Quinnipiac Poll: Voters Back Teachers Unions Over Cuomo, 54%-31%

Capitol Confidential reports on a Quinnipiac Poll out this morning that finds 65% of New Yorkers do not believe standardized tests are the best way to measure student learning.

The poll finds a split for opt out (48%-47%), with huge regional disparities - opt out has more support upstate and in the suburbs than in New York City.

And the poll finds voters back teachers over Cuomo generally on specific issues like tenure and merit pay as well:

Though what voters think of opt-outs is a mixed bag, they’re put more faith in the teachers unions, which pushed the opt-out movement, to improve education than they put in the governor (54-31). Voters also strongly rebuke the idea of teacher pay and tenure being based on how well students perform on standardized tests.

If you're an education deformer pushing an education deform agenda, the poll numbers are moving against you on a host of issues, from tenure to teacher pay to standardized testing to Common Core.

Even the opt out findings are a victory for the Opt Out movement.

Can you imagine 48% saying it was okay to opt children out of standardized tests just a couple of years ago?

Jeb Bush Calls For Merit Pay For Federal Employees, Disruption For Federal Government

Republican presidential candidate Jeb Bush laid out a plan today to "disrupt" the federal government if he is elected president, saying that he will cut the federal workforce by 10% and institute merit pay for government workers:

In a speech on Monday in Florida, the Republican presidential candidate unveiled his plan for "disrupting" Washington by downsizing the federal government.

Bush's plan takes aim at the federal budget. He proposes cutting the number of federal employees by at least 10% and radically overhauling the budget process to require a balanced budget, a controversial prescription popular with the conservative base.

"It will not be my intention to preside over the establishment, but in every way I know to disrupt that establishment and make it accountable to the people," Bush said.

...

Bush says that he will institute a policy of hiring one employee for every three who leave when it comes to federal hiring, with the exception of national-security related jobs. Bush suggested that federal agencies shouldn't replace many workers who retire — according to the governor, 10% of the federal workforce will retire within the next five years, and "not everyone who leaves has to be replaced."

And then there's this:

• Merit pay. Bush claims too many mediocre federal employees are being paid the same as exemplary employees. Though he didn't delve too far into specifics on this point, the former Florida governor said that he'll make it easier to fire bad federal employees.

It seems both the rhetoric and policies of Jeb's education reform agenda will now be leveled at the federal government and federal workers too.

Can "turnarounds" for federal departments be far behind?

Maybe receivership for some federal departments, with goals to be hit or the whole thing gets turned over to a non-profit charter entity?

Oh, the ideas for bringing education reform ideas to Washington government are limitless.

How exciting! 

Rudy Giuliani Declares Himself The Savior Of Black People

I've already posted how former NYC Mayor Rudy Giuliani blamed teachers for police shooting black people, saying cops wouldn't need to kill black people if the teachers would just accept charter schools, vouchers and merit pay (no seriously - he said it.)

That wasn't the only ridiculous thing he's said recently.

There was also this:

“If you look at my eight years in office, I saved more black lives than any mayor in the history of the city,” Mr. Giuliani claimed.

 Just in case you're thinking maybe he misspoke, well, this is the second time he's said this:

'I probably saved more black lives in this city than any mayor in the history of New York City, with the possible exception of Mike Bloomberg, who was there for 12 years,' he said.  

That's some assertion by Saint Rudy of 9/11 - it goes quite well with blaming teachers for tragedies like the Eric Garner case.

If we'd just accept charters, vouchers and merit pay, Saint Rudy of 9/11 would be able to save even more black people from the evils of the teachers!

And Rudy Giuliani is like a Black Moses.

Makes sense, I guess, what with Isaac Hayes being dead and Rudy Giuliani being an asshole and all.

Rudy Giuliani: When Black Men Are Killed By Police, It's The Fault Of Teachers

Via Raging Horse we learn that former NYC Mayor Rudy Giuliani, the Saint of 9/11, said this:

“Maybe all these left-wing politicians that want to blame police, maybe there’s some blame here that has to go to the teachers union, for refusing to have, for refusing to have schools where teachers are paid for performance, for fighting charter schools, for fighting vouchers, so we can drastically and dramatically improve the education situation. Maybe they should be talking about and holding rallies about the problem of black fathers taking care of the children they fathered,” he said.”

Wow.

I've heard all sorts of reasons for why ed deformers want charter schools, vouchers, merit pay and a busted teachers union, but this is a new one.

I wonder if Giuliani will blame teachers when worldwide protests explode after the U.S. torture investigation report is released?

Governor Cuomo Says He Will Institute An APPR Evaluation System For Meteorologists

Governor Cuomo is very mad at the meteorologists at the National Weather Service.

He claims they got the lake effect snow forecast for Buffalo wrong last week:

ALDEN, N.Y.- During a press conference Saturday afternoon Governor Cuomo had some criticism for the National Weather Service and its forecast of the storm.

