Don’t scapegoat teachers

By Paul Choiniere

Publication: The Day

Published 01/29/2012 12:00 AM

If there is one thing that gets Mary Loftus Levine steamed it’s the perception that most of the problems with the Connecticut education system, and with American public education generally, can be attributed to bad teachers.

“Teachers are facing demonization,” Levine told me when we recently sat down. “It’s not fair, it’s not accurate and it’s not going to fix the real problems.”

Levine is a lifelong teacher herself and currently the executive director of the Connecticut Education Association, the largest teachers’ union in the state with about 43,000 members.

Before dismissing Levine’s comments as the actions of a union boss out to protect the membership, consider the recent proposal put forth by the CEA. It would streamline the process for dismissing ineffective teachers. The proposals the union offers would shorten by a third the dismissal process, from 120 days to about 85. It calls for one arbitrator instead of the current costly and cumbersome three.

But the union also wants to assure school systems have clear and consistent evaluation policies, which take into account multiple indicators of academic growth, not just test scores. They want plans in place to help underperforming teachers improve. And they want to assure teachers have adequate protection from retaliation because of personal or political reasons.

Has tenure and complicated dismissal procedures protected poor performing teachers? Absolutely. Do the proposals put forth by CEA go far enough in making sure bad teachers can be rooted out? Maybe not, but they certainly appear to be a good-faith effort to start a discussion about fair and effective methods for assuring teacher accountability.

I’d have to agree with Levine that it is a mistake to scapegoat teachers as the cause of what ails our education system, particularly in Connecticut, where the gap in educational achievement between urban students and their suburban counterparts is so massive.

Simply blaming teachers lets parents who do not make education a priority in the home off easy. It masks the reality that children growing up in wealthier suburban towns begin their educational journey in kindergarten so much better prepared than kids in the cities and in some poor, rural communities. Saying it’s the teachers fault ignores the lack of discipline and respect from students that those teachers often have to deal with; values that can only be successfully engrained if reinforced in the home.

The challenges facing our public education system are myriad, the difficulty of rooting out poor teachers among them. But it’s hardly the biggest problem, not even close.

“It was a compromise by consensus, which was reached after many months of long, tough conversations,” said Mary Loftus Levine, CEA executive director. “What the positive consensus shows is that all education stakeholders want the same results. And we and other members of PEAC are pleased to have developed a structure for a fair, reliable, and valid evaluation system with accountability for all. Student achievement is the overarching goal.”

CEA’s voice on the council has resulted in a framework which is consistent with the goal of elevating the teaching profession by holding everyone accountable, while producing a new evaluation system that is fair, valid, reliable, and useful. The area of greatest teacher concern and focus in PEAC’s work has been how to define, implement, and include “multiple indicators of student academic growth and development.”

In short, with today’s favorable consensus, PEAC is recommending a three-tiered system with no single test score or indicator being used to assess student learning. It has achieved this goal with fair and balanced weighted percentages as follows:

1. Multiple indicators of student learning will count as 45% of the evaluation. Half of that 45% weight will come from a standardized test, which would be either the CMT, CAPT, or another valid, reliable test that measures student learning.
2. Teacher performance and professional practice will be weighted at 40%.
3. Other peer, student, and parent feedback will be weighted at 5% with professional activities counting for 10%.

The basic framework for new evaluation guidelines reached by consensus today will be the basis for guidelines that will advise local school districts as they go back and design local plans working with their local teachers unions. For districts that determine they don’t have the capacity to design their own local plans, the State Department of Education (SDE) will provide a model, detailed template. For districts that already have exceptional models, a waiver will be available from the SDE.

The next PEAC meeting is February 6, 2012, and much still needs to be accomplished to finalize the work done to date before it is presented to the State Board of Education on February 10.

PEAC is also working on administrator guidelines. CEA will share details as they are determined.

Veteran Guilford teacher Pete Cuticelli (left) proved himself to be a strong mentor in teacher advocacy when he encouraged his colleague third-year teacher Burt Vitale to join him at a reforum.

CEA members are packing hotel conference rooms across the state as they participate in reforums that give them opportunities to learn, talk, and plan for their legislative advocacy roles in the “Year of Education.” There are four more reforums scheduled for this week and next, so if you haven’t attended one yet, sign up now.

Veteran Guilford teacher Pete Cuticelli, a building representative, encouraged his colleague, Burt Vitale, a third-year teacher, to join him at the Middletown Reforum yesterday.  Vitale said, “It’s important that young people get involved with the issues if they want to stay in the teaching profession.”

