Spreading at a time of deep cutbacks in public schools, private scholarship programs operate in eight states and represent one of the fastest-growing components of the school choice movement, many at the expense of the neediest children. The programs have redirected nearly $350 million that would have gone into public budgets to pay for private school scholarships for 129,000 students. Much of that money has been used to attract star football players, expand the payrolls of the nonprofit scholarship groups and spread the theology of creationism. Source: The New York Times

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A kindergarten teacher from Georgia, has made $700,000 selling her lesson plans on Teachers Pay Teachers, an ecommerce startup where teachers offer their lesson plans to fellow educators. Source: Mashable

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By Amy Buffenbarger

Asking the crowd to imagine a world in which every student receives a quality public education, National Education Association (NEA) Secretary-Treasurer Rebecca Pringle shared the NEA vision of “education utopia” on May 18, at a meeting of the Education Writers Association (EWA).

“The National Education Association believes every student should have access to a great public school.  But that is not our reality today,” said Pringle. “I want you to suspend your disbelief and travel with me to a place where that actually ‘IS’ America’s reality.”

Pringle led the audience of approximately 250 journalists, educators, researchers, and advocates through a presentation of what education utopia looks like. Based on NEA’s Three-Point Plan for Education Reform, education utopia is a system that ensures quality in five domains: quality professions, quality professionals, quality schools, quality policy, and quality unions.

It’s also a system that benefits students, where union leaders and district administrators confront challenges as partners. According to Pringle’s presentation, “campfires of excellence,” which demonstrate the principles of education utopia, are currently in place and led by NEA members at NEA’s Priority Schools Campaign sites.

“Let’s take a trip to Belmont High School in Ohio, where the quality of the profession is being elevated by the teachers themselves,” said Pringle.

Educators at the Dayton, Ohio, high school worked with the Dayton Education Association to draft a Letter of Agreement spelling out how they’d do their work differently: They created their own standards to meet the needs of their students, but also to align with state and district standards; in addition, they set weekly performance goals with their students and chart their progress. The results at Belmont demonstrate success—promotion rates for 9th graders have increased from 30 percent to 84 percent, and the number of juniors taking the ACT has increased tenfold.

In Denver, Colorado, NEA members are setting the example of quality professionals. Denver Public Schools has developed a residency program for teachers that operate in a fashion similar to that of medical students. Teacher residents are paired with mentor teachers in classrooms serving a variety of high needs, including English language learners, special education, bilingual Spanish, and math and science. For a full school year, residents spend four days a week in the classroom learning and teaching alongside a mentor teacher.

“This hands-on training and mentoring should be required of all aspiring teachers before they have their own classrooms,” said Pringle.

NEA’s commitment to the quality of schools is demonstrated in Evansville, Indiana, where “schools have become the center of the community,” explained Pringle. Many students at Howard Roosa Elementary School were starting their day hungry, so the union and the school district developed a breakfast program that took meals directly to the classroom. In addition, there are school-based health clinics that serve students, staff, and the community. At McGary Middle School, a community garden has helped engage students and grow community partnerships.

In the Romulus School District just outside of Detroit, Michigan, “the quality of education policy is actually driving improvements,” said Pringle.

Local education leaders transformed the teacher evaluation process into a system that promotes creativity and ingenuity, and is structured to improve professional practice. The union and school district then worked together to steer needed resources to prevent school closures and narrowing of the curriculum.

In highlighting how the “union’s role in ensuring quality lifted the entire school community” in Columbus, Ohio, Pringle shared the example of the Columbus Education Association. Their “peer assistance and review program ensures quality professionals; their evaluation system is elevating the profession, through quality policy; and, their work with the Ohio State University to implement service-learning, a practice that unites academic instruction and learning with student-focused service in the community, is raising the quality of the Columbus schools,” said Pringle.

Pringle ended her presentation by asking the audience to use their influence and ideas to join NEA in building an education utopia for all public school students.

“The 3 million members of the National Education Association are committed to spreading that excellence from isolated campfires to brushfires of quality nationwide,” said Pringle.

