The discussion and rumors swirling around the Seattle teacher contract negotiations are quite telling.
Sides are being staked out, spin is being spun, and confusion reigns. In there somewhere is a conversation that should drive much-needed changes that raise our kids’ achievement.
Kids. Write that down on a piece of paper and put a check mark next to it every time any side of the conversation uses it. Be sure to use a Post-It note.
It’s hard to know which end is up and what side to take and whether to take a side at all. How’s a person to know? And why should they even be interested? Let’s tackle that last question first.
These negotiations determine critical elements of your kid’s education. Everything from how long the school day is to who teaches them to how their teachers get evaluated and supported are at stake.
Why should you care? Here are a few reasons:
- According to a report done by the National Council on Teacher Quality, Seattle has the shortest school day for elementary students in the region. Less learning time is not an answer to our growing achievement gap and our overall gaps in math and science achievement.
- Just to illustrate the point, look at the Seattle School District’s results in statewide testing. Math and science proficiency are abysmal for all. Meanwhile, the achievement gap in math and science hovers in the 40 – 50 point range depending on which groups of kids are being compared to middle-class white kids.
- High school graduation is a fifty-fifty prospect for African-American kids in the district and slightly worse for Latino kids. High school graduation is supposed to be a launching pad for college success, degree completion, ultimately jobs that sustain families. Dropping out is a dead end.
- When teachers get laid off, this “reduction in force” (RIF) takes place based on seniority. Studies show this to be a highly ineffective way to manage this sad situation. Yet this is the only criteria for layoffs in Seattle. Effectiveness should enter into the equation somewhere. Yes, we have a problem measuring effectiveness given our two-tiered and somewhat silly evaluation system, but that is on the table as well.
Some of you have wondered why LEV cares about these negotiations. Well, here are a few reasons.
- See above.
Seriously.
We have fought for increased funding and statewide reform and have played a pretty serious role in some of the reforms that are currently being negotiated (teacher evaluation being one). We have worked hard to stay true to our evidence-based roots in advocating for change.
But we also applaud innovation. And given our lackluster results, it is time to try new things. The proposal being put forward by the Seattle Public Schools represents a mix of both tried and new. Some of them make good sense. Some raise concerns.
Over the course of the next several weeks, we will follow these negotiations to see whether the adults in the system are ready to adopt much-needed changes. We will work to offer insight into which pieces are proven, which are new, innovative or just wild swings and misses and to remind everyone why these negotiations are taking place at all.
It’s about the kids.
I was having lunch with a friend today, and the question that stumped us both was: In a community that likes to think of itself as a place with progressive values, how have we come to tolerate mediocrity in public education? Maybe the urgency is less because of the high percentage of kids in private schools. People shouldn’t just be concerned; they should be angry. The pace of reform isn’t just slow, it’s glacial. The recent official response to Washington’s dismal performance in Race to the Top competition showed arrogance unjustified by our children’s achievement levels. I would rather see some thoughtful experiments that carry some chance of failure than a continuation of the status quo. Both sides of the negotiating table need to be held accountable.
Bob,
SPS teachers are not about mediocrity unless you’re talking about our superintendent. Reducing children to numbers in an endless array of testing, really takes the compassion and focus out of teaching. If Goodloe-Johnson’s SERVE evaluation program is adopted teachers will also be reduced to numbers. So you have numbers teaching numbers. What is the point of attaching teacher evaluations to student test scores? Surely you are aware that all students perform differently for numerous reasons and often regardless of any interventions. Just try being “innovative” with your job on the line. Have you heard of teaching to the test. That will not prepare students to be competitive learners ready for college and careers.
The SPS teachers jointly with the SPS administration have created teacher evaluation rubrics at great expense in time and energy that are currently being 86ed by our superintendent, because she wants to force an unproved and expensive new SERVE program on the teaching staff.
You are probably a voter hold your superintendent accountable and your school board for obfuscating the important issues here. Teaching is an art. Poor teachers just can not survive the profession. The problems with education lie in the lack of appropriate funding.
I’m a parent at a public school where we practice child-centeredness, child-engagement, and teaching of the whole child. I don’t see anything in the SERVE proposal that aligns with our values. This district is all about testing companies, and I don’t know why LEV supports that so blindly.
I really feel like the public is missing the point. As a teacher for 20+ years, I have no problem with being held accountable. I am accountable to my students and parents every single day I set foot into my classroom. I am constantly assessing and adjusting my teaching to meet the varied needs of my students. I am always researching, reading and educating myself in the best ways to reach my students. It is very disheartening to hear that as a teacher, I don’t want to be held accountable or that I just don’t care. And I am not alone in my efforts. The staff that I work with puts in many extra hours of time (unpaid) to plan, meet, and attend events in the evenings and after school for our students and parents. I have watched my 1st/2nd grade classroom number grow over the past 6 years from 24 to 28 or 29 students. It may not seem like much, but those few extra students make a big difference between the kind of attention I am able to give to those students that need extra help.
As for a longer school day? I would love to have more time in my day, but you have to pay me for that time. The Seattle School district also has our elementary day starting at 9:20 now, and ending at 3:30. Make our day start earlier while their young brains are fresh – I would be happy with more time in my day.
What I wonder is, why has the superintendent thrown out the collaborative evaluation reform effort that was so carefully thought out by a joint committee of SEA and SPS? And is the public aware that the test that will be used as a part of our evaluation (MAP) has Dr. Goodloe- Johnson on their board? I also think the LEV needs to look at the record of principals in our district. There is so much talk about the incompetent teachers and nothing about the administrators. Many of them are shuffled around from one school to the next without and regard for the damage they are causing.
