Progress needed

So here we have another example of the central flaw in our educational debate. Jonathan Alter of Newsweek sits down with Bill Gates to talk about education and the reform movement he has embraced. Alter writes this article entitled A Case of Senioritis. Clearly, Gates' beef is one of seniority, right?   Alter writes:

 After exhaustive study, the Gates Foundation and other experts have learned that the only in-school factor that fully correlates is quality teaching, which seniority hardly guarantees. It’s a moral issue. Who can defend a system where top teachers are laid off in a budget crunch for no other reason than that they’re young?

In most states, pay and promotion of teachers are connected 100 percent to seniority. This is contrary to everything the world’s second-richest man believes about business: “Is there any other part of the economy where someone says, ‘Hey, how long have you been mowing lawns? … I want to pay you more for that reason alone.’

It's a piece about creating change through the end of the seniority system.   It is a moral issue.   And it's why that if I had to take sides- I take sides with Gates.   Not that I fully embrace his ideas for education reform- but he does understand and attempt to solve a central problem.   The education profession is indifferent to quality.
Dianne Ravitch, who has made a second and very profitable career of  "defending"  educators from the so called attacks of Gates, responds directly to some of the rhetorical questions posed by Gates on Valerie Strauss' blog, The Answer Sheet.   Ravitch pokes some pretty serious holes in the seemingly logical solutions proffered by Gates and other reformers.   But how many times do you think Ravitch uses the word seniority in her response?

Not once.

Why not?  It seems to me it's a losing issue.   Ravitch thus focuses her attack on Gates' main solution, testing:

I don't hear any of the corporate reformers expressing concern about the way standardized testing narrows the curriculum, the way it rewards convergent thinking and punishes divergent thinking, the way it stamps out creativity and originality. I don't hear any of them worried that a generation will grow up ignorant of history and the workings of government. I don't hear any of them putting up $100 million to make sure that every child has the chance to learn to play a musical instrument. All I hear from them is a demand for higher test scores and a demand to tie teachers' evaluations to those test scores. That is not going to improve education."

Ravitch may be right about testing.   Testing students too many times, in too many subjects could have serious ramifications.   And value-added modeling in its current form, likely poses more questions than answers. I suppose that's why she spends so much time talking about testing rather than seniority rules; the battle over testing is, as Gates would say, a moral one.  And it's grounds where Ravitch may have the moral authority.   So I would like to take this argument backward- to what I believe is its foundation.  Is there agreement between Ravitch and Gates on seniority?  If we can agree, perhaps we can find new ways to pay and evaluate teachers.   A system that is more effective than the one used now, and one that will not turn the measure of teacher effectiveness into a test taken by students.   Or maybe the two don't agree, and seniority is the best way to go after all.  Either way, I think we could all benefit by an explicit answer.   So here is a new rhetorical question for Ravitch to answer:

Is the seniority system the best way to compensate teachers for their hard work?

How we got in this mess

Teachers, their unions, and others all want to know how we got into this educational mess.  Dianne Ravitch spends day and night defending educators from the "reformist" voices of Bill Gates, Michelle Rhee, Arne Duncan and the like, who argue for the use of  student achievement in teacher evaluations.  The reformists say we need to look at the "value-added" that a teacher brings to the classroom.   My union (along with others), cries foul, and goes here there and everywhere to testify.  They regurgitate claims that value-added modeling used to measure student achievment gains is huey.  And they take up the fight against movies made by directors who know more about global warming than education.  But why?   Why has this turned in to an all out war on education?  How did we get here?   Why are we still here?

Clear the air, and you'll realize this  fight is one that should have been over long ago.    The real fight is over seniority based rules that pay the most tenured teachers more money than the most effective teachers.   The same rules call for new teachers to be fired before the least effective teachers.    They are calls for reform that have fallen on deaf ears for many, many years.  They are calls for reform that were ingored.  But they are rules that could have been, and should have been, addressed by the unions themselves.   Had simple but thoughtful reforms been made or even attempted, the foundation upon which "reformers" built their castle would have fallen into the sea.  But like an old stubborn mule, the unions, led by the eldest teachers that control their ranks and benefit most by the imposition of the rules they defend, refused to change.

The result, is a fight that never had to be.   A fight that has now morphed itslef into an us vs. them fight over the use of testing.  We're fighting over the rediculous standardized test data that was released to the public by a newspaper more concerned with selling a few papers than fixing education.   We're fighting over the relaibility of value-added modeling- a topic about which most teachers and politicians and common folk care to know very little.   We're fighting over the merits of movie directors and chancellors of education.     It's a fight that never should have happened.   But it's a fight on grounds where the unions- and Diane Ravitch-  stand a much better chance of winning.   

Don't be fooled by what you hear and read today.   The real fight is over seniority.

A call for leadership

I read and I read and I read.   And then I wonder "how can something so pure as the education of our children be so political?"   Can we not stop what we're doing and finally solve some problems?

I simply find much of what I read, especially from those who oppose performance pay, alarmist.   Diane Ravitch has made a second career of ringing the anti-merit pay bell across the United States.   Valerie Strauss of the Washington Post frequently republishes Ravitch's blog as part of this gospel.

In a recent post, Ravitch goes so far as to speak for all teachers:

Although teachers need and want higher pay, they are strongly opposed to individual merit pay.

A generalization that brings me to an article I recently read in the Christian Science Monitor.  Melanie Stetson Freeman wrote a piece more than a year ago about the evolution of performance pay in Denver, CO.   I was struck by this snippet:

Back in 2004, when the Denver teachers union voted on ProComp, many teachers had a deeply ingrained opposition to "merit pay." One poll about a month before the vote showed that just 19 percent of them were in favor. The district undertook a public-relations blitz and massive information campaign, and it ended up winning the support of 59 percent of teachers.

Teachers, once they understand that they can have due process side by side with merit pay, are willing to support an opportunity to earn more money in a less traditional manner.   However it requires leadership and stake holder input.  Off hand claims made by Ravitch are harmful to the dialogue.  She continues to say of merit pay that it,

destroys the collaboration and teamwork that are essential to the culture of the school.

However, the very same study that Ravitch notes as proof pudding that merit pay won't work actually concludes those who received merit pay were more likely to collaborate:

...what can we say about the way treatment teachers responded? Treatment teachers...were more likely to report thatthey collaborated with other teachers (planning, reviewing student test results, coaching and being  coached or observed) 

And I suppose this is my biggest beef with how merit pay is treated by its opponents.  Merit pay is not perfect.  Value added modeling has limitations.  And charter schools will not fix all our educational ills.  But neither will the status quo.  We need to spend less time yelling and making sweeping generalizations and more time figuring out how school reform can go forward recognizing the strengths and weaknesses put forward by both sides of the argument.

We can't afford to continue forcing people to line up on one side of this issue or the other.   Movies like Waiting for Superman, shows like those recently seen on Oprah, and polarizing figures like Michelle Rhee only exacerbate the problem.

But reform should not be held hostage by politics.  It must move forward with all stake holders contributing to a dialogue.  The question is when will we work together to decide what real and honest educational reform will look like?   It's happening in some places.   I just wish we had leaders here in Montgomery County willing to make it happen.