I AM NOT A STEPFORD TEACHER!

This is a letter to the editor of the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette. I just finished penning it and submitting it. I'm well aware that it will be considered too long for publication but what I'm hoping is that at the very least it will provide the editor with another side of the story and will perhaps cause him or her to seek out other opinions from other teachers. I really felt that the Journal Gazette article almost inferred that by the end of our State Superintendent of Public Instruction, Bennett's talk and the discussion at Waynedale Elementary School in Fort Wayne that he'd pacified us all into being "Stepford Teachers." I just wanted to say "NOT SO!"

First, this is the article: http://www.journalgazette.net/article/20101118/LOCAL04/311189984

Here is my letter:
Dear Editor,
I would like to thank the Journal Gazette for covering State Superintendent Tony Bennett’s visit to Waynedale Elementary School. I appreciated that the article indicated that the “air” was tense and that the teachers present were leery of Dr. Bennett and his initiatives. However, I was dismayed to see that the close of the article seemed to infer that the teachers who were present were pacified after listening to Dr. Bennett. There was even a quote from a woman who stated she didn’t believe Dr. Bennett was “the bogeyman” anymore.

I can assure you that none of the other five teachers who were with me were, or are, pacified. I can assure you that all of us remain committed to opposing Dr. Bennett’s plan to sanction more charter schools, his plan to have teacher salaries based on a merit system, and for that merit system to be based primarily on student evaluations. We oppose Mitch Daniel’s plans to do away with collective bargaining and seniority rights. I do not believe that we were (or are) in the minority of those teachers who attended the Waynedale talk or in the minority amongst our colleagues who were not in attendance.

To start, we oppose charter schools because only 1 in 5 in the nation has been proven to be effective and those that are effective have had huge infusions of private capital and support, they usually only have to serve a “motivated” constituency, and they have not had to “play” by the same rules as “regular” public schools. But most importantly, we oppose them because they siphon off money from an increasingly limited pool of funds for the public schools leaving schools that are already in trouble in more of a lurch.

In a study of successful charter schools, the things that have been identified as making them successful were parent participation/interest, adequate resources, the number of motivated students enrolled, TIME in school for students and collaborative educational teams that have TIME to collaborate. All these things could already happen and often do already happen in the public schools with the teachers we have, if our educational leadership and our legislature would provide for those things to happen.

Substantiating my belief that I am not alone amongst my colleagues in my opinions on this is that a woman at Wednesday’s event got the ONLY spontaneous and resounding applause of the day for challenging Dr. Bennett about his interest in charter schools.

Secondly, we oppose merit pay. We oppose this because despite what Dr. Bennett presented on Wednesday, he still could not indicate any real definitive and fair plans to administrate such a system. He indicated that it hadn’t all been worked out and that much of it would be up to local control (except for the achievement pay factor ) and we wonder how subjective that’s going to be without the teachers having any input into the evaluation system.

Dr. Bennett spoke a good deal about how the growth model evaluations would make this type of teacher evaluation fair, yet he still has no plan in place for how he would evaluate special class (art, music, p.e. etc.) teachers or K-2 teachers (whose students are not tested) or special education teachers. When asked about special education teachers, Dr. Bennett again pointed to the growth model and he thought that these could show progress fairly and be a fair representation of a special education teacher’s effectiveness. All this, while the Economic Policy Institute (orginated by 7 prominent professional educators and associations) has issued a policy statement and petition to OPPOSE heavy reliance on test scores for teacher evaluation. The petition specifically cites that there are specific dangers in using value added or growth models to evaluate teachers.

We oppose our evaluations being based on student achievement because it would cause teacher’s rankings to be based on the particular population of students in their classrooms. What teacher is going to want to have student’s with special needs or behavioral problems or even special circumstances (such as a family going through a divorce or a death) in his or her classroom? Can we expect those children to make the predicted growth or even comparative growth against their cohorts?

We oppose eliminating collective bargaining rights and seniority based pay systems. There is much information to be found about these subjects in the media, however I will cite a Washington Post Answer sheet indicating that 9 of the 10 of the highest achieving states for highest average student rankings on the NAEP are Unionized states. Perhaps that’s a coincidence but I don’t believe so. As for a continual claim that union- backed tenure prevents bad teachers from being fired, I will answer that tenure is ONLY a guarantee of due process awarded to teachers after an initial period of employment and all it really means is that teachers cannot be fired for arbitrary reasons. A school can get rid of ANY teacher it wants to at ANY point IF they follow due process procedures.

Speaking to Dr. Bennett’s promotion of the Growth model we cite an article by Kevin Welner, (Associate Professor of education policy and director of the Education and Public Interest Center at the University of Colorado) for the American Association of School Administrators entitled “The Overselling of Growth Modeling.” In it he lists 5 limitations to growth models especially when they are used for cohort comparisons such as Dr. Bennett’s presentation indicated that Indiana’s growth model system of evaluation would do. The five limitations cited are 1. If used for cohort-comparisons, they cannot provide a true measure of individual growth. 2. Growth expectations can be just as unrealistic as the current AYP expectations. 3. Mobility of students, multiple teachers per student each year and untested subjects all introduce further confusion into the model, and there is no perfect way to adjust. 4. Any growth must be based on assumptions about the ongoing effects of a given teacher in subsequent years and about the ability of a prior year’s score to fully adjust for student, family and community resources as well as school and classroom resources. (Simply put- this is saying that you can’t determine what the outside factors or reason might be for a student’s growth or achievement or lack there-of.) 5. The switch from a proficiency-threshold system to a growth model would not address core concerns about test-based accountability, such as narrowed curriculum, teaching to the test, measurement error and reliance on one type of assessment rather than multiple factors.

To sum up, while the growth model might be better than the current AYP system of judging schools and or educators, we simply do not feel that this will be the panacea that Dr. Bennett is suggesting it will be and we certainly do not agree with him that it should have any place in the evaluation of teachers and or principals.

Dr. Bennett encouraged those of us who questioned and challenged him that instead of fighting him we should instead join with him in improving the educational system in Indiana. He indicated that if we had better ideas or plans, should have (or should) let him know of them. My answer to that is “That’s a nice sentiment, Mr. Bennett, but it’s a little late in coming especially after you shut the ISTA out of any opportunity for meaningful input into your plans when you submitted your unsuccessful Race to the Top plans and there is no confidence on my part, based on your past performance, that my opinions or those of my colleagues would have any impact on your agendas.”

At the beginning of Dr. Bennett’s talk on Wednesday he posed the question to us “Why would I want to destroy the public schools as so many of you think I do?” He said he was a father of kids who went to public schools and he indicated he would not want to leave that kind of legacy behind him. There was a ready answer in my head as to why Dr. Bennett might want to destroy public schools and that is that he would do it for political gain, his own and for Mitch Daniel’s.

Sincerely,

Cindi Pastore

Note: I am a special education teacher for the Adams Wells Specials Services Cooperative of Adams and Wells Counties.
(Also incidentally, while I did not include this in my already lengthy letter, I was sitting in the front row and I could swear that I heard Dr. Bennett to say “Many of you have came today…” rather than the correct “Many of you came…” or “Many of you have come..” That may sound trivial but wow, he’s our state superintendent of schools. Perhaps I heard wrong but if you would happen to have a recording of the event, I’d sure like to listen for that. )

Perhaps i should have added- "I AM NOT A STEPFORD TEACHER!"