Education Reform?

Parents Forum
1

<p>I'm a resident of Idaho. Recently it has been released that the state Education Superintendent has released his proposed education reform for the state. Teachers, parents, and even some students are in uproar around the area. Some agree, but most are turned off. I'm curious as to parents views across the country. If these policies were to be implemented in your state how would you react? </p>

<p>
[quote]
Public schools chief Tom Luna outlined an aggressive overhaul in education reform as he called Wednesday for more technology in the classroom and a pay-for-performance plan for educators.</p>

<p>Luna detailed his proposal for lawmakers on the House and Senate education committees, and he infuriated the Idaho teachers union by proposing increased class sizes to help pay for the reforms.</p>

<p>The plan, which would eliminate tenure for new teachers and limit their contracts to two years, may be difficult for "adults" in education to digest but the reforms are designed to benefit students, Luna said.</p>

<p>The current system, which has lost roughly $200 million in funding during the past two years amid the economic downturn, is no longer sustainable, Luna said.</p>

<p>"Do we continue to cannibalize the system we currently have or do we change the system?" Luna said.</p>

<p>The multiyear strategy to overhaul Idaho's public education system was introduced with backing from Gov. C.L. "Butch" Otter and touches on everything from laptops in the classroom to teacher contract negotiations.</p>

<p>"Each one of these is going to have to be debated on their own merits," Otter said.</p>

<p>Under the plan, high school students will be armed with laptops and starting next fall, ninth-graders will be required to take two online courses a year.</p>

<p>Idaho would pay teachers based on their performance in the classroom, not their education or seniority. This part of the plan was crafted last year and gives school districts some flexibility in rewarding teachers, allowing measures other than standardized tests.</p>

<p>While the Idaho Education Association has some input on the pay-for-performance plan when it was created, other measures under Luna's overhaul may be harder for them to swallow.</p>

<p>The plan would eliminate tenure for new teachers and instead offer them two-year rolling contracts, after a three-year probationary period. Teachers with seniority would no longer be safe when school districts reduce their work force. And collective bargaining agreements with teachers would expire at the end of each fiscal year, with negotiations limited to salaries and benefits.</p>

<p>"I am very concerned about the fact that we want effective teachers and we want them more actively involved in their profession, but yet we're going take away their ability to discuss at the bargaining table things like parent-teacher conferences, what professional development they need, how students are graded, said Idaho Education Association President Sherri Wood. "All of those things are discussed in negotiations."</p>

<p>Idaho school districts that lose students would no longer hold onto 99 percent of the state funding that came with that student for another year, saving an estimated $5.4 million, under the plan</p>

<p>And increasing the student-per-classroom ratio from 18.2 to 19.8 over the next five years will save about $100 million, according to the proposal. The union rejected Luna's suggestion that technology, including electronic hand-held devices he passed at the hearing, will help ease the burden of increased class sizes.</p>

<p>"I don't quite understand the trade-off," Wood said. "You're going to give a teacher a 'clicker' and yet you're going to load more students into their classroom."</p>

<p>Several lawmakers lauded Luna for his innovation, with Senate Education Committee Chairman John Goedde calling the plan "the most comprehensive package" in education reform he has seen this year. Goedde also cautioned lawmakers would need time to sort through the details.</p>

<p>"It's going to take a while for the committee to digest," Goedde said.</p>

<p>Other highlights of Luna's plan:</p>

<ul>
<li><p>If a high school student meets all their graduation requirements by their junior year, the state will pay for them to earn college credit while completing their senior year.</p></li>
<li><p>Teachers would be able to receive bonuses for taking on hard-to-fill and leadership positions.</p></li>
<li><p>Parents would have input on teacher evaluations, which would also factor in student achievement growth.</p></li>
<li><p>Idaho colleges and universities could be authorized to operate charter schools.</p></li>
<li><p>The state would publish a fiscal report-card for each school district.</p></li>
<li><p>Salary negotiations between districts and teachers would be held in open public meetings and the master agreements they sign would be available online.</p></li>
<li><p>Students will have the flexibility to take online courses without permission from their school district.</p></li>
<li><p>A first-year teacher's starting salary would raise from $29,655 to $30,000.</p></li>
</ul>

<p>Read more: Idaho</a> schools chief details aggressive ed reforms | Idaho | Idaho Statesman

