The author, a principal in NYC, writes about three scenarios in her school where great teachers, evaluated as “effective” in each of the three categories in the NYS evaluation system would overall be ranked as “ineffective” and lose their job.

With the above scenarios I am not creating fiction, I am describing the future — one in which children lose great teachers. The reason the above “band” system is so flawed is because of the obsession of Albany with test scores.

Our state’s rule-makers wanted to design a system in which the teachers whose students’ scores are in the lowest ten percent could under no circumstances be anything other than ineffective. It created a ludicrous system where teachers who are effective across the board can be rated ineffective overall.

One of my finest teachers was near tears the other day. Her student had asked her, “You are so smart…why did you become a teacher?” Within the context of this teacher-bashing climate, that remark was just too much to bear, and I hugged her as she cried. Less than a mile away, her Governor had thumped on a podium at Molloy College saying “if they want the money, perform” as though she and her colleagues were trained seals.

Mr. Baker looks at the educational philosophy of some of the top private schools and points out they specifically stay away from testing, merit pay, and even firing teachers.

From the National Association of Independent Schools (as quoted by Baker):

We do not have to respond to the whims of the state, nor to every or any educational trend. We can maximize our time attuned to students and how they learn, and to the development of curriculum that enriches them and encourages the skills and attitudes of independent thinkers.

Merit pay, so routine in the corporate world, has a miserable track record in education. It almost never improves outcomes and almost always damages morale, sowing dissension and distrust, for three excellent reasons, among others: (1) teachers are driven to help their own students, not to outperform other teachers, which violates the ethic of service and the norms of collegiality; (2) as artisans engaged in idiosyncratic work with students whose performance can vary due to factors beyond school control, teachers often feel that there is no rational, fair basis for comparison; and (3) in schools where all faculty feel underpaid, offering a special sum to a few sparks intense resentment.

In an analysis of a StateImpactOhio article on school vouchers the author points out that parents are choosing other schools because some cash-strapped public schools are unable to provide common sense learning situations and this leads to a cycle of a deteriorating school system.

Vouchers are setting up a vicious economic cycle. Parents want smaller class sizes, so some choose to use vouchers to enroll their children into smaller schools, which subtracts money from the struggling public schools reducing their ability to maintain smaller classes, which in turn causes more parents to seek schools with smaller classes via vouchers.

The article reports the findings of the Ohio State Auditor’s Office which was conducted from 2008-2010.  The schools hired the businesses of school board members, bought alcohol for a holiday party, and unsupported fund transfers.

The state auditor’s office on Tuesday said “booze, missing money, missing records and self-dealing” has led to $929,850 in findings for recovery in a special audit of the Dayton area Richard Allen Academy charter schools.

About $888,411 has not yet been paid back.

The author, an education professor at Stanford and co-director of the Stanford Center for Opportunity Policy in Education, writes why high-stakes, fill-in-the-bubble, standardized tests need to be replaced with meaningful student centered assessments.

No country tests its children as often as the United States: The highest achieving often have few or no tests until the end of high school. Furthermore, the tests that are used in top-ranked nations like Finland, South Korea and Singapore are open-ended essay and oral examinations. Most top systems also expect students to design and conduct extended research projects and scientific investigations.

RSA Animate created a catchy animation to coincide with best-selling author Daniel Pink’s research about motivation.  This is the reason merit pay for teachers simply won’t work especially when it’s tied to unreliable standardized test scores.

“Rewards are very effective for some things — simple things, mechanical things,” he (D. Pink) explains. “But for complicated jobs that require judgment and creativity, the evidence shows that it just doesn’t work very well.” Teaching, of course, is one of those jobs.  (Quote from Washington Post article on Pink.)  http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/as-teacher-merit-pay-spreads-one-noted-voice-cries-it-doesnt-work/2012/02/14/gIQAtRpsFR_story.html

The editorial reviews a recent court ruling stating that transparency must occur when charter schools use tax dollars to educate children.

Apart from the issues of principle, the important question raised by this case is, why is White Hat (the charter school company) so unwilling to tell the public — or even its clients — how it spends their money?

The author first reflects on communities devastated by irresponsible businesses whose public schools remained the lone bright spot and then shifts to present day scenarios where the big banks have blamed teachers for the economic woes facing our society.

It is not American business which is the great success story and public education the dismal failure, but the other way around. Maybe it’s time to bring teachers and administrators into our top firms and have them show how to run things without wasting huge amounts of money on executive salaries, and without making people work in constant fear of being fired.

Whose uncontrolled financial speculation led to the failure of Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch and A.I.G. along with the disappearance of 7 Trillion Dollars in wealth once owned by individuals, pension funds, banks and insurance companies? Are 28 percent of the homes in the United States under water because of union teachers?

A concerned husband writes about his wife’s classroom in Philadelphia where “experts” removed the reading area she created for her students in the back of her classroom.  The author writes a considerable amount about what the students lost and the obvious wrong of the situation, however the larger problem is the fact that talented teachers are not allowed to do what they know is best for their students.

Of course, since Lea is an Empowerment School, skilled teachers like my wife are effectively handcuffed to the scripted curriculum. They are not free to use their knowledge and expertise, because the District says that it is better for them to act like automatons and follow the script.

The post focuses on a recent study from Colorado where students who attended online schools scored considerably lower than students who attended a traditional school.  The post also reports on similar findings in Minnesota and Pennsylvania.

From the Colorado Department of Education:

“….online students consistently achieve proficiency at rates less than non‐online students. The differences in proficiency rates were greatest in math and the smallest in reading and science. Also consistent with Table 8, logistic regression results for data reported in Table 9 indicate the within grade differences between online and non‐online students in the likelihood of achieving proficiency were all statistically significant (p<.05).”