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By Tim Walker

The already diminished reputation of high-stakes testing took another hit this week with the startling news out of Florida that only 27 percent of fourth graders passed the state’s comprehensive assessment test (FCAT) for writing. That’s a drop from 81 percent the previous year. The scores for eight and tenth graders yielded similarly abysmal results.

The news sent Florida’s board of education into a damage control frenzy, as the media, parent groups, and educators demanded an explanation. Are three out of four Florida students functionally illiterate?

Of course not, but the board did attribute the drop on a failure to adequately prepare, and communicate with, teachers regarding the more rigorous writing standards implemented this year. At an emergency meeting on Tuesday, the board quickly voted to lower the passing mark from 4.0 all the way down to 3.0 (last year’s level was 3.5). With this adjustment, 81 percent of fourth graders now have a passing mark. Without it, the scores would have led to a number of schools being downgraded and the implementation of expensive remedial programs to correct the situation. Soon, test results will also be more closely tied to teacher reviews and pay.

Still, by jury-rigging the FCAT results, the board essentially rendered the test scores meaningless, inviting even greater scrutiny on the inherent flaws of the testing regime implemented by then-Governor Jeb Bush and continued by Rick Scott.

The dramatic drop in test scores, according to Florida Education Association (FEA) President Andy Ford, clearly shows that the system is a failure.

“We have always opposed and questioned the overreliance on standardized testing,” Ford said. “It hasn’t helped students, it hasn’t helped teachers, parents are frustrated and it costs millions of taxpayer dollars.”

Teachers and parents joined the board meeting on Tuesday via conference call and expressed their frustration at the state’s reliance on the FCAT and the failure to communicate details of the new standards to teachers and schools.

“I think this is one indication of where teaching to the test has become the problem,” said Darla March, a Miami-Dade parent of three children in public schools.

While the FCAT fiasco is a stunning illustration of the flaws of the high-stakes testing culture, scrutiny over testing has been intensifying recently. Just two days before the FCAT scores were announced, the Palm Beach County School Board adopted a resolution that opposes the over-reliance on high-stakes standardized tests.

Endorsed by the National Education Association, the Time Out for Testing resolution calls on federal and state policymakers to reduce standardized test mandates and base school accountability on multiple forms of measurement. Other signers include the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, Parents Across America and the National Center for Fair & Open Testing (FairTest).

According to the resolution, “the over-emphasis on standardized testing has caused considerable collateral damage in too many schools, including narrowing the curriculum, teaching to the test, reducing love of learning, pushing students out of school, driving excellent teachers out of the profession, and undermining school climate.”

“The overuse of standardized tests for high stakes decisions has shortchanged students, teachers and our education system in too many ways for far too long,” said NEA President Dennis Van Roekel. “We’ve lost sight of the reason tests were designed—to help gauge students’ comprehension and progress.”

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Here are a few some hard-learned lessons from a former teacher to new teachers - tips that are probably pretty useful for veteran teachers as well. Read more about staying connected with other educators, setting boundaries, and knowing when to go home! Source: Edutopia

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Budget cuts illustrate the balancing act these days between academics and PE, as schools struggle to raise test scores in the face of a growing obesity epidemic. The Maplewood-Richmond Heights district in St. Louis has emphasized physical education as part of a larger health initiative. All students, including those in high school, have at least 200 minutes a week of physical activity, and usually more when recess is counted. The district also encourages teachers to incorporate brain breaks by having students stretch and run in place in the classroom. Source: St. Louis Post-Dispatch

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By Cindy Long

Workplace bullying is on the rise. About a third of American workers have been impacted by bullying in the workplace, either as a target or as witness to abusive behavior against a co-worker. Unfortunately, it’s even more prevalent in the field of education. In a recent survey of medium-sized school districts, 25 percent of employees reported that they had been bullied.

A teacher from Augusta, Maine, was so traumatized by her principal and superintendent that she didn’t want her name or school mentioned, but wanted to share her story because she believes the pervasive problem of workplace bullying has gone on unchecked for too long.