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<p>(If I can throw in a bit of info here, Tom Luna, has never taught. His degree, a BA in "the science of weights and measures" is from Thomas Edison State College.)</p>

<p>What would you think if this was happening where you lived and what would you do in return?</p>

2

<p>Homeschooling is legal in all 50 states.</p>

3

<p>I totally support it. Something has to be done about the public education system in this country and I applaud your state for putting this on the table. My opinion is not very popular with my family though. My mom was a teacher, my grandmother was a teacher, my brother is director of guidance in a high school.</p>

4

<p>It looks pretty sensible to me - especially the elimination of tenure and moving to ‘pay for performance’ as opposed to level of education and seniority, as well as more pay for hard to fill and leadership positions. It sounds more similar to the way private industry treats professionals as opposed to hourly workers.</p>

5

<p>This sounds good to me. </p>

<p>The bargaining table is the place for salary, bonuses, work conditions; it should not be the place for things like class size, teacher-parent conferences, or how students are graded. </p>

<p>Actually judging and rewarding teacher performance would be fabulous too. I think the many fabulous teachers in my past life, and those of my kids, should be earning 5 times as much and the bad ones should have been fired a long time ago.</p>

6

<p>Some of the ideas seem like good ones to me; some don’t. </p>

<p>I’m not fond of the requirement that students must take on-line classes – they work well for some students, and not at all well for others. (There are also real issues concerning delivery of Special Education and English Language Learner services in an on-line or hybrid environment.)</p>

<p>I do like much of what has been proposed for teachers, but I hope that there is an even stronger level of accountability for principals and district administrators, as well as significant opportunity for teachers to get to observe master teachers and to be observed by master teachers.</p>

7

<p>If these policies were to be implemented in your state how would you react?</p>

<p>Applaud the courage. </p>

<p>What would you think if this was happening where you lived and what would you do in return?</p>

<p>I’d say “finally” and hope that it is only the beginning of a series of further improvements such as making the teaching profession a 12 months per year job.</p>

8

<p>FWIW, here are additional details on the plan:</p>

<p>[Education</a> reform plan centers on technology, transparency, and teacher incentives Idaho Reporter](<a href=“http://www.idahoreporter.com/2011/education-reform-plan-centers-on-technology-transparency-and-teacher-incentives/]Education”>http://www.idahoreporter.com/2011/education-reform-plan-centers-on-technology-transparency-and-teacher-incentives/)</p>

<p>What is there not to like about a plan that will be phased in throughout the next three to five years and be centered on technological advancements for classrooms, openness and transparency for school districts, and incentives for teachers to do more and better educate their students.</p>

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9

<p>Hate it. Research shows that “Pay for performance” does not improve performance, and can be very arbitrary depending on factors outside teacher control. (Some teachers earn big bonuses one year, none the next and visa versa.) Pay for performance results from our school district have been studied by an outside university and found to have such limited correlation between money and results that they are practically nonexistent - in spite of this, the federal goverment just awarded our district over 60 million dollars for more PFP money. We aren’t producing widgets. Technology is overrated.</p>

10

<p>They’ve got to they something. I’d be all for it.</p>

11

<p>I’m not entirely sold on technology in the classroom, but overall I’d say Idahoans should grab this by the horns. I especially like that it makes some efforts to address student incentives and options, though more work in this area would be even better.</p>

12

<p>“PFP money. We aren’t producing widgets. Technology is overrated.”</p>

<p>PFP will always be limited because of the difficulty to measure performance. On the other hand, it will not be that hard to establish criteria for hard work and leadership. Schools will still have to offer competitive salaries to attract better teachers. At least the hope exists that the higher salaries won’t keep rewarding tenure and connections, as well as the hope paying fewer and better teachers substantially higher salaries on a hourly basis.</p>

<p>Technology is indeed overrated at this time, and much of it comes from the need to maintain outdated material and combat the resistance of technology illiterates. Investing in technology is much more than replacing screen projectors and older computers, or installing whiteboards. </p>

<p>Just as much as nobody could predict in 1990 what would be available in 2010, it is impossible to measure what could be accomplished by 2030. Heck, did anyone anticipate a world of iPads, iPhones, Facebook, and CMS at the END of the last century? All that is known is that the new generation of teachers and students will see a much larger integration of technology in the education world. We will still need great teachers; it will simply be easier to share them outside the walls of a school.</p>

