Last night in New London, Groton teacher Claire DePeter Powers told the governor she is worried about her salary going up and down "based on my principal’s yay or nay."
Groton teacher Claire DePeter Powers is concerned about her ability to pay her mortgage under the Governor’s Education Bill #24, which ties teacher evaluations to certification and pay scales.
“I don’t want to worry about paying my mortgage or sending my kids to college because my salary is going up and down based on my principal’s yay or nay,” she said.
DePeter Powers was one of a dozen people selected to ask a question at the governor’s education town hall meeting in New London last night. She also told the governor that as a parent of children in the New London school system, she is concerned about their education and diverting funds to charter schools.
“Some charters are successful, but they don’t have to follow the same rules as district public schools—they have mandatory school extension days, they are allowed to select certain students so they don’t take all kids, and then those kids that don’t qualify sit next to my son in overcrowded classrooms with teachers trying to do best they can. Teachers will tell you that if they could pick their own students they would have very, very, successful classrooms and students—why can’t effective practices be implemented and funded in the school around the corner with the great teachers who are already there?” DePeter Powers asked, to an overwhelming round of applause from the audience.
The governor disagreed with her characterization that charter schools don’t accept all students. He also said nothing is stopping success from being implemented in neighborhood schools right now.
East Lyme teacher Rose Ann Hardy asked the governor how standardized test scores would be used to evaluate teachers at last night's meeting.
Dozens of teachers attended last night’s meeting in New London, to discuss everything from evaluation and certification to the need for more funding for neighborhood schools.
Rose Ann Hardy, an East Lyme High School history teacher, asked the governor how teachers will be evaluated when assignments are not equitable. “How will you evaluate a social studies teacher against an art or gym teacher who have no standardized tests? Are we going to spend more money to develop more standardized tests?” Hardy asked to applause from the audience.
The governor said Connecticut needs state standards for evaluations. The Performance Evaluation Advisory Council (PEAC) has a framework in place and is developing new teacher evaluation guidelines for districts to use in developing their evaluation systems. The governor, who had previously described PEAC’s completed work as an evaluation “system” or “guidelines,” said, “I was urged to use framework by your union.”
Malloy also gave Hardy a compliment. “I know you are a great teacher because I have been to your class,” he said.
The governor’s eighth education town hall meeting will be in Waterbury tonight, where teachers are expected to attend and continue sharing their views on the need for education reform done the right way.
Teacher Describes Semi-Terror
Ridgefield Teacher Mark Reinders told Governor Malloy that SB 24 is out of proportion to what students and teachers really need.
Ridgefield teacher Mark Reinders says he’s living “in semi terror” of the implications of the governor’s education bill, SB 24. He attended the governor’s education meeting in Bethel Thursday, expressing concern that SB 24 is out of proportion to what students and teachers really need. “If I hit my toe with a hammer, please don’t cut off my leg to fix it,” he told the governor.
In a relatively long exchange with the governor, he went on to address additional concerns. He told Malloy, “When I see this legislation it makes me think my colleagues and I are being held solely responsible for the achievement gap.”
“There is research showing the achievement gap correlates directly to the income gap,” Reinders added. “How are teachers expected to sufficiently compensate in situations where there is just not enough money?”
“There are interesting things you have said,” Governor Malloy responded. “No one has ever said that teachers can do it alone, but at the same time, no one should say a poor kid can’t overcome.”
Evaluation
The subject of teacher evaluation was also addressed, as it has been at most of the governor’s education reform meetings.
Governor Malloy told the crowd, “With regard to evaluation, all the bill does is implement a system both unions have agreed to.”
Members of the audience shouted, “That’s not true.”
Malloy said, “This bill changes the status quo. What we actually do is that which is represented by two years of work by PEAC. This is what CEA called for on its own website, to take into statute that very evaluation process that PEAC adopted.”
What CEA agreed to as a member of PEAC (The Performance Evaluation Advisory Council) has nothing to do with the governor’s proposal in his Education Bill No. 24 to tie a teacher’s evaluation to his or her certification and license to teach and earn a living.
In developing a general framework for teacher evaluations PEAC members had no discussion and no idea that the framework designed would ever be misused and exploited to link evaluation, certification, salary schedules and tenure, as is proposed in Bill No. 24.
Accountability for all
“I know the bill holds teachers accountable,” Heather Green, a parent, told the governor, “But I’m concerned about administrators and parents being held accountable, too.” The crowd responded with loud applause.
“I have seen parents swear at teachers,” she continued. “There are students who hinder teaching. One of the guidance counselors at my daughter’s school got punched in the face the other day. Can you do something with parents and administrators?”
The governor answered, “yes,” saying that laws are being discussed to protect teachers.
Last year a CEA bill on teacher assault passed the State Senate but died on the House calendar before it could be voted on. CEA has continued to advocate for more protections for teachers, testifying before the Labor and Public Employees Committee in favor of teacher assault legislation last week.
The governor’s education reform tour continues this week on Monday in New London and on Tuesday in Waterbury. More information here.
Jeannette Picard, a reading consultant in Lebanon, asked Governor Malloy to spend more money on early childhood education, which would greatly benefit the students she works with.
The next stop for the governor’s education reform train is Bethel High School tonight. If the past is prologue, then many teachers will attend to urge the governor to get education reform done right in this legislative session.
