Tuesday, May 17, 2005

 

The Errors of Citizens to Save California, Part I

(Please note that I am using a new spell check system; I hope there are not too many errors!)

Governor Schwarzenegger's Citizens to Save California has become a formidable force in California politics even though its proposed policies are the result of simplistic and myopic thinking. I will take a look at the good and bad of his organization's ideas in the next few days. Today, the focus is on The Excellence in Teaching Act (TETA).

TETA is based on the premise that teachers are primarily to blame for underachievinig students and poorly performing schools. The initiative, titled "Excellence in Teaching Act," would "solve" the problem of having bad teachers in the classroom by: (1) abolishing the collective bargaining power of teachers; (2) radically changing the tenure process; and (3) installing a vague teacher evaluation process (that is likely to raise more problems than it allegedly would solve).

Under the section "Findings and Declarations," TETA leads with the statement that, "California children deserve the best teachers available." No sane person would argue with that statement. However, sane and informed people should easily see the problems with TETA's proposed amendment to Education Code section 44929.21. First TETA dismisses the idea that experience matters at all when it states "employee seniority shall not be considered in making any employment decision." This idea contradicts the premise underlying the section on tenure in TETA. TETA would mandate that tenure could only be given after five years since that is a more reasonable time period in which to evaluate a teacher. The underlying premise is that teachers show improvement over time, but TETA would only take this into consideration for the purposes of tenure and not for merit increases in salary. This concept also serves as a disincentive to joining the mentally, emotionally, and financially taxing career of teaching. Very few qualified people would be tempted to switch careers and go into teaching (bringing in their outside expertise in critical fields like science and math) with such a system in place.

Second, TETA proposes that employee performance should be assessed as follows,"as to school administrators and teachers, employee performance shall be assessed based upon an appropriate combination, as determined by the governing board of the school district, of individual annual performance evaluations and improvements in pupil academic achievement as measured by state-adopted standardized tests." The governor's new assessment proposal is riddled with problems. It is entirely unclear as to how an appropriate combination can ever be reached since the tasks of teachers varies from department to department. For example, an assessment rubric for a social studies teacher who teaches regular college track students would not be a fair rubric for a special education teacher, a physical education teacher, nor a social studies teacher who teaches Advanced Placement classes. TETA seems to imply that the school board will magically devise the correct rubric. Since teachers and our unions appear to be the problem, then it would be wrong to assume that the school boards would consult us for our input, leaving it to, well, who exactly? TETA does not specify the answer. Additionally, if a school board wanted to, it could make the assessment rubric based on 99% evaluation and 1% test result or the exact opposite!

Unlike some teachers, I am not opposed to state-adopted standardized tests being used for evaluative purposes. As E.D. Hirsch, Jr., wrote in The Schools We Need and Why We Don't Have Them, "(tests) function as achievement incentives for students and teachers, as ways of monitoring students' progress in order to remedy their deficiencies, and as essential helps in the administrative monitoring of classrooms, schools, and districts. Without effective monitoring, neither good teaching nor good educational administration is possible. Finally, and above all, objective tests are needed for academic fairness and social equity." But, the question of how to use the tests as an evaluation needs to be reshaped in light of the fact that TETA proponents fail to include the community and parents in its consideration of what is wrong with education. Although we have students of a variety of backgrounds and cultures in our public school system, we can learn from studies on Latino high school students. In Latino High School Graduation: Defying the Odds, Harriet D. Romo and Toni Falbo found that the parents of high school graduates used seven strategies to keep their children in school long enough to earn a diploma. The key to the seven strategies was parental involvement. Governor Schwarzenegger's TETA ignores the parental component of education entirely. Hence, TETA is fatally flawed, and will not produce the dramatic changes that the governor wants.

But how can we use test scores and make them matter to all the stake-holders (administrators, parents, teachers, students, and the local community)? We should begin a discussion on how state test scores can be incorporated into the accreditation process for each school. Currently, the WASC process seems to look at scores on a selective basis. In fact, the WASC process seems a bit vague overall and in need of an overhaul. The revamping of the WASC process should include test scores among its factors of evaluation. Schools that that do not show improvement may be subject to the loss of accreditation at the end of a certain time period unless they show improvement. An immediate penalty would be to freeze the salaries of administrators and teachers for a time period based on the severity of the test results. Individual students who perform poorly or do not show improvement would not be allowed to participate in after-school activities. State test results should be made available immediately so that they can be used in the calculation of the grades of the students and provide immediate feedback. One of the problems with the current test is that it takes months to get the results. As a result, many students simply do not care about how "well" they do on the tests since their scores do not immediately or visibly impact them. Immediate test results could also help counselors place students in appropriate classes.

The above is an idea in the rough. Although I could ramble on and provide more details, I think my point is clear: student achievement is the product of many factors, and to increase student achievement all the factors must be addressed. TETA is myopic and misguided. If passed, it will ultimately fail. I welcome discussion on this issue.

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