Cuomo said the Weather Service did not indicate that the heavy snow bands would remain stationary and blast South Buffalo and the Southtowns with the incredible rate of snowfall.

Cuomo said that's part of the reason why New York State is building its own linked weather forecasting system that will be superior to any other state system in the country.

"No one had an idea that it was gonna be that much snow that fast. Snow coming down at the rate of about five inches an hour. No one had an idea. The weather service was off. By the way, I said this in my state of the state last year we're putting in our own weather detection system," said Cuomo.

Cuomo says he will be breaking the "monopoly" that the National Weather Service has by creating his own New York Weather Service.

He says high quality charter weather stations will be funded all over the state in order to give the NWS some much-needed competition in the meteorology business.

"I believe in competition and I believe in charter weather stations," Cuomo told reporters at a briefing in South Buffalo. "There's nothing like some hungry forecasters working at Weather Success Stations to make those lazy slugs at the National Weather Service get off their fat asses and do their jobs right."

In addition, Cuomo says he will institute a new evaluation system for all meteorologists who make forecasts on New York weather to ensure that only the highest quality and most accurate forecasters keep their jobs.

Cuomo says the evaluation system will mimic his APPR teacher evaluation system, with meteorologists rated as "Highly Effective," "Effective" "Developing," and "Ineffective."

Meteorologists will be rated after every weather forecast.

Meteorologists who are rated "developing" or "ineffective" two weather systems in a row will be publicly shamed by the governor - Cuomo will send out a list of "Bad Meteorologists" in order to make the public aware of this much needed information.

Meteorologists who receive "Highly Effective" ratings two systems in a row will be eligible for meteorology merit pay courtesy of New York State.

Cuomo says if the meteorologists at the NWS don't shape up, he will add more "sanctions" to the APPR meteorology system, though he won't say what those "sanctions" are.

As for the pushback Cuomo has received from the NWS and other meteorologists who point out that he doesn't know what the hell he's talking about when he says the NWS didn't forecast the lake effect snow last week, Cuomo says "I'll deal with those guys later.  I've been making a list of people I plan on getting even with in the next term - you can bet some of these guys are going to get a visit from Joe Percoco to set things right."

Question To Randi Weingarten: Is This Campaign Rhetoric From Cuomo?

Via ICEUFT blog, here's Cuomo's latest threat to take on teachers and schools:

Gov. Andrew Cuomo in a radio interview this morning reiterated that he will tackle an overhaul of education in his second term, a sign that he is not letting up on his battle with the state teachers union.

Cuomo, on The Capitol Pressroom this morning, said he wanted to make his education reform measures part of his overall legacy as governor — linking it to his other legislative successes.

...

What those reforms will be are likely to include new performance evaluations and raising teacher standards, along with tying pay raises to merit.

At the same time, Cuomo has been pushing for strengthening charter schools in his second term. For the New York State United Teachers, Cuomo’s push on education reform measures is meant to appease his donors, many of whom are wealthy hedge-fund managers who are supportive of charter school initiatives.

Cuomo’s education plans aren’t just academic. A number of tangible issues are coming to a head next year in Albany, including the expiration of mayoral control of New York City schools.

...

Cuomo in his interview today said he was willing to expend some of his political capital in order to get changes to the state’s education system.

“If you’re not willing to pay the price for change, get out of the business, because the status quo is the worst outcome of all of this,” Cuomo said, adding, “When I am done I’m going to be proud of these things that have caused the most heartburn.”

He's proudest of things that cause the most heartburn.

He's going to push for new evaluation standards for teachers, even though the current system he touts as the best in the nation is a mess, he's going to push for merit pay and he's going to either increase the charter school cap dramatically or eliminate it completely.

Finally, he says he's willing to expend political capital on this attack on teachers and public schools (though I dunno if he knows that he's got a lot less political capital these days than he had after 2010 when he pushed through his first slate of education reforms.)

Before the election, Randi Weingarten defended his earlier threat to "break" the public school "monopoly" by calling it "campaign rhetoric."

Hey, Randi, are these post-election comments from Cuomo "campaign rhetoric" too?

Deformers Want To Argue Students' Civil Rights Are Violated If Teachers Aren't Eligible For Merit Pay

Let's say some deformers file a lawsuit here in New York State against teacher tenure and seniority rules sometime soon.

The laws in New York are a lot different than they are in California, so they'll have to adjust the thrust of the suit.

From this Jessica Bakeman article in Capital NY, you can see how the deformers are not only dreaming big, they're dreaming too big:

New York and California’s teacher tenure rules are broadly similar, with some important differences. Unions have argued that New York’s laws are significantly more stringent than California’s, while reform leaders say the two sets of laws are the same in essence if not in content.

While both states have a probationary period for new teachers, after which teachers are generally given tenure, New York’s is at least three years, while California’s is eighteen months. Union leaders say New York’s law allows for more time to help and observe teachers.

