriplegic to compete in a marathon with able bodied runners, absent a wheelchair. It simply is not fair.
I think ajb was agreeing with dtr, not me.
in an earlier comment I indicated that for kids who do not have parental support, society would be well served in the long run to figure out a gap filler that can substitute for parents who are unwilling or unable to support their child’s educational efforts. My comment about mother’s education level is just stating what the statistics tell us and the data should be used to make better programs.
As to DD for the students themselves, I will agree and disagree. Before 1974 there were plenty of DD kids in regular classes, they just called them “slow” and there was no specialized education for them to help remediation. At best they were held back a grade or two.
Of course for the profoundly disabled you are correct, they were institutionalized or kept out of the education system.
Special ed requires special rules: I think it is a significant problem in the measuring of teacher competency since DD is such a broad term.
“Slow” kids may well have been in school. But, public schools had the right to exclude anyone who measured in the retarded range….In Colorado, I think this was a score of 85 and below on a standard IQ test. The exclusion may well have been arbitrary and varied from district to district.
Many of these kids were not “severely disabled” and worst looked normal.
We are in agreement that specia ed kids require special rules and that this is a significant problem in the measuring of teacher competency.
And we need to address as many links as we can. I can think of a couple others right off:
* Reducing teen pregnancy.
* Reducing drop-out rates.
Poverty adds pressure to kids to perform.
No easy fix. It doesn’t hurt to try
but an educator did tell me this:
This shows the flaw in this bill – teachers who teach in poor areas or non-english speaking schools will be punitively punished for working in a challenging environment, where the most work is needed.
Teachers in the burbs will receive rewards for work parents and from social mobility and upper class status.
The real solution is not to put the onus on the teachers’ for student test performance, but to take steps to make teachers more effective, such as reducing classroom size.
Sen. Johnston teaching experience at Mapleton is a prime example of how a smaller classroom (i believe the average was 12 students to 1 teacher, hardly the conditions for most Colorado schools)
enabled him to have success.
Addressing this kind of issue will go a lot farther in improving test scores.
(not to mention, I can not believe we are supporting bills that give someone like convicted Felon Neil Bush a way to make money hand over fist with testing software and educational materials)
the only people who can ‘fix’ this are the people in the legislature by voting no on sb 191.
Because it measures improvement of each student. And it takes in to account their background. So a teacher does not need to take a student that is 3 years behind and get them up to grade level. All they have to do is teach them over the year so that at the end of the year they’ve moved forward a reasonable amount.
And if a teacher can’t accomplish that for their students – why would you want them in the classroom?
I have taught “advanced” and “regular” education students. There is one big difference between the two. Parent involvement. At parent-teacher conferences I had 6 parents out of 150 regular students. I had well over 50 “advanced” students. That is the only difference. Parental involvement, and the motivation of the student are directly correlated with success. This bill does not address the issue, despite what Mr. Johnston says.
Sen. Johnston has the principal’s perspective, the CEA has the teacher’s perspective. They differ because teachers don’t trust administration to evaluate them fairly. Few administrators have spent more than a few years in the classroom, as shown by Johnston. Administrators come and go with the tides, teachers are in it for the long haul. Teacher’s don’t trust the 50% of the evaluation from administrator, and we don’t trust rote memorization tests. Although my students do exceeding well on these tests, they are not always reliable or valid. There is no buy-in by the students because there are no consequences if they do poorly. Yes, we must figure out a way to reform tenure, and get rid of bad teachers, but this isn’t the way. The problem is that all teachers get a bad rap from this bill. It makes us all look like we aren’t doing our job.
To address your question, “why did you go into teaching?” Because I had terrible teachers, and wanted to give the students something better. I love teaching, and I don’t want to do anything else. This bill will make firings more arbitrary from admin, make me teach to the test, and take some of the joy and fun from the classroom. It does no reform, it merely puts more constraints on teachers. It’s hard and expensive to get a teaching license, expensive to keep, and the pay is low. Good luck attracting a new generation of teachers.
I’ll agree the bill is imperfect. But for 40 years every time a change has been suggested, the response has been “that’s got problems.” And so we are stuck with an ongoing disaster.
I’d like to see the CEA come up with an alternative. One that has a decent chance of significantly improving the schools and a decent chance of getting through the legislature. That would be an alternative.
But so far what I have seen from the opponents is the Republican approach of just say no.
come up with an idea of what they want teachers to do. I mentioned above, in great detail, what I view my job as. I want to know what angry parents want me to do differently. I want to know whether they appreciate the things I do. I want to know what I should do to make them happy.
And if the only thing they care about is higher scores on some test, I want them to realize that you can easily get all kids to do pretty well as long as you don’t particularly try to inspire any one of them. What is the thing you want teachers to do? We’d love to know.
Once you figure it out, how do you think you’ll measure it? We’d love to know that too.
As it is, it just looks like ideas are being pulled out of the air, and whether they improve teaching or ruin teaching doesn’t particularly matter, since the important thing is to be seen doing something. Good job, if that’s the goal. But the people involved (like Senator Johnston) clearly don’t have a firm idea of what they think they’ll accomplish. And more importantly they don’t particularly care about solving the problem, since they’re happy to say, “Well yes that’s important but this is easy!” I refer in particular to his stance on parental involvement.
