The ABCs of the Chicago teachers’ strike: New evaluation system looms large

On Monday morning, 350,000 kids in Chicago found themselves without a classroom to bustle about as the city's teachers went on their first strike in 25 years. The sticking point? A new teacher evaluation system.
While Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel and the local teachers' union disagree on a long list of issues, including planned pay raises and sick day accrual, Emanuel said in a press conference Monday afternoon that the evaluation is the main obstacle to agreement. The new system would eventually use students' standardized test scores as 40 percent of a teacher's yearly evaluation. Teachers who don't improve their students' test scores would be fired.

Many Democrats, including Emanuel's former boss President Barack Obama, embrace this test-based way of judging educators. The president's "Race to the Top" federal program awarded money to states that agreed to rate teachers this way and institute other reforms, like encouraging the creation of more independent charter schools. As of last October, teachers can be dismissed in 14 states based on their students' test scores.

Union supporters argue that evaluating teachers using tests can be tricky, and that this "value-added" measurement can be volatile and inaccurate. Additionally, teachers who have a high proportion of poor students may have a harder time lifting their kids' scores than teachers who work in affluent districts. (About 80 percent of Chicago students qualify for free or reduced federal lunches.) As many as 6,000 teachers would wrongly lose their jobs under the system, says Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) President Karen Lewis. "Evaluate us on what we do, not the lives of our children we do not control," she said while announcing the strike, according to Reuters. But reformers counter that teachers should be responsible for helping their students score better on tests, and that current evaluation systems provide no way for ineffective teachers to be identified or removed from classrooms.

Emanuel doubled down on the new evaluation system Monday, as negotiations between CTU and the city dragged on. "What we can't do is roll back what's essential to improving our quality of education," Emanuel said at the press conference, flanked by children. He called the strike "totally unnecessary."

While other city and state leaders have pioneered test-based evaluations without prompting strikes, one sticking point that may make Emanuel's reforms more controversial is a lack of money. The school district is facing a $3 billion deficit over the next few years. Former Washington, D.C., Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee was able to overhaul the city's teacher compensation and evaluation system in part by offering big pay increases for teachers who thrived under the new system. But Emanuel has no such leverage.

"The mayor is pushing for dramatic Obama-era teacher quality reforms, but doesn't have a lot of money to help the medicine go down," Rick Hess of the American Enterprise Institute told Yahoo News.

Union organizer and former social studies teacher Jackson Potter said one issue the teachers are striking over is poor facilities. Teachers are upset that some schools lack playgrounds or libraries, while others convened in "sweltering" August classrooms without the benefit of air conditioning. Meanwhile, the facilities budget for the city has been slashed. Emanuel dismissed this complaint on Monday, saying the teachers aren't actually striking over facilities. "It's 71 degrees outside," he said. "You don't go on strike for air conditioning."

But the issues leading to the strike have been building for quite a while, said Potter. When current Secretary of Education Arne Duncan ran Chicago's schools, he pioneered a new aggressive approach of closing down schools whose students performed poorly on tests. Duncan's strategy led some teachers, who felt they were being blamed for teaching in difficult, high-poverty schools, to form a more radical branch of the union, called Caucus of Rank-and-File Educators (CORE). The organization has been instrumental in the current strike, and similar groups have formed in other big cities with strong teacher unions, such as New York and Los Angeles, potentially setting the stage for more high-profile strikes in the future.

"I think we're likely to see other cities going down the same road as Chicago," Hess said.

What Do Test Scores Really Say About a School?

By Hannah Boyd

If you’ve recently moved or purchased a house, you probably researched local schools first. These days, access to test scores is only a click of the mouse away – but critics argue that this information tells us more about the socio-economic status (SES) of the student body than about the quality of the schools themselves. How much do we really value diversity? And how much can you learn about a school based on its test scores?

That high socio-economic status is correlated with academic success is unpalatable, but undeniable. Economist Steven Levitt described some of the factors most highly correlated with high test scores in his book Freakonomics: highly educated parents and high socio-economic status mattered more than intact families, daily reading sessions, and an at-home mother.

“The research on this issue says that the variable that counts for supporting high academic achievement is high expectations,” says Carol Pate, Ed.D., Associate Professor and Chair of the Education Department at Chestnut Hill College. “Parents who are in the high SES realm expect that their children will achieve at the level to continue the lifestyle, whether it means in a professional manner, economic or a combination of both. In addition, children of high SES parents are also more likely to inherit good genes resulting from supportive nutritional, medical and overall environmental care. Finally, children of high SES parents…are able to concentrate on their schooling…because they do not need to be concerned about the necessities of life, such as nutritional foods, safety in the community and schools, and finding adults to care for them.”

While some of these factors, like safe hallways, do directly involve schools, most do not – yet they have an impact on the test scores parents use in finding the “best” schools. Schools may have excellent facilities, involved teachers, and high per-pupil spending, but still score lower than a school with a wealthier student body and high scores. “It is critical that parents don’t stop at the question, ‘what is the best school?’ and instead move toward ‘what is the best school for my child?’” says Dan Gilbert, Lecturer at the Stanford School of Education.