In California, unlike in New York, uncertified teachers can be awarded tenure, and disciplinary hearings for California teachers can legally extend far longer than similar hearings in New York.

Union-allied defenders of teacher tenure here also say New York City’s intensive and controversial new teacher evaluation laws ensure quality among teachers, and point out that tenure reforms implemented under the Bloomberg administration led to a significant decline in teachers approved for tenure.

Sedlis said a potential legal complaint would likely focus on lengthening New York’s probationary teaching period and changing the way teacher seniority is used.

She said the city’s controversial absent teacher reserve, a pool of teachers without full-time jobs but who are still paid by the city, is “a clear example of tenure gone wrong.”

Beyond probationary periods, certification requirements and evaluations, education reform leaders are looking to take on larger long-term sticking points between their groups and New York’s city and state teachers’ union, including merit pay.

“It’s more about what’s missing,” Weisberg said when asked what he would like changed about New York’s tenure laws. “Laws should require that highly effective teachers be rewarded in terms of compensation.”

Merit pay would be anathema for the U.F.T., and fundamental disagreements about pay based on performance prevented the union from agreeing to a contract under the Bloomberg administration.

Sedlis agreed that legal action would be an opportunity for “parents and advocates to give every aspect of the law a fresh look.”

“Countless policies can be challenged,” she said, adding that a lawsuit could “force some real changes at the management and policy levels.”

They're going to sue over merit pay?

Seriously?

Is this the "craft" they plan to add to the New York case?

New York laws are different - it takes longer to get tenure, in NYC many teachers never get tenure at all and some have to wait well over the mandated three years to get it.

In addition, the APPR teacher evaluation system allows districts to fire teachers who come up "ineffective" two years in a row.

The argument that was used in California - "grossly ineffective" teachers cannot be fired without a long cumbersome process - doesn't hold water here.

So the deformers are looking to broaden the case, adding seniority rules around layoffs and performance pay to the mix.

They may be able to craft an argument around seniority, but I have a difficult time seeing them craft one around performance pay.
 
I'd like to see the judge in New York who agrees that students' civil rights have been violated because their teachers are ineligible for merit pay.

Often these deformers exist in a deform echo chamber where they say stuff that makes sense to everybody in their little circle, but once they get outside that circle, people look at them like they're crazy.

Arguing that students' civil rights have been violated because their teachers aren't eligible for merit pay is one of those cases.

Michelle Rhee Says The UFT Contract Fails The Reform Test

Could be a head fake out of the Great Broomster, but Michelle Rhee says she's not too impressed with the new UFT contract agreement:

The camaraderie among the mayor, senior administration officials and UFT leadership was evident at Thursday's big announcement. Praise flew every which way; UFT boss Michael Mulgrew and Chancellor Fariña hugged.

What was not so clear was what, exactly, they had agreed to. Inexplicably, the city focused on the pomp and circumstance of the agreement but has not released its language. This much we know: Mayor de Blasio gave in to the union's demands for sizable raises but got very little in return - no premium sharing of health-care costs, no higher co-pays, no guaranteed dismissals for ineffective teachers who don't even teach full time, no changes to the rigid seniority-based salary schedule, nothing.

For all the talk of a fair deal for students, the union did not make a single meaningful concession.

Make no mistake: I support the generous raises in the new contract agreement. Teachers deserve to be paid like the professionals they are. But rather than use substantial salary increases to drive groundbreaking reform, the de Blasio administration tinkered around the edges, by and large preserving the status quo.

If the mayor had been willing to cause some friction with his union friends, he could have used the new contract to drive reforms that would have enhanced the quality of teaching and had real impact for kids. Yes, it's difficult to stand up to powerful and wealthy special interests, but across the country there are mayors and superintendents showing precisely this type of courage.

For example, in Harrison County, Colo., school officials worked with their teachers union to put in place an "effectiveness and results" pay plan that uses educators' classroom performance - rather than simply their seniority - to make school placement decisions and salary increase determinations.

In Cleveland, Oh., public school leaders did away with the outmoded salary scale that gives raises based on only on tenure and college coursework and replaced it with a more modern system that gives raises based on performance and specialized qualifications. The Cleveland contract also changes how layoffs and recalls are handled, with performance and qualifications taking precedence over seniority.

In Washington, D.C., where I was chancellor, IMPACT teacher evaluations are among the strongest in the country and have helped that school district go from the worst urban district in the country to the one making the biggest gains in student achievement.

In Newark and Hillsborough, N.J., teachers receiving an "unsatisfactory" or "needs improvement" rating will not be eligible for salary increases for the next school year or for any pay raise until they receive an overall satisfactory evaluation.

San Jose also chose to deny automatic raises to unsatisfactory performers.