Jeannette Picard, a reading consultant at Lebanon Middle School, was among the hundreds of people who attended Governor Malloy’s education reform plan town hall style meeting in Windham last night, and one of a handful selected to ask the governor a question.
Picard, who has been teaching for 29 years, works with academically troubled students. She told the governor to put the interests of children first. She said that, while she loves her job and the children, they wouldn’t need her help if they received the services they needed from the beginning, and that 500 new slots for preschool are not enough to solve the problem.
“Rather than punish teachers, let’s look at the real problem and spend the money for early childhood education that our children deserve,” she said.
Malloy responded that he is a big supporter of universal preschool, and told the crowd that his plan is not a punishment for teachers. “What’s more punishment than working with teachers who are incompetent and can’t be removed because it can’t be proven?” Malloy asked.
He read to the audience CEA’s tenure proposal from A View from the Classroom and the plan to shorten the time frame and use one arbitrator instead of three. “Our plan mirrors [the teacher’s plan] in so many ways, including in designing a new evaluation plan… I know what people are telling you but I am not lying to you,” said Malloy.
“I believe you believe in what you are saying,” said Picard, “but as a past union president I did see tenured teachers leave because the administration did their job, and it didn’t take a long time—the teachers were treated with respect and had due process. The system we have in place does work.”
Malloy asked her if the standard for dismissal should be incompetence or ineffectiveness.
“I think you’re playing a rhetorical game with me,” said Picard. “An ineffective teacher is an incompetent teacher.” Picard’s response was greeted with applause and shouts of agreement from the audience.
The governor’s next education reform town hall meeting is tonight, March 15, at Bethel High School, 300 Whittlesey Drive, at 7 p.m.
The governor will announce more dates and locations for his reform tour here.
Improving Education Requires Collaboration
Statement from CEA Executive Director Mary Loftus Levine
Encouraging parental and community participation in schools was a focal point of the teachers’ reform plan released in January. A View from the Classroom: Proven Ideas for Student Achievement offers critical actions that can better engage parents, such as promoting incentives for employers to provide time for parents to participate in school-day activities; developing a challenge grant that would promote even greater collaboration between parents and teachers; and providing training for School Governance Councils to promote cultural awareness and respect, and expand the training to all stakeholders.
Connecticut teachers are proud of their work with parents. CEA has been a champion for CommPACT Schools, a school reform model that empowers parents. And CommPACT parents have been unbridled in their praise of what CommPACT offers students and families.
Collaboration has been a hallmark of reform efforts in Connecticut. In contrast, Michelle Rhee is recognized for divisive politics as evidenced by her short-lived tenure in Washington, D.C. Why should CT citizens want to import outsiders like Rhee, when there are so many solid ideas for education reform right here in our own state? Why did the Florida legislature recently work in a bipartisan effort to reject Rhee’s proposals? These are the kinds of questions everyone who cares about public education should consider as we work to ensure high-quality schools for all students who need to compete in a global economy.
A Valid Alternative to Senate Bill 24
CEA continues to encourage people to read the teachers’ reform plan, A View from the Classroom: Proven Ideas for Student Achievement, developed by a cross-section of teachers with expertise in the classroom. It’s a commonsense, research-based alternative to the governor’s proposed bill, with proven ideas that work.
CEA and its members know that Connecticut needs to reform its statutory dismissal process, including the mistaken notion that tenure means a “job for life.” It is as misunderstood as it is outdated.
It is time to end teacher tenure as we know it, while ensuring jobs are not threatened for petty personal or political reasons that have nothing to do with classroom effectiveness. It is time for Connecticut to reform the dismissal process so that it is speedy, more cost-effective, and fair.
The plan calls for
- Shortening, by a third, the time it takes to carry out the dismissal process by reducing the statutory timeline from 120 days to 85 days and make other changes that could reduce the timeline even further.
- Reducing the hearing cost by requiring one arbitrator versus the current system that allows up to three arbitrators, each billing for multiple daily charges.
- Protecting against unfair firings by providing a speedy hearing in front of a single neutral third party.
Teachers ideas are in sharp contrast to positions being advanced by some other groups. Watch a clip from a news conference yesterday below.
You can find a list of members of the legislature’s education committee here. If your legislator is a member of the education committee, call or send an email and let him/her know what will really work to improve the quality of our public schools.
New London Day: Don’t Scapegoat Teachers
The New London Day ran an editorial yesterday about CEA’s reform plan, A View from the Classroom: Proven Ideas for Student Achievement.
Don’t scapegoat teachers
Publication: The Day
Published 01/29/2012 12:00 AMIf 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.
New Framework for Teacher Evaluations
A council working to develop new educator evaluation guidelines reached favorable consensus today on a basic framework that will meet the needs of Connecticut teachers. CEA has been a strong advocate for teachers as a member of the state Performance Evaluation Advisory Council (PEAC) that has been meeting for over a year.
“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:
- 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.
- Teacher performance and professional practice will be weighted at 40%.
- 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.
Still Time to Sign Up for a Reforum
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.”
ECS Task Force Approves Interim Report
Members of the Education Cost Sharing (ECS) Task Force studying state education funding today voted on an interim report to present to the governor before the start of the legislative session.
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.
CEA Supports Teachers’ Spouses Eligibility for Retirement Benefit
CEA is calling for a legislative remedy to ensure that the surviving spouse of a retirement-eligible teacher who dies would automatically be offered pre-retirement Plan D, even if the spouse was not the sole named beneficiary.
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.
