Union Attacks Bill Evers for Encouraging "Best-in-the-World" Math

The teachers' union in Capistrano Unified attacks me for encouraging the district to consider Singapore Math instead of a business-as-usual math textbook series.

The attack appears in the union's Jan. 8 Board Watch newsletter.

At the time I made the suggestion, I was an official member of the district's textbook review committee. I stressed that successful implementation of Singapore math in America has needed extra training for teachers, and that such training would be needed if Capistrano were to adopt Singapore Math (which is officially approved in California).

I cited Singapore's comparative success on international math tests. I also pointed to the U.S. Department of Education-sponsored study entitled "What the United States Can Learn from Singapore's World Class Mathematics System."

The union calls for automatic rubber-stamping of teachers' recommendations. It attacks me for favoring parental input on textbook adoptions.

I agree that teachers' recommendations should weigh heavily, especially if the textbook has been tried. (The Capistrano teacher committee had declined even to try out Singapore Math.) But I contend that objective, scientific studies of content-coverage and effectiveness as well as international comparative testing should be given their due weight.

Singapore students in 4th and 8th grade were best in the world in Mathematics in 1995, 1999 and 2003.

I pointed out that a school nearby in Los Angeles has had great success with Singapore Math.

I'm sure that the Capistrano teachers want textbooks that they believe will work for them and that have a familiar feel. But parents, taxpayers, and community members have a right to ask: Why not the best for our children?

DLC Head Harold Ford Defends DC Opportunity Scholarships, Praises Pres. Obama's Courage

In a recent opinon column in the Mar. 26 issue of Politico newspaper, former Tennessee Congressman Harold Ford Jr. praises President Obama's courage and resolution on school reform. Ford is current chairman of the Democratic Leadership Council (DLC).

President Barack Obama...called for higher standards, more charter schools, merit pay and eliminating bad teachers....

Ford clearly identifies the public-school Establishment that he expects will oppose genuine reform:

Obama expects that special interests will oppose his reform agenda. Those who do will fight vigilantly to hold onto the failed schools that shame us as a nation.

But their actions will put them against the best interests of our children and on the wrong side of history.

Ford says the past anti-reform efforts of the Establishment lead one to expect more of the same from them. He mourns the death of opportunity scholarships in the District of Columbia, "tragically... killed by Senate Democrats":

Teachers unions and education groups have expressed opposition in the past to ideas like merit pay and charter schools. They are strongly opposed to a successful voucher program in Washington, D.C., which tragically was killed by Senate Democrats in the omnibus spending bill that passed the Senate last week.

But Ford says we have reason to hope, because when it comes to education policy, President Obama will be a brave and tenacious leader:

On behalf of the nation's children, Obama is prepared to take on members of his own party and the special interests.

Perhaps, most interesting of all, Ford calls for a mass movement of aroused parents. With a combination of "missionary zeal and political sophistication," an organized grass-roots force of well-informed parents could apply effective and lasting pressure:

It is also time we wake the sleeping giant: the parents who have children attending public schools....Parents — motivated by wanting a world-class education for their children and being highly informed and organized — could bring persistent pressure to members of Congress to adopt an agenda of change to fix our failing schools.

Ford describes well the hopes that President Obama has created for genuine school reform. We should also consider seriously Ford's thoughtful proposal of a mass organization of parents committed to student success.

What do readers think of Pres. Obama's response thus far to the impending demise of DC opportunity scholarships?

UPDATE (3/31/09) For an alternative view of President Obama's courage on school reform, see Richard Cohen's Mar. 24 column in the Washington Post. Here is the relevant excerpt:

[I]n domestic matters, Obama's image has become muddled. He remains more popular than credible. Where does he draw the line? Not at tax delinquency, clearly, and not at earmarks, clearly, and not at real school reform, which he advocates but has done little to implement.

Does DC Union Want It To Take Longer Than Forever to Fire Teachers?

