The format of these events included introductory remarks by the host organization, the superintendent, and her special assistant. Following that, there were three breakout sessions, and each was presented twice so that attendees could hear two of the three.
The session that I did not attend was about budget and living within our means as a school district. I could have, but I figured that since my expertise is in education and social action, and not number crunching, I'd stick with the other two.
Unfortunately for one of the first presenters, despite number-crunching being her speciality, someone thought that she was qualified to work in the office of teacher effectiveness. This presentation, entitled "Investing in People," sought to describe the need for the teacher evaluation system that was crafted with special help from the Gates Foundation.
The backstory leading up to this system makes a little bit of sense. According to many teachers, there was little accountability, not enough feedback, and not enough meaningful observation. 99% of teachers were satisfactory, and that was that. The Pittsburgh Federation of Teachers made some courses available, but supposedly there was already talk of improving evaluations.
According to other teachers, and understand I don't want to implicate anyone, nor can I credit just one person when I talk to numerous people about this topic, the entire evaluation system was formulated under duress. Teachers had to attach their names to it because participating in this project meant that they'd have a better chance at being looked at favorably.
Back to the presentation: a young woman by the name of Tara Tucci was the presenter I mentioned. She presented along with Dr. Connie Sims, who is yet another officer of teacher effectiveness...or something...so many admins. Ms. Tucci is a Data Fellow through the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Until just now, I didn't realize that such a person existed. She was speaking in place of Sam Franklin, the head of the Teacher Effectiveness office. Mr. Franklin taught for 3 years through Teach for America: Ms. Tucci was never a teacher. Believe me, I asked her. Not that I really want to be known as a bully but she looked like she was ready to cry when I got to the point of asking her if she was a teacher.
Here's the statistic that got me to the point of raising my teacher voice: 9,000 students were taught by ineffective teachers, and 6,000 of those were students of color. My response: you've got this backwards. By what means are these teachers being deemed ineffective? What schools are these students attending? District hiring policy encourages teachers to transfer to "better" schools. My child attends such a "better" school--many teachers have been there for awhile, and the community emphasis is strong and authentic. Other schools in the district have teachers who transfer out the second they can, or they just give up. As a former admin said, Teach for America would be a step up in stability for some of these schools.
I went on. Oh boy did I go on. I said that in order to encourage teachers to stay in rough schools they need supportive administrators who recognize the need for the right teachers (meaning the ones who are a good fit in these schools) to be supported in their efforts to just show the kids that they can learn and they matter, using the old adage "they don't care how much you know until they know how much you care." But instead, teachers are afraid to go to those schools. Not because they're afraid of the kids, but because they're afraid that teaching students who are lower-performing is going to affect their evaluations.
But in looking back at my tweets from the evening, I realized that even before the whole backwards issue with teacher ineffectiveness, I interrupted Ms. Tucci and put her on the defensive early when I asked why in the world the Tripod teacher survey was appropriate for kindergarten students. When she got flustered and couldn't handle it, Dr. Sims chimed in and claimed that she did administer this survey to kindergarten students before and they did fine. I think people are allowed to lie in public when it comes to stuff like that. It's a 45 minute survey, just like a test. Except that it's about a teacher and it goes into their evaluations. Really. So the fact that she was able to get the kids to complete the survey and was still around to stand in front of me to tell the tale...I guess her students' completing the tripod survey successfully is like saying that the teachers who developed the evaluation system were all completely on board. Similar truth level.
One of the longtime PFT execs said that part of the problem is that teacher scores are being made public. It perpetuates the outward criticism of teachers. Ms. Tucci said that these evaluations were also designed so that teachers would no longer be treated the same way. The implication there is that the union is trying to protect teachers from anyone being labeled as better than another when "everyone knows" (I can picture her saying that but she didn't) that some teachers are better than others.
I prefer to think of it as, teachers are treated the same way and are supposed to move up the pay scale at the same rate, with movement to a new "column" being achieved by additional education, because they all work hard but in different ways and at different times. Some teachers have more difficulty during the day, others after school, some when first starting out, others some time in the middle of their careers, and while there are variations on who works hardest on any given day of the year, you won't find a teacher who says "wow, I worked my whole life as a teacher--what a piece of cake!" The union protects teachers from being punished when someone else happens to have an easier class with fewer extra issues. The union also protects teachers from being punished because an admin doesn't like that person. Or at least that was the case--I've seen a few teachers lose their jobs over very foolish things.
Dr. Sims claimed that evaluations and scores were based on those facets of the school experience that can be controlled. They prefer to shut out what cannot be controlled. Foolish foolish people who make way more money than I ever will. Ugh, seriously, how many people are they paying to tell teachers that they are failures because the kids are failures, and how many actual teachers could they hire with that money? These out-of-school factors inform everything that these kids do!
I get very long-winded about these issues. I'll have to slow it down and summarize.
The second session actually addressed some of these factors and, aside from a brief argument about class size mattering or not, I was glad to see that there are services in place to help those kids who don't have all the advantages to succeed and set their sights higher. After all, public schools are a public good.
Hopefully enough people heard me raise my teacher voice.
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