The contract governing educators in a group of schools run by Green Dot, in Los Angeles, calls for teachers to devote the necessary time and effort to fulfill their professional obligations. Though high-performing teachers typically work long, unpredictable hours, traditional teacher contracts both set strict limits on hours and are extremely prescriptive about what responsibilities can be assigned within those limited work days.

This civil-service approach leads to significant negative outcomes, from parents having two-minute conferences with teachers, to new teachers being told not to work late because it will make veterans look bad. Green Dot's simple language has helped transform the culture of teaching at these schools.

Each of these gains in the contract happened with unions and districts working collaboratively.

These are just some of the ideas that could have been replicated in New York City to benefit students. And a nine-year agreement with generous salary increases would have been the exact right mechanism to do it.

Bob McManus of the Post also hammered the deal today, calling it "catastrophic" for the city, though he was focused more on the cost and the little in "health care savings" that he wanted out of it.

While I think there is much to dislike about the agreement, this much is true:

Salary steps are preserved and continued, unlike in some teachers contracts around the country in the last few years.

In fact, had Christine Quinn won the election, you can bet she would have pushed for a contract that eliminated automatic salary step increases and promoted so-called "performance pay" as the primary mechanism for raises.

Same goes for Anthony Weiner - who also said he would push for city employees to be part of a universal city health care system and force teachers to pay "at least 10% of their health care premiums."

The UFT even put out a trial balloon last year about what a contract without automatic step increases might look like through Unity caucus member and Ed in the Apple blogger, Peter Goodman, something I posted about in March 2013. 

While this de Blasio contract has a merit pay proposal in it, it doesn't replace steps as the primary mechanism for salary increases and while it does call for some fuzzy notion of health care savings, both the city and the UFT claim that teachers will not be paying part of their salary toward health care.

I've seen some criticism around the Internet that claims this is the worst deal ever, Bloomberg's wet dream, etc., but the truth is, it's not even the kind of deal that Quinn or Weiner would have sought, let alone Bloomberg or Rhee.

By all means, scrutinize and criticize the deal, point out the problems with the delayed compensation, the "retro pay" that isn't really retro pay at all, the merit pay stipulation, the ATR changes and the 200 schools that can dispense with parts of the contract if 65% of their staffs agree to it.

But don't overdo it because this UFT/de Blasio deal is nowhere near as bad as some deals we've seen around the country recently (like the one Rhee lists), nor is it anywhere near as bad as what you might have seen had Quinn or Weiner been elected.

That doesn't mean I think it's a good deal - I think there are major problems with it and I know why people are pissed about it.

But make no mistake, it could have been a lot worse than it is, as Rhee points out in her Daily News piece, and I think it's important to take that into account as you talk to your colleagues about it.

Here's How You Know The UFT Contract Deal Is A Bad One - The NY Post Likes It

One of the measures of any UFT contract deal is what the neo-liberals at the Daily News and Times and the neo-cons at the Post think about it.

If these editorial boards, who never saw a merit pay proposal they didn't like, a teacher they didn't want to fire or a traditional public school they didn't want to turn into a non-unionized charter school, like the new UFT contract deal, then you know there's are serious problems with it.

The NY Post came down squarely on liking the merit pay and de-contractulaizing 10% of city schools in the tentative UFT contract agreement:

Now that Mayor de Blasio has reached a deal with the United Federation of Teachers, most of the attention is on the $3.2 billion in retroactive pay. That’s understandable, given it’s the largest number in the deal and the mayor’s predecessor has said the city can’t afford it.

But we’re intrigued by some of the items we didn’t expect. One provision, for example, will allow exemptions from some Department of Education regulations and union rules in 200 schools — permitting them to change curricula, reconfigure the length of their school year, provide for more parental involvement and modify seniority rules for work assignments.

Used correctly, that would give traditional schools some of the flexibility that helps make charters successful.

Ditto for merit pay. Again, it will depend on how it’s implemented. Paying a good teacher $5,000 extra to keep her in a challenged school is an excellent investment, but if it means paying $5,000 to keep every teacher there, you haven’t fixed anything.

Perhaps most important is the $1 billion in savings the mayor says he and the UFT will seek in health care. We have few specifics, though the mayor mentioned sensible possibilities such as auditing benefits to remove those not entitled. If the mayor makes good on the promised savings, it would be a huge step forward.

Yeah, they love the merit pay and the charterizing of 10% of the city's schools without actually making them into charters (i.e., they won't be under the UFT contract rules, but teachers there WILL pay UFT dues.)

That's how you know this is a bad deal for teachers - the Posties like it and see it as a blueprint for eventually de-contractualizing all of the city schools down the road.

Will UFT Members Approve This Teachers Contract With So Much Delayed Compensation?

James Eterno at ICEUFT has all the details of the tentative UFT contract and you should go over to ICEUFT blog and get the scoop.

Yesterday I focused on two parts of the tentative agreement I find very troubling - the termination proceedings ATR's will face if they don't find permanent placement after two "trials" in schools and allowing the city to run 10% of NYCDOE schools outside of the contractual rules of the UFT contract.