East Haddam teacher Susan DeBisschop (right) and Old Saybrook teacher Margaret Samela review the reforms outlined in the CEA plan, "A View from the Classroom: Proven Ideas for Student Achievement", as they shared ideas at the reforum held in Middletown.

Cuticelli said he’s impressed that CEA’s been “proactive” with its reform agenda.  Susan DeBisschop, an East Haddam teacher, said her intent is to carry a “positive message forward.”

In total, CEA is hosting eleven reforums for teachers to hear an overview from CEA staff on statewide issues, participate in discussions, and carve out strategies for keeping their views percolating on the legislative front burner.

“Sure, I will continue to to email, call, and reach out to my legislators,” said Margaret Samela, an Old Saybrook teacher.  “I don’t think teachers get the respect they deserve.  CEA’s book, A View from the Classroom: Proven Ideas for Student Achievement, is a positive step.  It’s a way for us to come together as a collaborative voice and share our concerns about where our profession should be headed.”

Two Bridgeport teachers saw the reforum as such a vital opportunity that they are considering attending two of the gatherings.  Daniel Kwet and Jason Poppa say they have many concerns.  Just one was succinctly expressed by Kwet this way, “It’s just drill and kill at Harding High School where I teach.  The curriculum has been so narrowed.”

The task force members voted unanimously on six recommendations, which provide a core vision for improving education funding.

The recommendations include supporting efforts to increase funding, establish clear year-to-year funding predictability, and collecting and using the most recent and appropriate data to measure wealth, poverty, foundation, population and other formula factors.

The report identifies six main areas:

1)      ECS grants

2)      Magnet schools

3)      Choice

4)      Early childhood education

5)      Accountability and performance

6)      Special education needs

“I know that everyone has decided that what is required is more money, and I don’t know that I agree that it’s a whole lot more money, I think it’s money better spent,” said Sen. Toni Harp, co-chair of the Appropriations Committee and task force member.

Sen. Andrea Stillman, chair of the education committee and co-chair of the task force, thanked the task force members for all their hard work and input into the process. But she said, “We still have some work ahead of us in the next few months.”

The group has established a list of next steps and will meet again next month to continue their work before issuing their final report in October.

Task force meetings are scheduled for Feb. 2, Feb. 16, March 8 and April 2.

As soon as the interim report is available, we will provide a link.

The importance of fixing the Connecticut General Statutes came to CEA’s attention recently because of a very unfortunate incident.

An active teacher died unexpectedly. Because he was eligible for retirement at the time of his death, his wife expected to qualify for pre-retirement Plan D, which would pay her his accrued monthly pension (with a slight reduction) for the rest of her life.  Sadly, she learned from the Retirement Board that he had not named her as his beneficiary; he had named his father (who had since passed away).

Years ago when the teacher married he never changed his beneficiary designation to add his wife. As a result, she cannot receive Plan D since the law specifically requires the surviving spouse to be named as the sole primary beneficiary. Instead, she will get monthly survivor benefits which are significantly less than the pre-retirement Plan D benefit.

CEA worked with the Retirement Board to draft a legislative proposal to change the law so that a surviving spouse of an eligible teacher who dies would automatically be offered pre-retirement Plan D, even if the spouse was not the sole named beneficiary.  If a teacher for some reason does not wish to offer the benefit to his/her spouse, the teacher would need to proactively waive the spouse’s right. This puts the onus on the teacher to reject pre-retirement Plan D rather than to remember to name a spouse as the sole primary beneficiary.

At a recent meeting, the CEA Board of Directors unanimously moved to add this proposed change to Connecticut General Statutes Section 10-183h to CEA’s 2012 Legislative Agenda. The language the board formally moved to support is as follows:

Surviving spouse’s benefit. On and after January 1, 2009, unless a member had filed a waiver of the co-participant option while actively teaching, the surviving spouse of a member who, at the time of death was eligible for a retirement benefit other than a disability benefit, may elect to receive a monthly benefit for life equal to the benefit payable if a one hundred per cent co participant’s option had been elected or an amount equal to the member’s accumulated contributions with credited interest.

“To make some of the progress we need to make in early childhood and teacher improvement, some additional monies are going to have to be expended. So, I believe that districts, and/or the state, are going to have to spend more money,” the governor told reporters at a day-long education workshop at Central Connecticut State University in New Britain on Jan. 5.

