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Yes, teacher tenure needs reform, but state Sen. Teresa Ruiz's bill places too much weight on the teacher evaluation system under development in New Jersey. Firing teachers based on two consecutive years of poor evaluations is not going to improve teacher effectiveness or student achievement.

"The world's largest private-sector employer and the country's most prominent conservative entertainment company have teamed up to sponsor a fundraiser called "Teachers Rock." Backed by Walmart and Anschutz Film Group, the August 14 event will feature live performances from musicians like Josh Groban and appearances from actresses like Viola Davis; it will be broadcast August 17 as a CBS special with messages from actresses like Meryl Streep. And it will promote the upcoming feature film Won't Back Down, Anschutz's entry in the "education reform" wars. Won't Back Down is reportedly a highly sympathetic fictional portrayal of "parent trigger" laws, a major flashpoint in debates over education and collective bargaining. Under such laws, the submission of signatures from a majority of parents in a school triggers a "turnaround option," which can mean the replacement of a unionized school with a non-union charter. Such laws have been passed in several states, but due to court challenges, the "trigger" process has never been fully implemented."

Teacher evaluation is at the top of the list of things to talk about in the education reform world. I've largely stayed away from writing about it on this blog because I think there are a lot of more fundamental changes that need to be made in public education before we spend time revamping teacher evaluation. It seems to me that a lot of new evaluation schemes are attempting to hold teachers accountable for factors they don't control and penalize them for shortcomings for which they are not responsible.

I would also ask you to please stop promoting the myth that unions are abusive and make it impossible to fire bad teachers. Unions only ensure that all teachers have due process to protect them from abusive admin. (And no, I am not saying that admin. is abusive, but just as there are poor teachers out there… there are poor administrators.) It is not the unions job to evaluate teacher performance. But it is the unions job to be be sure that disciplinary action is justified by requiring proper steps to be taken.

In education, teacher evaluations are supposed to gauge what is and isn't working in teachers' practice, and provide feedback to ensure teachers are at the top of their game. Even though administrators have always had this responsibility, teacher evaluations have rarely met that standard. They often are little more than quick snapshots, taken by a principal sitting in the back of the classroom with a checklist once a year. Yet these snapshots-"drive-by evaluations" as they are known-frequently serve as the basis for decisions to keep or dismiss teachers. More recently, so-called reformers have pushed to replace that inadequate snapshot with another kind-once-a-year standardized student test scores in math or English-even though such tests are not designed to evaluate teachers and the majority of educators teach subjects not currently assessed by standardized tests.  Neither of these limited approaches makes any sense-for neither one does anything to improve teacher practice or increase student learning. And after all, isn't that the point?

America's public school teachers are seeing their generations-old tenure protections weakened as states seek flexibility to fire teachers who aren't performing. A few states have essentially nullified tenure protections altogether, according to an analysis being released Wednesday by the National Council on Teacher Quality.

There is a widespread consensus among practitioners, researchers, and policy makers that current teacher evaluation systems in most school districts do little to help teachers improve or to support personnel decision making. For this reason, new approaches to teacher evaluation are being developed and tested.  There is also a growing consensus that evidence of teachers' contributions to student learning should be a component of teacher evaluation systems, along with evidence about the quality of teachers' practice. Value-added models (VAMs) for examining gains in student test scores from one year to the next are promoted as tools to accomplish this goal. Policy makers can benefit from research about what these models can and cannot do, as well as from research about the effects of other approaches to teacher evaluation. This background paper addresses both of these important concerns. 

In time for Secretary of Education Arne Duncan's presentation of the Obama administration's reforms to teacher preparation programs last week, a new report offers comprehensive recommendations for how to develop and maintain teacher evaluation and support systems.

"This is must see though I know it is long. This workshop led by Mike Klonsky and featuring his brother Fred, Dr. Michael A. Walker-Jones, Executive Director, Louisiana Association of Educators, along with one of my Chicago pals Xian Barrett is loaded with meat. Even Leo Casey makes an appearance with a comment that may cause some comments. In the audience were John Elfrank-Dana, CL of Murry Bergtraum HS and Arthur Goldstein, CL of Francis Lewis HS."

We know that the flawed New York City teacher ratings data that was released last week is broadly unreliable, with a high margin of error and rating teachers not just by how well their students did on tests, but by how well their students did in relation to an algorithm's sometimes unreasonable expectations of how the students would perform. That's information that's widely known and indisputable. Yet the teacher rankings are still being used to publicly vilify low-rated teachers without even a cursory investigation of whether the data's many known flaws may have made a good teacher look bad.

Yesterday's Milwaukee Journal Sentinel carries a feature on the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation.The Bradleys were the main source of support for Gov. Walker's assault on Wisconsin's teachers and public employee unions. Indiana's T-Party Gov. Mitch Daniels sat on Bradley's board of directors. His teacher-bashing, anti-union school "reform" initiative was recently embraced by Ed Sec. Arne Duncan.  They also provided support for the Milwaukee school voucher program and its main proponent in the African-American community, Howard Fuller and his Black Alliance for Educational Options (BAEO) . They funded Charles Murray, author of racist book, "The Bell Curve," which argues that intelligence is predicated on race, and Dinesh D'Souza, author of "The End of Racism," which attempts to absolve Whites from discrimination against Blacks during slavery, claiming that Blacks were too uncivilized to be a part of society anyway.

"This report shows that segregation has increased seriously across the country for Latino students, who are attending more intensely segregated and impoverished schools than they have for generations.  The segregation increases have been the most dramatic in the West. The typical Latino student in the region attends a school where less than a quarter of their classmates are white; nearly two-thirds are other Latinos; and two-thirds are poor. California, New York and Texas, all states that have been profoundly altered by immigration trends over the last half-century, are among the most segregated states for Latino students along multiple dimensions."

"So I looked carefully at the data and found that these test scores do, in fact, prove there was some lying going on.  But it is not the lie that that Klein and Duncan were talking about.  The lie that these test scores reveal is the one about charter schools being better than public schools."

"Right now, people who are CEO's of business model corporations are acting through propaganda, marketing, and donations through their foundations as the great saviors to all of our education problems, placing themselves and their foundations in the role of the protagonist in OUR story! I write today to suggest that we reclaim our own story, reclaim our own language, and shift our own role from victims/antagonists to the true protagonists that we are! We are the main characters of our own story!"

Most parents believe in educational equity. But putting their belief to the test is another story.

As co-chair of Wisconsin's powerful legislative Joint Finance Committee, Alberta Darling was charged by Governor Scott Walker with cobbling together the most anti-public education budget in Wisconsin history. And Darling delivered, with a plan to slash $800 million in funding for public schools across Wisconsin while at the same time scheming to shift tens of millions from the state treasury into the accounts of private schools. She was delivering for American Federation for Children (AFC), the powerful national network of billionaire campaign contributors that has been pouring millions into school privatization fights across the country.

The AFT's Randi Weingarten nailed it last week. Commenting on the unveiling of the Obama administration's NCLB waiver plan, she told the New York Times: "You're seeing an extraordinary change of policy, from an accountability system focused on districts and schools, to accountability based on principal and teacher evalutions."

List of ALEC supported legislation.

America's teachers have long struggled to gain respect and satisfactory working conditions.  Toward that goal, in 1916 the New York City Teachers Union was formed.  Modest in its objectives, the organization essentially sought decent salaries and recognition for teachers as professionals. 

Advocates for poor and minority students, students with disabilities, and others sent a letter to Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, and Sen. Michael B. Enzi, R-Wyo., expressing deep concerns with legislation to reauthorize the Elementary and Secondary Education Act put forth today.