Today I want to look at the money.

The news media is reporting that teachers are getting an 18% raise, including the 8% that was owed from the 2009/2010 pattern + full retroactive pay for the years since, but the reality is much more complicated than that.

Here's how James Eterno at ICEUFT blog describes the compensation schedule:

For the seven years from 2011 to 2018, where the UFT will set the pattern for raises that other city unions will now follow, we will be getting a total of 10% in raises for seven years plus a $1,000 signing bonus.  That works out to less than 1.5% per year.

Specifically, this is how the CFO crunched the numbers:

2009-2010 = 4% raise
2010-2011 = 4% raise
2011-2012 = 0% raise but we will get a $1,000 signing bonus if we ratify the contract.
Nov 2012- April 2013 = 0% raise
May 1, 2013 = 1% raise
May 1, 2014 = 1% raise
May 1, 2015 = 1% raise
May 1, 2016 = 1% raise
May 1, 2017 = 2.5% raise
May 1, 2018 = 3.0% raise
Total: 18% (compounded it will be a little more)

But there's a catch on when the 4% + 4% from the 2009/2010 pattern gets paid out - it doesn't get added to salary schedules now but gets gradually added in from 2015 on:

May 1, 2015 = 2%
May 1, 2016 = 2%
May 1, 2017 = 2%
May 1, 2018 = 2%

The news media is reporting that teachers are getting full retro for the 2009/2010 pattern, but that's a much more complicated story too.  Here's how that gets paid out:

October 1, 2015- 12.5% lump sum
October 1, 2016 - Nothing
October 1, 2017 - 12.5% lump sum
October 1, 2018 - 25% lump sum
October 1, 2019 - 25% lump sum
October 1, 2020 - 25% lump sum

My wife was over on the UFT Facebook page when the tentative contract agreement was first announced and noticed that a lot of comments were positive on the deal.

But as the night wore on and news started to spread that the 8% from the 2009/2010 pattern was going to be delayed for years and we were really only getting a 2% raise in the near future, some of the comments started turning negative.

People weren't too happy to hear that the 2009/2010 raises weren't going to be fully paid until 2018.

I think that's what's going to happen in general as people get the news of this contract.

At first, when they hear 18% raise and full retro, they're going to say "That sounds great!", but then as the understanding spreads that much of this compensation won't be in their pockets for years, there is going to be dismay and a little anger at the UFT leadership.

I've been around for three contract votes - 2002, 2005, 2007.

Not a one of those votes has ever been close and while I know from my older colleagues of a contract that was voted down during the Giuliani Years, I have a hard time seeing this one getting voted down.

In the end, I think this contract will be passed by the UFT membership, but I don't think there are going to be too many happy campers out there today as they learn that most of the money the media is reporting they're getting isn't actually going to arrive in their checks for years and the retro is so delayed that this 9 year contract will actually be expired by two years before its finally (and fully) paid out.

There is a reason the other union leaders are so pissed at the UFT leadership over this contract agreement.

Given the concessions the UFT agreed to - essentially throwing the ATR's under the bus, de-linking 10% of city schools from the contract, merit pay, unstated health care concessions - and given the piss-poor salary increases the leadership got, about 1.4% a year for 7 years (after the 8% from the old pattern), the UFT membership ought to be pissed at the UFT leadership too.

This is a terrible contract that was negotiated and while the UFT shills will tell you it scrapes the skies because they got you full retro, the reality is, they gave up a whole lot to get money that you're not going to see for years.

Hey Governor Cuomo, Where's The Merit Pay Money Coming From?

The Jamestown Post-Journal wants to know:

Danielle O'Connor, superintendent of Frewsburg Central School, said the logic of promising bonus pay to teachers while her district is still struggling with a $1.2 million gap elimination adjustment is less than sound.

"We would certainly be able to strengthen our district and our performance if we had that $1.2 million, as opposed to giving it to individual teachers," she said. "So, while it's nice to reward teachers for hard work, I would like to know where the money is coming from."

Several times throughout his address, Cuomo reinforced his belief in linking a school's state aid to its academic performance. Chris Reilly - president of the Jamestown Teachers Association - couldn't disagree more, saying the incentives are bad in both theory and practice for those actually involved in education.

"It's only good in theory to those who haven't been responsible for children in a classroom," Reilly said. "There is no research to support that merit pay systems promote better teaching, or that they adequately identify good teachers. Teachers can't be measured in the same ways the private sector is, just as the private sector shouldn't be measured the same way teachers are measured. There are way too many variables in today's society that impact student growth and student success. We aren't selling hamburgers or refrigerators; our bottom line cannot be measured by test scores."

A common concern from superintendents is the lack of an equitable distribution of state aid to small, rural schools in the face of an increasing number of state mandates.