Andy Rotherham and Richard Whitmire have an article in The New Republic on AFT President Randi Weingarten. In it, they divulge some details about the counter-offer of the teachers' union in DC contract negotiations. It seems that the union, as things stand, wants to make the firing of teachers more complex and protracted than it already is:

...[T]he counter-offer, which hasn't been made public, would complicate rather than streamline [the teacher-firing] process in D.C. ... [It wraps] teachers even more tightly in tenure protections and extend[s] the termination process....If adopted as currently proposed, [DC schools chancellor Michelle] Rhee's hurry-up reforms would be throttled back to a glacial pace and students would suffer.

Rotherham and Whitmire point that some people contend that, in the mirror-world of labor negotiations, this complexifying proposal is "actually a signal from Weingarten that she's open to negotiating and moving in Rhee's direction."

We'll see.

UPDATE (3/22/09) D.C Wire had a blog post on Michelle Rhee's reaction to the union's counter-proposal -- the counter-proposal that I discussed above. Rhee reported to the DC Council: "There are some fundamental issues we can't come to agreement on....Both sides are drawing a line in the sand."

What Exactly Is the Stand of Teachers' Unions on Merit Pay?

Intercepts (Mike Antonucci) makes an important distinction today (Mar. 11) about the stand of teachers' unions on merit pay. Intercepts points out that the National Education Association (NEA) currently says that its opposition to merit pay is only opposition to pay “based on student test scores.” The union also currently says that any merit-pay plan should be arrived at through collective bargaining, rather than imposed.

But the picture conveyed these days is actually misleading. The NEA as a matter of policy opposes all K-12 merit pay under all circumstances.

Intercepts goes carefully over the actual wording of the resolutions adopted by the NEA's governing assembly. Intercepts concludes:

[The] NEA opposes merit pay, performance pay, or any other method of pay that replaces the traditional salary schedule, collectively bargained or not (except for higher ed).

The union may support pay that supplements the traditional salary schedule provided it is bargained, does not pay to fill hard-to-staff schools or subjects, and is not based on “education employee evaluation, student performance, or attendance.”

That last provision is important. It doesn’t say “student test scores,” it says “student performance.” It doesn’t say “education employee evaluation by a principal or other administrator.” It says “education employee evaluation.”

Intercepts thinks President Obama’s notion of merit pay "falls well short of replacing" the traditional salary schedule. But Intercepts is convinced that President Obama "does actually mean performance pay," and that he is in fact "at odds with [the] NEA" on the issue.

Los Angeles Teachers' Union vs. Diagnostic Tests

David Lehrer and Joe Hicks (President and Vice-President of Community Advocates, respectively) posted an incandescent piece today (Mar. 9) on the Fox & Hounds blog on the opposition of United Teachers of Los Angeles to the school district’s diagnostic tests scheduled to be administered to students in two weeks.

The union has told the public that its members will “boycott a series of unnecessary assessment tests” that would result in “the loss of valuable instruction time spent prepping students for the tests instead of teaching.”

But union leaders are telling their members something quite different (namely, that the boycott is about protecting teachers' jobs, not about classroom teaching time for students). According to Lehrer and Hicks:

In a February letter to UTLA’s members its president struck a very different theme, clearly not about “education being a top priority.” He told teachers that the boycott was really about “everyone’s health care, class sizes” and that “jobs are on the line…now is the time for unity among members—not division.” Not surprisingly, the claimed pedagogic problems with the assessment tests aren’t mentioned in his teacher-directed communication.

Lehrer and Hicks go on to say that these tests have proven to serve valuable diagnostic purposes and have been shown to help children learn:

In reality, the “periodic assessment” tests which UTLA finds so objectionable facilitate teaching the curriculum that these teachers are hired to instruct. The tests’ goal, as the [Los Angeles] Times has written, is “to give teachers insight into what students need to learn while there remains time in the current school year to adjust instruction.”

A statistical analysis by the [Los Angeles Unified School District] has found that the assessments “contribute to higher student achievement.” The District’s study found that, especially at the elementary level, students who take the full battery of four assessment tests during the course of the year are “much more likely to score proficient or advanced on the California Standards Test than similar students that either do not take the tests or take them only once or twice.”