I want 55% of the students, across all income levels, graduating from a 4 year college 5 years after they graduate from high school. Accomplish that and I will fight to double all teacher’s salaries and give them anything/everything they ask for.
With the above I assume the other 45% will do proportionally better. Some of them will go to 2 year colleges. Some will go to votech schools. But most (not all) could get through a 4 year college if they chose that route.
I want that too. That sounds great.
How do you want a 10th grade teacher to make that happen?
I’ve seen kids go to college, have a great first semester, become potheads, and drop out in their junior year. I kind of think maybe that might happen regardless of what their trigonometry teacher did.
I know it’s hard to propose something practical, but I want to know what a teacher can do, practically, using tools under his/her control, to avoid getting fired under your ideal system. This is important to a lot of people. Teachers WANT to make you happy. Really, we do. Tell us how.
We can’t control what’s going to happen five years in the future to someone with whom we no longer have contact. I doubt you’d offer a five-year warranty for your software on all future computers and OS’s without a hefty premium. So in terms of things that human beings can control, what do you want?
I think the trick is to work backwards from that goal. So that puts us first at how should they pop out of high school not just in terms of education but also motivation, approach to life, etc.
From that we look at what we need to accomplish year by year working from 12 back to K. This gives us what should be done in each class at each grade level.
We then look at the most appropriate way to measure it taking in to account that measurement is inexact and we want to minimize the time spent on measurement.
We also look at best practices to accomplish our goals each year in each class and give teachers training and info on how to accomplish this.
It’s not an easy thing to do as you dive in to the details. But it is similar to what well run companies do every day. And this is a lot more important than a given company making a profit.
I’ll finish up with something similar to “physician heal thyself.” You guys are the experts – you should be able to come up with a way to accomplish that goal.
I’m interviewing someone from the CEA later this week. I’ll ask them if they’ve got a way to accomplish this.
But speaking of physicians, can you imagine a system where physicians get retained or fired based on how many of their patients get cured? We don’t do that currently. Should we? Why do you think we don’t do that now?
I’ll give you my thought: it’s because we trust that physicians aren’t trying to kill people, and we realize that they do the best they can, but sometimes even if a physician does the best s/he can, the patient still remains sick. But I wonder how well your system would work if it were applied to other professions. “Here,” say you, “I want X to happen in five years to everyone you come in contact with, if not you’re fired. You have one year to make it happen.” I honestly can’t imagine a job any normal person would take if that’s the criterion.
“Here,” says David, “sell Windward software to people so well that you can stop talking to them for five years and they’ll still want every new version of the software for any platform they might use.” Would you really base employment on such a measure? And if you wouldn’t do it in real life, why do it to teachers?
Teachers don’t hate students. Teachers want students to succeed. Teachers would love all their students to go to college and study the subject they taught. They’re all doing the best they can to make that happen. And if you have better ideas, they’d all love to try them.
They are reviewed and that review can include revocation of their license.
Physicians bury their mistakes.
A board of teachers!
I don’t know why the teachers haven’t thought of this themselves before. Any time a committed group of professionals gets together and creates a board which certifies its professionals and has the power to license them, and revoke those licenses, they have become extremely powerful and effective. Think doctors, layers, dentists, etc.
Take this out of the hands of the school administrators and politicians. Let the teachers become fully responsible for themselves and their professional certifications and licenses. They can set standards for educational levels, passing boards, etc.
So, sxp151, what do you think of this?
ARe you familiar with statistics and the bell curve…which shows a normal distributions of certain traits, IQ being one of the most famous? On a bell curve, tell me the IQ spread for your 55%?
http://www.iqscorenow.com/Imag…
I seem to recall that it was 110; but I don’t have a source to cite.
Ok, how about 75% of those that have the IQ to go to College?
Now, David. How many in that category are not now going to college?
The number of low income kids who make it through College is incredibly low. And since there’s a very slight correlation between IQ level and income level, figure a little under half of them have the IQ to go.
It is hard to find them because IQs are not specifically linked to achievement, drop-out rates, or high school graduation.
There are real privacy concerns. However, there ought to be a way to report such data in the aggregate. So, taking the data from the link you provided, let’s say that 34 % of the population has the IQ 100-115. It is hard to see where 110 would fall on that graph. Let’s say 25% of the population has an IQ to successfully graduate from college. You would like to see 75% of that group graduate. I round that off to 19% of our population.
So, we could reasonably expect 19% of the population to graduate from college…..that is a far cry from your original 55%. My statistics could be all wet, GIGO. There are many variables. But this is a way to begin looking realistically at what our expectations should be.
What you are saying is that 95% of that 19% which is low income does not make it through college. I don’t think that is right…but I don’t know of any graph which would show the association between our three variables: IQ; college graduation and low income status. I am way beyond my pay grade in trying to figure out that kind of analysis.
Public school works well for upper income families. My daughters went to Boulder public schools (the youngest went private for middle school). They’re good schools and where the school was deficient we handled that ourselves or hired a tutor.
But as the income level drops, the quality of the education imparted drops with it. There’s a ton of reasons, but the bottom line is it drops.