"It's tough to envision something like (the APPR teacher incentives) when the governor is still looking at giving schools the same aid they received in 2008-09," said Stephen Penhollow, Falconer Central School superintendent. "I don't know whether this is fair or unfair to teachers, but I do know that, as it stands, districts can't afford to pay for these programs without funding.

Underfunding school districts while adding lots more state mandates that cost, you know, money - doesn't that sound like a recipe for failure?

How about taking more education money and using it for merit pay based upon the mess of a teacher evaluation system Governor Cuomo shoved onto the state a few years ago?

Sounds like another recipe for failure.

Is Governor Cuomo deliberately trying to wreck the public school system in NY State?

Judging from some of his policies, it sure seems that way.

NYSED Commissioner King: Merit Pay A Great Idea

From TWC.news:

Another proposal from the governor, rewarding excellent teachers, those who rated highly effective on a valuations would be eligible to receive $20,000 as a bonus.

Dr. John King said, "We certainly support rewarding highly effective teaching. We know there's an opportunity to identify teaching practices and allow them to be mentors for their colleagues." 

As Leonie Haimson pointed out yesterday, they plan on using the APPR teacher evaluation system that few trust to identify these so-called "highly effective" teachers and reward them with $20,000.

The evaluation systems around the state have been a mess so far, but rather than acknowledge the mess, Cuomo and King make as if these systems are "objective" arbiters of "teacher effectiveness" and call for tying not only teaching jobs to the measures but also teacher pay.

Students, parents and teachers have been up-in-arms around the state over the SED testing, the inBloom data project, the CCSS and the APPR evaluation system that mandates so many tests.

King attended forums where he heard much criticism of the state ed agenda, but has said there will be little change to the reforms.

Cuomo basically said the same thing in his State of the State speech yesterday.

Cuomo Calls For Merit Pay For Teachers

Apparently Andrew Cuomo hasn't heard that students, parents, teachers and administrators all over New York State are up in arms over his teacher evaluation system that mandates so many extra tests so that teachers and administrators can be rated for the year, because he's doubling down on that issue with a proposal to reward so-called "highly effective" teachers based upon his APPR teacher evaluation system with bonuses.

Few details about the program have been announced, but regardless of how Cuomo and Company put this program together, it comes down to this:

But did he say that? Cuomo said $20K to all highly effective teachers; huge cost based on eval system few trust @GDeckernews @joshgreenman
— leonie haimson (@leoniehaimson) January 8, 2014

Merit pay based on a mess of an evaluation system that is under attack from all corners for being completely convoluted, unworkable and Kafkaesque.

Good luck getting that proposal up and running, Governor.

NEA President Says Get Rid Of Step And Lane Increases For Teachers

Time to get rid of Dennis Van Roekel:

Dennis Van Roekel, president of the National Education Association, or NEA, came out strongly against single-salary teacher-compensation systems at an Education Writers Association, or EWA, event held earlier this month in Chicago. “Let’s get rid of step and lane,” he declared. “I don’t like it.” Van Roekel’s comments about trading in one-size-fits-all salary schedules, long used by school districts in setting the pay of teachers, in favor of salaries based, at least in part, on teaching effectiveness reinforces the NEA’s reputation as a forward-thinking teachers union.

Step-and-lane pay scales, which tie teachers’ salary increases to years of experience and to the number of higher-education credits earned and degrees attained, have long been a hot topic of debate in education-reform circles. The step-and-lane pay scale was created to address inequities for teachers who were traditionally provided little in the way of salary, security, or fairness, by standardizing teacher pay.

As the teaching profession has evolved, however, the stagnant nature of step-and-lane pay scales must be reconsidered, as Van Roekel voiced.

Yeah, let's base teacher salaries on junk science like the APPR teacher evaluation system in NY State.

That's a swell idea.

They get rid of step and lane i ncreases and no teacher will ever get a raise anymore.

That the NEA president is calling for this shows you how out of touch the union leadership is.

UFT Leadership Readies Membership For End Of Steps/Differentials/Raises

I have long said that the sell-outs at the UFT will agree to the end of salary steps, raises and differentials in the next contract and a move to merit pay and bonuses.

Since the parent AFT leadership is oh so happy to push this kind of contract in places like Baltimore and Newark, you can be sure that they would be happy to push the same kind of contract in New York City.

And now, as NYC Educator points out here, Unity functionary Peter Goodman has put out the first trial balloon today in this post, getting us all ready for the inevitable sell-out that the leadership is going to give us via the PERB "fact-finding":

The UFT is open to merit pay based upon test scores and VAM and the end of steps, differentials and raises.

More than ever, we need MORE.

We have been without a contract for years, we have been asked to do a lot more with fewer resources, we have a whole new evaluation system coming that will require a lot more work and a loss of tenure protection to boot.

And now the leadership is getting us ready for the final nail in the coffin - no raises, no salary steps, no differentials.

Just bonuses and merit pay based on junk science and test scores.

