RESEARCH-BASED OPTIONS FOR EDUCATION POLICYMAKING

RESEARCH-BASED OPTIONS
FOR EDUCATION POLICYMAKING


From the NEPC:

If the objective is to improve educational performance, outside-school factors must
also be addressed. Teacher evaluation cannot replace or compensate for these much
stronger determinants of student learning.  The importance of these outside-school
factors should also caution against policies that simplistically attribute student test
scores to teachers.

The results produced by value-added (test-score growth) models alone are highly
unstable. They vary from year to year, from classroom to classroom, and from one
test to another.  Substantial reliance on these models can lead to practical, ethical
and legal problems.


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CTU Strike! Their Fight is Our Fight!

CTU Strike! Their Fight is Our Fight!: "The strike was a success!  The CTU was able to win many of their demands in the new contract.  Below is a partial list of the language in the new agreement between the CTU and CPS:"

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Wendy Lecker: Helping kids, or helping charter school companies? - StamfordAdvocate

Wendy Lecker: Helping kids, or helping charter school companies? - StamfordAdvocate: "Education Commissioner Stefan Pryor, a founder of the Achievement First charter franchise, declared that having Jumoke take over a public school was "an important transition in the charter school movement."

The comment indicates that some reformers apparently believe that expanding charter schools is more important than addressing children's needs."

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5 Biggest Lies About America's Public Schools -- Debunked | Alternet

5 Biggest Lies About America's Public Schools -- Debunked | Alternet: "Since pundits and politicians often engage in education rhetoric that obscures what’s really going on, here are five corrections to some of the more egregious claims you may have recently heard.

Lie #1: Unions are undermining the quality of education in America.

Teachers unions have gotten a bad rap in recent years, but as education professor Paul Thomas of Furman University tells AlterNet, “The anti-union message…has no basis in evidence.” In fact, Furman points out, “Union states tend to correlate with higher test scores.”"

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Daily Kos: 10 Reasons Not to See "Won’t Back Down"

Daily Kos: 10 Reasons Not to See "Won’t Back Down": "Won’t Back Down avoids the real issues. Writing in variety, Peter DeBruge points out the film is “grossly oversimplifying” education reform.  Rather, it’s a “disingenuous pot-stirrer [that] plays to audiences’ emotions rather than their intelligence.”"

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Eugene Robinson: Standing up for teachers - The Washington Post

Eugene Robinson: Standing up for teachers - The Washington Post: "According to figures compiled by the College Board, students from families making more than $200,000 score more than 300 points higher on the SAT, on average, than students from families making less than $20,000 a year. There is, in fact, a clear relationship all the way along the scale: Each increment in higher family income translates into points on the test.

Sean Reardon of Stanford University’s Center for Education Policy Analysis concluded in a recent study that the achievement gap between high-income and low-income students is actually widening. It is unclear why this might be happening; maybe it is due to increased income inequality, maybe the relationship between income and achievement has somehow become stronger, maybe there is some other reason.

Whatever the cause, our society’s answer seems to be: Beat up the teachers."

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Analysis: Striking Chicago teachers take on national education reform | Reuters

Analysis: Striking Chicago teachers take on national education reform | Reuters: "And the monopoly that the public sector once held on public schools will be broken with a proliferation of charter schools, which are publicly funded but privately run - and typically non-union.

To reformers, both Democrats and Republicans, these changes offer the best hope for improving dismal urban schools. Many teachers, however, see the new policies as a brazen attempt to shift public resources into private hands, to break the power of teachers unions, and to reduce the teaching profession to test preparation.

In Chicago, last-minute contract talks broke down not over pay, but over the reform agenda, both sides said Sunday. The union would not agree to Emanuel's proposal that teacher evaluations be based in large measure on student test scores."

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The Chicago Teachers’ Strike, in Perspective - NYTimes.com

The Chicago Teachers’ Strike, in Perspective - NYTimes.com: "In the absence of any bold effort to alleviate the pressures of poverty, in the absence of any bold investment in educating our children, is it fair to ask that the schools — and by default, the teachers — bear sole responsibility for closing the economic divide? This is a question asked not only in Chicago, but in virtually every urban school district around the country."

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Judge Strikes Down Wis. Law Limiting Union Rights - ABC News

Judge Strikes Down Wis. Law Limiting Union Rights - ABC News: "A Wisconsin judge on Friday struck down nearly all of the state law championed by Gov. Scott Walker that effectively ended collective bargaining rights for most public workers.

Walker's administration immediately vowed to appeal, while unions, which have vigorously fought the law, declared victory. But what the ruling meant for existing public contracts was murky: Unions claimed the ruling meant they could negotiate again, but Walker could seek to keep the law in effect while the legal drama plays out."