I have experience with both public and private education, having moved my son to a neighborhood parochial school for middle school. He is back in a public high school. Over the years, I’ve been extremely active in both school and district level volunteering. My career has also involved a considerable amount of interface with both Seattle and the Highline school districts. Based on my experience I have the following observation:
1) OK teachers, good teachers and excellent teachers abound in both public and private schools. A very small minority are bad teachers, but it has been very difficult to move them out of a school or district. Some principals are good at maneuvering bad teachers out of their schools, but they typically end up somewhere in another school.
2) Test scores have very little to do with what or how children learn. They have much more to do with who gets into college, though. Both measurements are tied very, very closely to family income and parents’ education levels. In individual cases, some good and some excellent teachers can make a difference for students whose success is not predicted by family income and educational history.
3) The ability of an individual school principal or administrator to lead a team of school staff and create a meaningful and successful learning community is the single most “changeable” factor in determining a good or excellent school. Bad principals make bad schools, no matter what. Bad principals can ruin good schools.
4) Children’s parents and families are at least equally important to a child’s school success as are schools and teachers. However, “bad” school can ruin education a child with a “good” family more easily than a “good” school can compensate for a “bad” family.
I make these observations primarily to point out that the responsibility for creating effective education depends on complex interactions between individuals, families, communities and systems. There are so many factors involved that it is useless and counterproductive for teachers and parents, families and schools, and communities and systems to blame one another.
The hostility between SPS and SEA hurts everyone, children most of all. No side is blameless. I must say, however, that I have had many, many positive interactions and relationships with teachers, but extraordinarily few positive interactions with anybody in the administration at the Seattle School District. I also think that a strike right now by teachers guarantees that the levies on the ballot in the fall will fail, creating even more acrimony, chaos and damage in the Seattle School District, harming children for years to come.
What to do? If I knew, I’d do it, in addition to everything I already do for schools and education. (Like help raise over $90,000 for my kid’s high school, serve as PTA President and treasurer, pay for private tutoring for my learning disabled kid, volunteer on field trips even AFTER my kid asked me not to “boss his friends around”, bake cookies late at night, help with homework over and over and over, write letters, serve on committees, educate myself on the issues, advocate for low income kids…..)At this point, I’d really liketo just second the theme of this campaign: please act like responsibile adults and THINK ABOUT TH andE KIDS.
LEV said: Just to illustrate the point, look at the Seattle School District’s results in statewide testing. Math and science proficiency are abysmal for all. Meanwhile, the achievement gap in math and science hovers in the 40 – 50 point range depending on which groups of kids are being compared to middle-class white kids.
This example doesn’t illustrate a failure on the part of individual teachers – it illustrates a failure of the school system. Place the blame where it belongs for achievement gap issues. Schools have to set up a system for remediation. There is nothing a 10th grade math teacher can do to teach algebra 2 to a student who can’t do basic math. That 10th grade teacher doesn’t have the opportunity to bring the kid up to speed when he/she sees the kid for 50 minutes a day and has 30 kids per class.
It does no good to blame the earlier teachers either because somewhere along the way the ADMINISTRATION of the school should have pulled the kid out for individualized help and a math specialist should have been called in to work with him/her. Unlike a teaching coach which would waste the teachers time showing him/her how to better implement the grade level material for the 90% who get it anyway, a learning specialist helps the kid succeed directly. The gap for that kid would be closed.
There are no quick fixes to the problem of the achievement gap – its going to take a lot of hard work on an individual KID level not on the TEACHER level. I’d rather see the $4 million of SERVE money used to hire more resource specialists to work in schools.
It’s a waste of tax payer money to create a complex system that will never be executed – there are many principals who fail to follow thru on the current evaluation system. The district should move forward with the joint teacher evaluation proposal they have been working on with the SEA and focus their energy on holding principals accountable for managing that.
Actually, Seattle’s results on statewide testing shows the district to be SUCESSFULL, not a failure, as Seattle’s pass rates are above the state average. If a district that is above-average for the state is abysmal, what does that make the majority of the state’s districts? And if you’re going to (unaccountably) attribute those scores to the design of the teacher contract – a leap that astounds me – then how is it that we see such a diversity of scores across the state when the teacher contracts at all of the districts are essentially the same?
The district average is slightly higher than the state average on the 2008-09 10th grade math and science WASLs — 48.9% of Seattle 10th graders pass the math WASL, compared to 45.4% of the state, and 41.5% of Seattle 10th graders passed the science WASL, compared to 38.8% of the state. This means less than half of Seattle’s 10th graders are demonstrating proficiency in math and science.
The spread between white 10th graders and all other racial/ethnic subgroups averages 37 percentage points on the 2008-09 math WASL, and 35 percentage points on the science WASL. The most severe gap is between white students and their African American peers — a 53 percentage point difference in math and 50 percentage points in science.
A graphical representation of the math scores is here: http://www.educationvoters.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/Seattle-10th-grade-math-WASL.pdf. A graphical representation of the science scores is here: http://www.educationvoters.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/Seattle-10th-grade-science-WASL.pdf. Look at the groups below the district and state average lines (black and gray), you’ll see a trend.
Thank you, Ms Cope, for acknowleding the fact that Seattle’s scores are no more abysmal than those in the rest of the state.
So how is this a Seattle problem? How does this require a Seattle solution?
Clearly this is a statewide problem requiring a statewide solution. It is not attributable to anything in the Seattle teachers’ contract and cannot be fixed by changes to the Seattle teachers’ contract.
I am willing to fight right alongside you on this, but let’s fight on the right battleground and against the right enemy. It is not the Seattle teachers’ union or their contract. Our struggle is elsewhere.