Never mind that Bloomberg has wasted billions on boondoggles like the 911 system mess or CityTime or the other consultant scandals.

Never mind how much they've spent on technology upgrades these last 12 years.

Never mind that every other union in the city got 8% raises as part of the pattern, but teachers did not.

Oh, no - there's no money for teachers and the days of raises and steps and differentials are over.

What Unity functionary Goodman and the UFT leadership do not understand is that there is a lot of anger out there from their Common Cored, PLC'd, Danielson'd, ATR'd workforce and they are not going to like when they hear Mikey Mulgrew tell them that there just cannot be any more salary steps or differentials or raises because the city is broke and the UFT is just doing the best they can in a very difficult environment.

Frankly if you're looking for real change in the UFT, having Mulgrew and Company accept merit pay and the end to steps/differentials/raises would probably be the final act that just might make that possible.

Because people are already fed up with all the reformy stuff being shoved down their throats, but when they hear what the UFT leadership is looking to sell them, they are going to explode.

Can't wait to go into work tomorrow and begin to tell people how Mikey Mulgrew's UFT leadership is trying to get us ready for these big changes.

No more steps, differentials or raises.

Merit pay based upon junk science.

Yay, UFT,

Bill Gates Turns His Talents To Toilets

You heard that right - Bill Gates is now interested in developing a new solar-powered toilet that will disinfect and decompose toilet waste and turn it into "biochar" -- biological charcoal -- that can then be used as fertilizer to grow food.

Huffington Post reports that Gates is very passionate about his "Reinvent the Toilet Challenge," so much so that he even tweeted about it a couple of days ago:

4 out of 10 people don’t have a safe way to poop - that’s 2.6 billion!

Given all the bullshit that comes out of the Gates Foundation - like the grants for merit pay they're always handing out (even though merit pay has never, ever worked), or the grants for the galvanic skin response bracelets to measure teacher effectiveness through "student excitement," or the grants for cloud whitening tests to lessen the effects of global warming that have been termed "dangerous" by many scientists including those at the Royal Society, or the grants to promote GMO in sub-Saharan Africa that will force African farmers to have to purchase Monsanto GM seeds, the Gates Foundation people ought to be flushing their own work down these Gates Foundation-funded solar toilets as soon as they get them.

That alone would make the world safer, if not for pooping, then at least for teaching, learning, breathing, eating and living.

Then they can take some of the stupid shit Gates says in interviews and flush that too.

Finally they can take the crap Microsoft makes and send that into the dumper as well.

Really, after we get through flushing all the shit Bill and Melinda Gates and their bullshit-laden employees at both the Gates Foundation and Microsoft do all day long, we're not going to have much of an opportunity to dispose of anybody else's waste.

The Gates people create too much of it on their own.

Frankly nothing would make the world a better, safer, cleaner place than for Gates to create this new solar-powered, high tech toilet and flush himself and his money down it.

NYCDOE Merit Pay Experiment Didn't Work At All

A Vanderbilt study found that merit pay for teachers doesn't raise achievement for students.

Now a study of a "transcendent" NYC merit pay scheme finds it too was a failure.

In fact, schools that took part in the merit pay experiment actually declined in performance.

Elizabeth Green at Gotham Schools reports:

New York City’s heralded $75 million experiment in teacher incentive pay — deemed “transcendent” when it was announced in 2007 — did not increase student achievement at all, a new study by the Harvard economist Roland Fryer concludes.

“If anything,” Fryer writes of schools that participated in the program, “student achievement declined.” Fryer and his team used state math and English test scores as the main indicator of academic achievement.

The program, which was first funded by private foundations and then by taxpayer dollars, also had no impact on teacher behaviors that researchers measured. These included whether teachers stayed at their schools or in the city school district and how teachers described their job satisfaction and school quality in a survey.

The program had only a “negligible” effect on a list of other measures that includes student attendance, behavioral problems, Regents exam scores, and high school graduation rates, the study found.

The experiment targeted 200 high-need schools and 20,000 teachers between the 2007-2008 and 2009-2010 school years. The Bloomberg administration quietly discontinued it last year, turning back on the mayor’s early vow to expand the program quickly.

...

The deal was seen as a landmark in 2007 when Mayor Bloomberg announced it with then-United Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten by his side. “I am a capitalist, and I am in favor of incentives for individual people,” Bloomberg said then, while Weingarten emphasized that schools could decide to distribute bonuses evenly among educators. She called the program “transcendent.”

...

Researchers were also surprised to find that middle school students actually seemed to be worse off. After three years attending schools involved in the project, middle school students’ math and English test scores declined by a statistically significant amount compared to students attending similar schools that were not part of the project.

The study adds to a research literature on teacher incentive pay that is decidedly more lukewarm than much of the popular conversation about teacher pay. Fryer, himself a strong early advocate of experimenting with financial incentives to improve student achievement, calls the literature “ambivalent.” While programs in developing countries such as India and Kenya have had positive effects, few teacher incentive pay efforts in the United States have been deemed effective.