“I am sufficiently frightened enough by my former employers to fear that maybe they could still hurt me,” she says. “I need to get a new job but won’t be able to do so if I am unable to receive even one recommendation from an administrator.  I know it and so do they.”

After the Augusta educator resisted being transferred to a new school and new grade level, she began to be scrutinized by her administrators. First, they began examining her test scores, her communications with parents, and her relationships with colleagues. Then, with no explanation and no warning, the principal began interrupting her class to pull out students one-by-one to talk to them. When the educator asked the students why they were being pulled out, they told her they were instructed not to tell.

She was accused of not using technology in her class, even though each student had a laptop. She was criticized for relying on a literacy mentor, even though some of her students were struggling with reading. She was put on a behavior modification plan and was told to submit her lesson plans a week in advance for review by administrators. Her peers warned her that she was being targeted, and she began to believe it. Finally, she left her job after her health began to deteriorate.

It’s not just administrators bullying teachers, says Carv Wilson, a geography teacher at Legacy Junior High in Layton, Utah. He’s been an educator for 18 years, and has seen teachers bullying each other to get their way, as well as aggressive parents who fly off the handle and threaten and intimidate their child’s educators. But he says the worst case of ongoing workplace bullying he witnessed was by a principal.

“I was heavily involved in school leadership both as a Davis Education Association Rep and on the school representative counsel, and I heard about or witnessed first-hand the abuse of other teachers, staff, and students by this principal,” he says. “She specifically targeted individual teachers and the only thing that seemed to offer any protection was membership in our local association.”

Wilson says more than 60 percent of the educators were NEA members, and the other 30 percent “suffered dramatically at her hands.”  The number of transfers out of the school was higher than 50 percent each year of the eight years that she was principal of the school.

“She seemed to revel in people being driven out of education or to another school,” he says.  “The memories of that time still haunt me from time to time, but it solidified my belief that having representation both in school and in the local community through the association is critical. It’s the only defense against unfair and even punitive measures that are sometimes solely prompted by personality conflicts.”

Denise Mirandola is a union representative for the Pennsylvania State Education Association who holds trainings for members called “Bullying in the Workplace.”

“I presented it at an Education Support Professionals meeting and was surprised to see so many heads nodding,” she says. “I believe that the phenomenon has been overlooked far too long and should be brought to the surface quickly.”

Like Wilson from Utah, she says association representation is vital if you’re being targeted by a workplace bully. The first thing you should do, in fact, is contact your union representative. Then, document, document, document – save emails, letters, memos, notes from conversations, or anything that shows the mistreatment. She also recommends confronting the bully with a supportive ally, like a union rep – and to describe the offensive behavior you’re experiencing, and the change in behavior you’d like to see.

According to Dr. Matt Spencer of the Workplace Bullying in Schools Project, “the bully steals the dignity, self-esteem, confidence, joy, happiness, and quality of life of the targeted victim”. And when the target is an educator, it is a great “injustice” because the bully deprives students of a caring adult who is crucial to their education.

Currently there is no law in any state against workplace bullying, unless it involves harassment based on race, color, creed, national origin, sex, age or disability. Please support the Healthy Workplace Bill in your state. Go to www.healthyworkplacebill.org for more information.

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Parents, teachers, and political leaders must reject long-standing practices that undermine students’ opportunity to learn in the city’s most neglected communities, write Pedro Noguera and John Jackson. In their place, they must advocate for genuine reforms, which will assure equitable access to good schools and programs. Source: The Washington Post

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The idea of mobile learning touches on just about every subject that any technology addresses: social media, digital citizenship, content-knowledge versus skill-building, Internet filtering and safety laws, teaching techniques, bring-your-own-device policies, school budgets.In the most ideal class settings, mobile devices disappear into the background, like markers and whiteboards, pencil and paper – not because they’re not being used, but because they’re simply tools, a means to an end. Source: KQED MindShift

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The STEM gap is a real and complex issue, writes Rep. Barbara Lee on The Huffington Post. “We cannot overcome the challenges we face without the collaboration of educators, parents, industry partners and mentors and policymakers with the courage to fight for bold investment in STEM education.” Source: The Huffington Post

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