13

<p>Best part of this plan: parent evaluation of teachers. It would be even better if they used Ron Ferguson’s student evaluation tool, which is highly correlated with student improvement. It is about time that there is accountability to the true customers!</p>

<p>I’m saying this after a parent just told me that she is thinking about pulling her kid out of school because she had Mrs. So-and-So last year and Mrs. such-and-such this year, that she watches movies every other day in history, and that she isn’t learning anything. I’ve been hearing complaints about Mrs. such-and-such for ten years and nothing is done. I’m tired of paying her with my tax dollars, and I am tired of the complaints that kids are not learning in her classroom. I’m tired of hearing about “improvement plans” that take “a hundred meetings a year” and then the teacher is still in the classroom.</p>

<p>Worst part of this plan: a laptop for every student. My daughter teaches in a school that has this. Students figure out how to get around every obstruction to access and go onto social networking sites and the like when they are supposed to be doing work. It is a huge time-waster.</p>

14

<p>^ Agree very much about the points you raised.</p>

15

<p>Is this a result of the federal Race to the Top awards? Some of these changes are occurring in my home state as well, though not anywhere near the scope of Idaho’s changes.</p>

<p>I love the parent participation in evaluations, the changes to tenure, and the transparency, involving public negotiations, sounds great to me.</p>

<p>Tying teacher pay to student performance on standardized testing will have a lot of unforeseen negative ramifications, but apparently Idaho is using other criteria, just as my own state claims it will be doing. I would be curious how that all plays out.</p>

16

<p>levirm, your daughter’s school should invest in some better computer techs. My son attends a school (a science & tech school at that) where every child is given a laptop. Yet even these tech-savvy kids cannot find ways to put anything other than school-sanctioned materials on these computers.</p>

17

<p>

I have mixed feelings. It definitely seems like a waste of money to me, but providing laptops may be a political necessity in order to enact effective online course requirements.</p>

<p>Regardless, the increased bargaining transparency - and limited bargaining scope - as well as the elimination of tenure strike me as long overdue efforts.</p>

<p>EDIT - There’s another very good overview here: <a href=“http://www.magicvalley.com/news/local/article_fed49b90-5b4b-5add-848d-a17f57ac596e.html[/url]”>http://www.magicvalley.com/news/local/article_fed49b90-5b4b-5add-848d-a17f57ac596e.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

18

<p>laptops is the classroom is way over rated ( and expensive). The rest sounds okay. PFP is easy - everybody knows who the good teachers are and which ones are terrible. I say, let the principals compete for the best teachers the way nba teams have to bid for the best players.</p>

19

<p>Not PC I know, but the quickest way to “improve” a teacher’s performance is to dump low-performing kids in another teacher’s classroom. I agree that something must be done, but PFP will inevitably lead to charges of favoritism within a school.</p>

<p>[Full disclosure: Private schools in our area consistently “outperform” public schools DESPITE having fewer resources. A rudimentary entry exam rules out the “educationally challenged” and expulsion for misbehavior policies eliminate classroom disruptors. Some might call these practices “common sense.”]</p>

20

<p>Chuckle ^ ^ Yup, post #19.
Just as a personal anecdote… my school has a PFP program, linking bonus money to our test scores as a team, a school, and as individual classes. We were overenrolled in Kinder; I had 24 very needy, low SES students in a small portable building. Yesterday, we added a new teacher and the principal split the classes up, so that our class size is now at 18. (Yeah!) But; the cut-off for receiving the bonus money is that 80% of our students must score at 80% or above on the final assessment. With over 20 students, 4 could not pass that mark, and the teacher would still receive money. At 19 students or less, only 3 students can not pass that mark for the teacher to receive money. So… the principal removed 6 students from a fellow teacher’s class, most on grade-level. Left the lower-performing students. Oops. That teacher can work and work and tutor after school and on Saturdays and do “interventions” all she wants, but it is unlikely that she will meet the 80% with these little guys. (We have lots of dyslexia, speech and language disorders, emotionally disturbed, and generally neglected kids coupled with high mobility and low attendance.) She just went from being an “excellent” teacher, to being marginal. Despite having benefited financially from PFP, I HATE the program, and so do many other teachers.</p>