Hey - merit pay schemes don't work in education.

They just don't.

But they fit the prevailing ideology of so many of the "Best and Brightest" we have running both parties and all the education think tanks.

Market-based reforms are the kind of policies that excite these folks.

After all, they are capitalists, as Mayor Moneybags so smugly noted back in 2007.

So what if the shit they push is harmful.

It's capitalism!

Yippeeeee!!!!!

Money!!!!!

Bonuses!!!!

Yayyy!!!!!

Cuomo: My LIFO Proposal Covers Evaluations, LIFO, Tenure and Pay Increases

Buried in this Daily News story about the fight between Bloomberg and Cuomo over LIFO is this gem:

Bloomberg wants an all-out repeal of the first in, last out law that requires layoffs be based on seniority.

His forces said the governor's plan to create a new statewide evaluation system of teachers doesn't address the issue, meaning seniority would remain the only criteria used for layoffs.

Over the past few days, Bloomberg aides called the Cuomo proposal a "scam" and a gift to the teachers union.

Cuomo aides shot back, comparing the Bloomberg-backed bill with Wisconsin-style efforts to evade collective bargaining with teachers.

The governor said his bill would not only pertain to teacher evaluations, but also layoffs, promotions, raises and bonuses.

There are some Cuomo apologists out there on the union side saying that Cuomo has saved seniority protections with his proposal.

That's garbage.

It is quite clear that Cuomo is pushing to use the new "objective" evaluation system for not only evaluations and layoffs, but also for tenure, merit pay, and new "super-teacher positions."

He also wants to see this system replace lockstep pay with a kind of base pay plus bonus system.

And of course test scores and the undying love of your assistant principal and principal will be the objective criteria used to figure out how much to pay you.

This is a horrendous idea, it is going to be rife with all sorts of cronyism and abuse, and will hurt schools and the teaching profession even more than the reform movement already has.

This all started with the Race to the Top program that Obama pushed, and the state supposedly won $700 million for changing how teacher evaluations are done by using the new "objective" criteria.

So Obama deserves blame too.

But believe me, the Cuomo system sucks just as much as anything Bloomberg is pushing.

Vanderbilt Merit Pay Study Goes Mainstream

Yes, Ed Week had the story, but it's good to see it show up in something mainstream like the Mclatchy papers:

NASHVILLE, Tenn. — Offering middle-school math teachers bonuses of up to $15,000 didn't produce gains in student test scores, Vanderbilt University researchers reported Tuesday, in what they said was the first scientifically rigorous test of merit pay for teachers.

The results could amount to a cautionary flag about paying teachers for the performance of their students, a strategy that the Obama administration and many states and school districts have favored despite lukewarm support or outright opposition from teachers' unions.

...

The report's authors, from the National Center on Performance Incentives at Vanderbilt University's Peabody College of Education, stress that more research is needed to determine whether different approaches that link teacher performance to pay or additional training could help boost student achievement.

Matthew G. Springer, the director of the federally funded center, said pay-for-performance wasn't "the magic bullet that so often the policy world is looking for."

At least in this experiment, Springer said, "it doesn't work."

The test was conducted from 2006 to 2009 in partnership with the nonprofit RAND Corp., a research center. A local industrialist and Vanderbilt benefactor, Orrin Ingram, put up the nearly $1.3 million in bonuses.

Some 296 middle-school math teachers in the Nashville school district — two-thirds of the total of middle-school math teachers — volunteered to participate in the experiment. About half were placed randomly in a control group, while the rest were eligible for bonuses of $5,000, $10,000 or $15,000 if their pupils scored significantly higher than expected on the statewide exam known as the Tennessee Comprehensive Assessment Program.

One-third of the eligible teachers — 51 of 152 — got bonuses at least once. Eighteen teachers received bonuses all three years.

Except for some temporary gains for fifth-graders, though, their students progressed no faster than those in classes taught by the other 144 teachers.

The teachers' union in Nashville agreed to the experiment in collective bargaining, according to Erick Huth, the president of the Metropolitan Nashville Education Association. He said the results weren't at all surprising.

"I've believed for a long time that what improves instruction is having an instructional leader who is able to get all players in a school to collaborate," Huth said.

Great - now tell that to President Accountability and his band of Broad Foundation-trained merry men and women at the DOE who are still pushing this stuff like it is a "magic bullet."

What Motivates Us?

In education these days, all the MBA's running policy think it is money (in the form of merit pay) and fear (in the form of school closure, teacher firings, etc.)

Turns out they are wrong.

And science proves it.

Science funded by the Federal Reserve, btw:



Wow - who knew?

Treating employees like intelligent human beings works better than treating them like horses to be rewarded with carrots or punished with sticks.

H/T Barry at The Big Picture