More than 350 people attended the workshop to hear education reform ideas that can help shape legislation for the upcoming legislative session.

Malloy told the crowd that Connecticut has lost its number one ranking in K-12, college education, and degrees granted. He added, “We’ve seen enough failure.”

State Education Commissioner Stefan Pryor kicked off the workshop by telling attendees that Connecticut must focus on student achievement and performance because the state is lagging behind.

“Connecticut is used to being at the top, and we can get there again. We have an opportunity to make real progress in the first quarter of the year,” he said, referring to the start of the legislative session and the governor’s call to legislators to focus on education reform in Connecticut.

Pryor emphasized the need for change. He referred to a new, not yet released, State Department of Education (SDE) survey of the state’s public school superintendents. The majority of superintendents said the SDE is not helping to close the state’s achievement gap.

In order to do that, Malloy said we need to measure what success is in the classroom. The governor, who reports to have never performed well on standardized tests himself, said, “Standardized tests should not be the sole measurement of teachers’ success, student success and school success.”

Panelists participating in a workshop on teacher quality agreed that teachers must be evaluated on multiple measures-a proposal strongly supported by CEA and unveiled in the Association’s reform plan called A View from the Classroom: Proven Ideas for Student Achievement, released at a news conference on Jan. 3.

Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) and a panel member said, “One of AFT’s most famous members, Albert Einstein, said it best, ‘Not everything that counts can be counted.’”

Richard Laine, former director of education at the Wallace Foundation, and panelist on excellent teachers and school leaders, said it’s not just about having the best educators you must also have great principals.

“You can’t turn around a low performing school unless you have quality teachers and effective leadership,” he said.

According to Laine, most principals believe their top priority is to provide a safe learning environment. He says that’s important but the top priority for principals is to create the best learning environment possible and to support instructional teaching and development.

In fact, he said the number one reason teachers move into low performing schools is not for more money, but to work in an environment with successful school leadership.

Teacher preparedness

More than half of the state’s school superintendents say programs in place now don’t adequately prepare new teachers. And only 7.5 percent believe the SDE has a clear plan to develop, attract and retain the best teachers in Connecticut. CEA’s reform plan calls for reforming how teachers are recruited, prepared, and retained. Nearly two-thirds (62 percent) of current students studying to enter the teaching profession say they are not prepared for the classroom.

“It’s not their fault. We didn’t prepare them properly,” said Kanter.

Nearly 1.6 million teachers are expected to retire over the next decade, and Kanter says, “Connecticut has the stakeholders in place now that can drive education reform forward and build alignment between K-12 and college.”

Arthur Levine, president of the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation, spoke about how the world has changed demographically, technically, and globally, and said Connecticut institutions must also change and move into the 21st century.

“All social institutions were built for another time,” said Levine, “And we are the generation that must make the changes and move teaching and learning forward.”

Robert Villanova, director of the executive leadership program at UConn’s Neag School of Education, said clinical experience in the community is an important element for teachers, but we need to these experiences better and richer.

“We need to find ways to support internships that are not available now.” But he added, “Those internships must have specific expectations and requirements to provide new teachers with the experiences they need to meet the needs of students in today’s classrooms.”

The CEA Student Program is working to do just that: provide unique opportunities in professional development, community outreach, leadership, and networking to future teachers all over the state. These opportunities are meant to support and supplement a future teacher’s preparation and entry into the teaching profession.

“Teachers need to prepare for the populations they are going to teach and intercultural competence is critical,” said Levine, who urged all colleges to add Charlotte Danielson’s books on teacher evaluation and professional development to their curriculum.

Malloy said 90 percent of Connecticut students are educated in public schools and we need to do a better job preparing teachers and working with them through their careers.

On January 3, CEA released an education plan that includes reforming the teacher evaluation process and replacing tenure with a streamlined dismissal process for underperforming teachers.

At a news conference at the Legislative Office Building in Hartford, CEA shared A View from the Classroom: Proven Ideas for Student Achievement — a comprehensive education reform plan developed by teachers.

“There’s no greater asset to improving our public schools than teachers. Teachers are in the classroom every day; they know what is needed to prepare students for the economic challenges ahead. We are proposing specific ideas that can make a real difference to improve education for Connecticut students,” said CEA President Phil Apruzzese.

CEA Executive Director Mary Loftus Levine said, “We cannot build a strong local economy in Connecticut unless we have high quality education, and we cannot have high-quality schools without adequate funding, small class sizes, and involvement of parents and communities to transform local schools that need help.”

