Last updated on 2013.09.17
Legislators and conservatives say that South Dakotans are voicing overwhelming opposition to Governor Dennis Daugaard's education reforms. Legislators like Rep. Nick Moser (R-18/Yankton) who voted for HB 1234 are saying they actually oppose much of the bill. Nobody in Pierre is presenting solid evidence to show that the Governor's chosen reforms—competitive merit pay for 1 in 5 teachers, bonuses for rookie math and science teachers, ending the due process protections of continuing contract—have any firm connection to student achievement. Educators are proposing counterplans backed by research, yet the Governor keeps repeating the tired trope that student achievement hasn't increased proportionately with funding.
Why would our Legislature and our Governor ignore the facts on education reform? Try ideology. Try ALEC, the American Legislative Exchange Council. The corporate front group supports merit pay for teachers. When it ranks states for teacher quality, it places merit pay higher than actual student performance:
After all, another part of ALEC's report reads, "...the greatest factor regarding a student's academic success within school walls is teacher effectiveness." One would think we must be doing something right when it comes to teacher quality.
Instead, ALEC placed into its report a nonsensical grade assigned to New Jersey by the National Council on Teacher Quality (NCTQ): a D+ for Teacher Quality and Policies.
Florida, which scored 12th on the NAEP, earned a C. South Carolina, which scored 50th on the NAEP, earned a C-.
Vermont, ranked second on the NAEP, received an F from ALEC on Teacher Quality and Policies. First-ranked Massachusetts got a D+. In fact, no state that ranks in the top 10 in student performance scored higher than a D.
High performing New Jersey, Vermont, and Massachusetts received poor grades from ALEC for the same reason that Ms. Jones scored "needs improvement" on her evaluation: they were measured on criteria that has no basis in research [New Jersey Education Association, "Research with an Agenda," NJEA Reporter, 2012.02.01].
Numerous South Dakota legislators participate in ALEC's efforts to co-opt state laws to favor the corporate agenda. In a session update to his constituents, Rep. Frank Kloucek (D-19/Scotland) says ALEC "has convinced at least 14 state governors and legislatures to introduce this proven failure model legislation."
While ALEC preaches accountability for schools, it meets in secret, much like our Legislature's Gang of Six. While ALEC says it wants good teachers, it doesn't want them involved in discussions of effective policy, much like the poo-pooing of teacher expertise we hear from legislators. ALEC wants to weaken teachers' voices by weakening the teacher unions. In South Dakota, where the teachers' union, like every union, is already weak, one of the few legal protections teachers have left is the due process of continuing contract. Rep. Nick Moser thinks continuing contract is not "germane" to the rest of HB 1234, and from an academic achievement perspective, he's absolutely right. But ending continuing contract is perfectly germane to ALEC's anti-teacher, anti-labor agenda.
For those of you wondering why, oh why HB 1234 means so much to legislators that they'll vote for it even though they share many of the policy doubts of their constituents, ALEC may be the most logical answer. Our legislators are choosing big-money ideological blinders over research and South Dakota values.
Update 06:31 MST: Also fouling up the ed-works: Bill Gates:
Now, he has thrown his support behind the idea that America has too many bad teachers, and he is pouring billions into the hunt for bad teachers. As the Times article shows, he has bought the support of a wide range of organizations, from conservative to liberal. He has even thrown a few million to the teachers' unions to gain their assent. Unmentioned is that Gates has gotten the federal government to join him in his current belief that what matters most is creating teacher evaluation systems tied to student test scores.
Gates seems not to know or care that the leading testing experts in the nation agree that this is a fruitless and wrongheaded way to identify either good teachers or bad teachers. Student test scores depend on what students do, what effort they expend, how often they attend school, what support they have at home, and most especially on their socioeconomic status and family income. Test scores may go up or go down, in response to the composition of the class, without regard to teacher quality [Diane Ravitch, "Bill Gates: Selling Bad Advice to the Public Schools," The Daily Beast, 2011.05.23].
Oh yeah, and all those new standardized teacher evaluations on which Governor Daugaard wants to base his whole education reform scheme? Really complicated. Really time-consuming. And far from perfect.
I believe in being fiscally conservative. If study after study shows that merit pay has little or no effect on student performance, why do we need to waste $15 million of the taxpayer's money?
We can use the money in other ways to better student test scores and improve graduation rates or we can leave things alone.
This bill is unnecessary like so many of the 500-600 bills that are proposed every year. How many new laws and regulations do we need?
"Tiny chameleons discovered on Madagascar may be world’s smallest reptiles, challenging record held by Henry Kissinger." @Randylandia, Randy Cohen, NPR's "ex-ethicist."
Blame ALEC and President Obama:
http://www.usatoday.com/news/education/2009-03-10-obama-teachers_N.htm
Can anybody spell NWO?
You rock, CAH! Kick some LawCo heinie!
More on Obama's Race To The Top and Daugaard's plan seems a lot like Georgia's plan:
The merit-pay plan is part of the $400 million Race to the Top federal grant awarded last summer to Georgia and applies next year to the 26 participating districts. The state’s application for the grant indicates the merit-pay system will be made available statewide within five years.
“There’s a whole lot that goes on in a classroom besides standardized tests,†said Tim Callahan, a spokesman for the Professional Association of Georgia Educators. “A good teacher is many more things than just a standardized test score, so we think that may be a little out of perspective from the get-go.â€
Callahan’s organization and other teacher groups have questions about the proposed system, like:
How will it measure teachers in foreign-language, music and other classes where there’s no CRCT test?