If test scores aren’t enough, what should parents consider? Pate recommends seeking out:

• schools that devote time for teacher collaboration
• teachers that provide significantly more frequent feedback to parents than a typical report card
• schools that invite parents to be part of the school community in meaningful ways
• schools that involve students in service learning and community-building activities
• schools that include an intensive focus on student data from multiple sources
• teachers that compare students to themselves rather than to other student groups

In an age of high anxiety, it can be frightening for parents to choose a school that doesn’t have the highest test scores. For parents who value socio-economic diversity, though, these schools may provide a different type of education – one in which students are exposed to the kind of diverse population they’ll encounter in the real world. And, says Pate, some of the worry may be exaggerated. “Parents need to know that there are many, many successful students from diverse populations, and students from middle to low SES educated by superb public schools.”

Ohio Gov. John Kasich signs third grade reading guarantee bill into law

Published: Monday, June 25, 2012,  6:20 PM    
Updated: Tuesday, June 26, 2012,  7:38 AM
By Reginald Fields, The Plain Dealer 

Jay LaPrete, Associated Press Gov. John Kasich

COLUMBUS, Ohio -- Gov. John Kasich on Monday signed a bill that steps up public education standards across Ohio and includes a requirement that some third-graders be held back if they cannot read at grade level.

The third grade reading guarantee was the hot-button topic in Senate Bill 316, a multi-faceted education and workforce development bill that the Republican governor signed in Cincinnati. Kasich said he doesn't
intend the new law to be a form of punishment for 8- and 9-year-old boys and girls who want to move on to the fourth grade, but more of a necessary investment in their futures.

"If you can't read you might as well forget it," Kasich said at a bank operations center in Cincinnati where he was joined by state lawmakers for the ceremony. "Kids who make their way through social
promotion beyond the third grade, when they get up to the 8th, 9th, 10th grade. . . they get lapped, the material becomes too difficult."

The Kasich administration often refers to a recent Annie E. Casey Foundation report that found that children who cannot read at grade level by the third grade are four times more likely to drop out before the 12th grade.

"No one should be surprised," Kasich warned. "We will not delay any holdback in the third grade if you can't read."

The education bill was part of the governor's mid-biennium review of the state's budget and policy initiatives. Kasich clashed with the bill's sponsor, Sen. Peggy Lehner, of suburban Dayton, after the Senate
deemed the governor's initial idea of holding back students who could not read at the "proficient" level as unfair and too onerous.

Lehner opted for a lower threshold that gradually steps up the level of reading required for a childto be promoted as other safeguards are put in place, such as improved teaching standards, more reading intervention and summer programs. That will assure that not all the scrutiny falls on the children but
challenges schools to do more to help students learn to read.

Kasich initially blasted his fellow Republicans in the Senate for weakening the bill, but has since relented. He thanked Lehner on Monday at the bill signing for her work on the bill.

"Education in this country is at a crisis. There are a whole lot of reasons for why we've arrived at where we are," Lehner said. "The governor referred to the future of blended learning. And part of our problem is we are in transition, we are changing from one way of learning to a whole new way of learning, and I think some people have been sort of left behind in that. This legislation is the beginning of major education reform in the state of Ohio."

The blended learning approach that Kasich referred to is a provision in SB 316 that will incorporate more technology into the classroom, so much more that teachers could eventually find their roles drastically
changing, the governor believes. "We're going to get to the point where online learning is going to
be the order of the day," Kasich said. "I think we will ultimately get to the point where teachers' roles will change to the point where ultimately they will be coaches rather than be teachers because the
online curriculum, the online capability is going to excite kids in a way in which they understand."

Other provisions in the new law will slightly change the system for evaluating teacher performance and will require the General Assembly to come up with a new school report card system by March 31, 2013.
The new law also contains a number of provisions aimed at giving more people a shot at getting a job. Ohio borrowed its Learn and Earn idea from Georgia. It will allow people on public assistance to continue collecting welfare payments while getting job training. Currently in Ohio, accepting job training skills nullifies a person's public assistance payments, serving as a deterrent for some people to move off of welfare.

And Employment First is a new program that will encourage employers to hire people with disabilities into meaningful, paying jobs as opposed to sheltered workshops. Currently, 40 percent of Ohio adults with
disabilities live below the poverty line as compared to 14 percent of all working-age adults, according to Kasich's office.

"The Lord is smiling when he sees the fact that we are going to give those with disabilities a chance to be what they were created to be and to maximize who they are," Kasich said.

School asks deaf preschooler to change his sign language name

Three-and-a-half  year old Hunter Spanjer, who is deaf, signs his name by crossing his forefinger and index finger and moving his hand up and down.

To his family, friends and those who know the Signing Exact English (S.E.E.) language that the Grand Island, Neb., boy uses, that gesture uniquely means "Hunter Spanjer."

But to Hunter's school district, it might mean something else. The district claims that it violates a rule that forbids anything in the school that looks like a weapon, reports KOLN-TV.

And Hunter's parents claim that Grand Island Public Schools administrators have asked them to change their son's sign language name.

"Anybody that I have talked to thinks this is absolutely ridiculous," Hunter's grandmother Janet Logue told the TV station. "This is not threatening in any way."

Hunter's father Brian Spanjer said, "It's a symbol. It's an actual sign, a registered sign, through S.E.E."
The family told KOLN that lawyers from the National Association of the Deaf may push for Hunter's right to sign his name at the school.

Jack Sheard, Grand Island Public Schools spokesperson told KOLN, "We are working with the parents to come to the best solution we can for the child."

One Grand Island resident said she disagrees with the school.

"I find it very difficult to believe that the sign language that shows his name resembles a gun in any way would even enter a child's mind," Fredda Bartenbach said in the news report.