She continued, “Teachers will do their part — we propose creating an evaluation system for teachers that uses multiple indicators of quality teaching, and we propose developing a streamlined dismissal process to remove underperforming teachers.” The plan also includes far-reaching proposals such as creating partnerships among communities, parents, teachers, and students to transform chronically low-performing schools with methods tailored to each school; requiring schools to provide health and social service supports to disadvantaged youngsters.

Apruzzese said, “Teachers lead classrooms, and our voice is necessary to ensure meaningful education reform. We want to create the conditions to make teaching a respected, supported profession. We look forward to engaging in a positive, collaborative dialogue with lawmakers, parents and everyone who’s interested in improving the quality of our public schools and preparing our students for tomorrow’s challenges.”

The CEA news conference was held two days in advance of Governor Malloy’s statewide forum on education reform at Central Connecticut State University that included education leaders from around the nation and state.

• The following is the link to the report: cea.org/viewfromclassroom
• Watch video from the news conference
• Media reports about the news conference can be viewed here

CEA’s executive director issued the following statement.

Statement from CEA Executive Director Mary Loftus Levine

We commend the governor for his leadership on advancing high-quality public schools.  In their collaborative outreach to CEA in recent months, both Governor Malloy and Commissioner Pryor have indicated they recognize that high-quality teachers are the greatest asset in public education.

Teachers want to use their experience in the classroom to help the governor enact changes that will improve education for the students of our state, so we look forward to working with the governor and the commissioner on these issues.

We could not agree more with the governor that our state’s economic future is dependent on our students’ educational outcomes.  As CEA has repeatedly indicated: We live in a knowledge-based global economy, and generations of citizens—young and old—depend on our students being able to compete in a global economy.

Michael Griffith from the Education Commission of the States presented to the ECS Task Force yesterday.

Connecticut is below the New England average in public education spending per pupil, and it also spends less than New York and New Jersey.

That’s what the Education Cost Sharing Task Force heard yesterday from Michael Griffith, senior finance analyst with the Education Commission of the States, a nonpartisan education policy group that provides funding information to policymakers in 49 states.

Griffith told the panel that funding formulas need to be updated, reviewed, and readjusted based on increased costs and economic changes.

“Never put funding formulas in place thinking they will be forever,” said Griffith.

He gave the analogy of a garden. You plant it, but you must continue to care for it, and weed it constantly in order for it to be successful.

Griffith cautioned about potential problems that come with sending local tax dollars out of the community and away from neighborhood public schools.

“There is a lot of local pushback when communities find out that their money is going outside of the district,” he said.

The task force is working on prioritizing a list of nearly 50 recommendations in order to present an interim report to Governor Malloy in January.

The group is scheduled to meet again on Jan. 5.

The Commissioner of Education heard about the changes and growth at Bassick High in Bridgeport, a CommPACT school, today.

“I see a spirit of collaboration, achievement and possibilities,” said State Department of Education Commissioner Stefan Pryor during his visit to Bassick High School in Bridgeport today, where he saw innovative school reform in action.

Bassick, is a CommPACT school. The CommPACT model, which stands for Community, Parents, Administrators, Children, and Teachers, is implemented within the local public school system and is having much success.

“I am very pleased with the CAPT score growth,” said Pryor. “It’s the right trend and what’s happened is incredible progress.”

During his two-hour visit, Pryor toured the school, visited classrooms and participated in a round-table discussion, where he heard about the school’s successes from students, parents and teachers.

Jim Shannon, who has worked in the school system for 42 years and is now a climate specialist, says he’s proud to be part of CommPACT.

“The change we’ve seen is systemic,” he said. “While no school is perfect, Bassick has its perfect moments.”

Teachers talked about the impressive academic improvements throughout the school and the increased parental and community involvement.

“All of us have seen growth in our classrooms,” said English teacher Walter Brackett. “I am so glad we got CommPACT at Bassick.  I am so much more enthusiastic and hopeful since we implemented it.”

Parents said they were concerned at first, but are pleased with what’s happening at Bassick.

“Change is good. It’s working and the future looks great,” said Dan Comeau, the father of twins and a newly elected member of the school’s governance council.

Toy Levy is a Bassick senior who helped give the commissioner the tour of the school. She told him that all the bad things people say about Bassick aren’t true. “Bassick is the finest urban high school in Connecticut,” she said.

Pryor said he hopes to return to Bassick for updates on the school’s continuous progress.