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Chicago's Teacher Problem, and Ours : The New Yorker

Chicago's Teacher Problem, and Ours : The New Yorker: "Another problem is that talk of breaking teachers’ unions has become common parlance among the kind of people whose kids do not live below the poverty line, polite Pinkerton agents of education reform, circling at cocktail parties. No doubt there are some lousy teachers in Chicago, as there are everywhere. But blaming teachers for the failure of schools is like blaming doctors for the diseases they are seeking to treat."

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Teacher accountability and the Chicago teachers strike | Economic Policy Institute

Teacher accountability and the Chicago teachers strike | Economic Policy Institute: "The strike represents the first open rebellion of teachers nationwide over efforts to evaluate, punish and reward them based on their students’ scores on standardized tests of low-level basic skills in math and reading. Teachers’ discontent has been simmering now for a decade, but it took a well-organized union to give that discontent practical expression. For those who have doubts about why teachers need unions, the Chicago strike is an important lesson."

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Teachers in Chicago School Strike Deserve Respect - Susan Milligan (usnews.com)

Teachers in Chicago School Strike Deserve Respect - Susan Milligan (usnews.com): "And what is often forgotten, in the resentment of public sector salaries, is that it has been unions that set the labor standards for all of us. The weekend? The 40-hour workweek? It was unions that got those established as a general standard. Cutting salaries for public-sector workers would indeed ease the pressure on government budgets, but it also lower the standard for the workforce as a whole. If public salaries go down, private sector compensation will follow.

"

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Chicago's Teachers Just Went On Strike -- Here's Everything You Need To Know About Why | Progressive Change Campaign Committee (PCCC)

Chicago's Teachers Just Went On Strike -- Here's Everything You Need To Know About Why | Progressive Change Campaign Committee (PCCC): "Why are these 29,000 teachers and school workers going on strike in the nation’s third-largest public school district?

Because they want what all workers want: fair pay and decent working conditions. They also want what all teachers want — to serve their students to their best of their abilities.

Here’s a few things you need to know about the strike, and why the CTU is right and Mayor Rahm Emanuel — who has failed to fairly bargain with the union — is wrong:"

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In Chicago Teachers’ Strike, Signs of Unions Under Siege - NYTimes.com

In Chicago Teachers’ Strike, Signs of Unions Under Siege - NYTimes.com: "If the famously feisty Mr. Emanuel wins this confrontation, he could set the table for a major setback for teachers’ unions nationwide and a potential rethinking of teachers’ enthusiasm for Democrats in this year’s elections. Advocates of sweeping education changes like Michelle Rhee, the former head of the school system in Washington, will be able to declare that if Chicago’s mighty union was willing to accept such changes, so should teachers’ union locals across the nation.

“The teachers’ unions are on the defensive on many more fronts than they used to be,” said Chester E. Finn Jr., a longtime education analyst who heads the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, a conservative-leaning education policy group in Washington. “It used to be they could just fight vouchers and charter schools. But now they face this huge set of issues,” not to mention budgetary pressures that have caused large-scale layoffs. Weakening the unions’ leverage and ranks, more than 300,000 school employees have lost their jobs since the recession ended in June 2009."

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Teachers’ Strike in Chicago Tests Mayor and Union - NYTimes.com

Teachers’ Strike in Chicago Tests Mayor and Union - NYTimes.com: "Outside the schools here, though, in the lines of marchers, the issues seemed ever broader. Many teachers said they were troubled by a new evaluation system and its reliance on student test scores. Teachers spoke of rising class sizes, much-needed social workers, a dearth of air-conditioned classrooms and slow-to-arrive reference books, and, again and again, a sense of disrespect.

Teachers also clearly saw the strike as a protest not just of the union negotiations in Chicago but on data-driven education reform nationwide, which many perceived as being pushed by corporate interests and relying too heavily on standardized tests to measure student progress.

At Lane Tech College Prep, where many passing motorists honked their support for the teachers, Steve Parsons, a teacher, said he believed the city was ultimately aiming to privatize education through charter schools and computer programs that teach classes online.

“We need to stay out as long as it takes to get a fair contract and protect our schools,” he said."

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CTU Prepares to Strike!

CTU Strike!

Their Fight is Our Fight!

As we start the school year, our colleagues in Chicago are getting ready to strike for a fair contract.  

THE ISSUES

Chicago Public Schools wants to extend the school year by 2 weeks and add 80 minutes to the school day--with a 2% raise.  Learn more.

Chicago teachers want a “Better Day” not just a longer one.  Learn more.

HOW IT AFFECTS US

Chicago has been “ground zero” for the current trends in school reform.  What has started in Chicago has recently come to Connecticut in the form of SB 24.  Learn More.

WHAT WE CAN DO

Send messages of support.

Contribute to the solidarity fund.

Wear red on Monday, September 10th.

Learn More.