How will it be paid for?
And how did the state decide half of a teacher’s evaluation would be tied to test scores?
Under the plan, 50 percent of a teacher’s assessment will be tied to student achievement. Ten percent will be tied to reducing the student achievement gap, and the rest will be principal observations and other assessments that have not been developed yet.
http://www.gpb.org/news/2011/01/20/race-to-the-top-means-merit-pay-for-teachers
The likelihood that President Obama influenced South Dakota legislation is about 0, but there are numerous connections to ALEC. Still, the educrats in the Obama administration have a corporate and technocratic bias that is just about as far off base as the ALEC people.
Donald, then wait for my lunch time post at Sibby Online.
I've read some articles about the Heartland Institute developing K-12 "science" curriculum aimed at debunking climate change science. In the comments sections I see people asking "what kind of science teacher would agree to teach this?" And when I look at what South Dakota is proposing, I know exactly what kind of science teacher it would take to teach anti-science material: one who just graduated from college with student loan debt who is guaranteed a signing bonus for a few years, one who can be fired without any due process, and one who gets a bonus for achieving great test scores - no matter what the material is. Is this a real possibility here?
Erika, Darwin's myth of evolution is anti-science.
Steve.
You are a troll.
A troll points out Obama's pro-merit pay agenda on a HB1234 thread?
In Internet slang, a troll is someone who posts inflammatory, extraneous, or off-topic messages in an online community, such as an online discussion forum, chat room, or blog, with the primary intent of provoking readers into an emotional response or of otherwise disrupting normal on-topic discussion. Such as saying "Darwin’s myth of evolution is anti-science".
Steve, just because you have pointed out the undue influence of the billionaire boy's club on the Obama Ed dept does not make you any less a troll. ALEC has taken these wrong-headed ideas to a new height by adding the anti-union, privatization aspect to the mix.
And ignorant, anti-science comments about Darwin are, if nothing else, proof of your troll qualities.
If they want better standardized test scores give the students a reason to do better. It was said a while ago on this blog that a lot of students just make pretty designs on the test sheets cause they "know" the test has no effect on them.
A teacher can lecture and present material till they are blue in the face, if a student doesn't want to learn they won't. Give the money to the school to make the learning environment better, ask the students what they think the schools need to help them learn and spend it on that (may not get the types of answers good for general learning). Giving a teacher more money helps the teacher not the student (sorry Corey).
If your goal is to get and keep the good teachers give them more money and bring back real tenure with requirements on what they have to do to keep it. Teachers do a lot of work outside the classroom with keeping certifications and the classes they take just to keep up to date on what they do. That is the sign of a good employee who deserves a good wage and a guarantee of steady employment. Continuing contracts is a waste. They say they want to run education like a business, how many businesses hire you and then tell you we'll let know once a year whether you will have a job to come back to after your "vacation."
How many of these rookie STEM teachers do they think will stick around after their bonus years are over? They'll be looking for a different position in the 2nd to 3rd year cause they know they will have to compete for more money after that. That also goes back to the business model, and the old saw "we want to attract more skilled workers". I could never see how they thought that wouldn't be an insult to the people you already hired or the people out there trying to get employment.
Sorry that was so long, lot of thoughts on this in the last week.
Long? Heck, Jim, that was only four paragraphs. No length limit here.
There is an argument (à la Daniel Pink) that giving teachers money can help students. Pay teachers enough that they don't have to think so much about money, and they can concentrate on doing their jobs. That applies to keeping them from having to race out at 4 p.m. to their second jobs. That applies to paying them enough that they can spend the summer taking graduate courses and doing research instead of painting houses. That applies to keeping them free of merit pay schemes that force them to objectify students and think of every action in the classroom in terms of some bonus rubric.
But much of what you propose makes sense, Jim. You at least sound more focused on real teacher quality and student performance than the Governor and his ALEC-led legislative leaders.
Joseph, it was Erika who brought up the issue of "anti-science material".
Putting "anti-science material" aside, I have to wonder why our governor is so determined to apply Enron-style incentive tactics to our education system. He has demonstrated his willingness to succumb to a small, but very vocal and well-funded group's influence before; it stands to reason that he's doing it again with education. My ten-year old, a budding scientist, read an article or two about this and recognized that the people proposing this plan don't state the problem they are trying to solve. He said, "They're trying to improve science education, but they aren't being very scientific." I'll admit I'm one of those crazy people who think teachers in South Dakota should be paid more, if for no other reason than to encourage my sister, who in the 6th grade wanted to become a teacher like the one who inspired her, to move back here and teach my children. (Also because every time I volunteer for a few hours in my kids' classrooms I feel like spending the next two days curled up in bed with a box of wine - I don't have it in me, and I feel we should generously reward those who do.) So when I hear my sister and other experienced and highly educated educators say that this is the wrong way to reward and retain good teachers, I have to listen to them and wonder what is really behind what I'm hearing, and not hearing, from our legislators about this plan.
Erika, a reporter from KOTA TV asked me what I think the governor is thinking. I told her I cannot know the mind of another. He's clearly not reading the research. The vagueness of the proposals on actual connection to student achievement is obvious even to your ten-year-old (good reading, kid! Keep it up!). I can only conclude that ideology is trumping good policy and good sense.
The governor's plan is coming out of the National Governors Association. The agenda is decades old.
Steve, you must heave meant the RGA, not the NGA. The connections are close.
http://www.progressive.org/republican_takeover_alec.html
The agenda is centuries old, and the reasons unions were created.