The tests are designed to provide individualized data to the teachers, within 48 hours of having been administered, of what each student has mastered in English, language arts, math, science and social studies---core academic subjects. If teachers “prep” students for this test they are teaching the curriculum that it is their job to deliver, not teaching obscure skills that are only relevant to a test.

Checker Finn's Seven Worries about National Standards

Checker Finn, one of the nation's leading proponents of national standards, writes in Gadfly today (Mar. 5) that he has accumulated seven worries.

First -- National standards may well (because of the involvement of unions and other special interests) focus on resources, instead of focusing on mastery of academic content:

...I cannot be the only person whose heart sank when Dennis Van Roekel announced that the National Education Association [NEA] was also joining the "partnership."...What really formed icicles on my toes was his declaration that this move is perfectly compatible with the NEA's adoration of "21st Century skills" and "comprehensive" standards that include "accountability for child well-being, facilities and supplies." (Who else remembers the brouhaha over "opportunity to learn standards" in the early '90s?)

Second -- National standards may well be heavily influenced by the wooly "21-Century Skills" movement:

...Speaking of 21st Century skills, the more I learn about this woolly notion, the clearer it becomes that this infatuation is bad for liberal learning; a ploy to sidestep results-based accountability; somewhere between disingenuous and naive regarding its impact on serious academic content; and both psychologically questionable and pedagogically unsound. (For a terrific exposition of these problems, see here.)

Third -- National standards may well be heavily influenced by the unsound and ideologically-freighted PISA test:

...[S]ome [in the current national-standards effort] are...overly fond of PISA--that's the Paris-based OECD's international math/science/literacy testing program for fifteen year olds--and view it as the surest path to "international benchmarking" and multi-national comparisons. Yet Tom Loveless of the Brown Center at Brookings has recently unmasked PISA's ideological bias and misguided notions about what young people should know and be able to do.

Fourth -- National standards may well not include the great works of literature:

...[A]s revisions are made in Achieve's respected " American Diploma Project" (ADP) benchmarks--these are at the core of the common standards project--one hears reports of a major tussle over whether English should continue to include literature and list important literary works.

Fifth -- National standards may well narrow the curriculum:

...[I]f the common standards enterprise remains confined, like NCLB (and ADP), to English and math, it may further narrow what's seriously taught in school--with a malign effect on states that have a decently rounded curriculum that gives due weight to science, history, even art. (Picture what happens to history education in a state that joins a national project that wants no part of history.)

Sixth -- National standards may well be ignored, because they are not tested:

...[S]uppose that the emerging standards are sound. Yet nobody is talking about common assessments to accompany them, at least not in this lifetime. But without an agreed-upon test and "cut points" for passing it (or, if you prefer, demonstrating "proficiency") these standards will have no traction in the real world of NCLB and discrepant state accountability systems.

Seventh -- Given the existing American political landscape, national standards may well change at any (unpredictable) time:

...[M]ost troubling...is institutional instability. The United States of America in 2009 lacks a suitable place to house national standards and tests over the long haul.

Who will "own" them? Who will be responsible for revising them? Correcting their errors? Ensuring that assessment results are reported in timely fashion? Nobody wants the Education Department to do this. There's reason to keep it separate from the National Assessment of Educational Progress and its governing board.

Yet the awkward ad hoc "partnership" now assembling to pursue this process could fall apart tomorrow if key individuals retire, die, or defect; if election results change the makeup of participating organizations; if the money runs out; or if their working draft runs into political headwinds like the "voluntary national standards" of the early 90s.

Finn remains cautiously optimistic about national standards, at the same time, he has given us all a list of what to watch out for.

I would add that No Child Left Behind has not led to significant narrowing of the curriculum. Schools have added a few minutes more a day for reading and subtracted a few minutes from other subjects. For National Center for Education Statistics data on this, please see:

http://nces.ed.gov/pubsearch/pubsinfo.asp?pubid=2007305