It was a national headline making decision issued by Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Rolf Treu, whose ruling overturned five state statutes giving California teachers firing protections and rights to tenure and seniority.
The suit, Vergara v. California, was filed by Students Matter, and backed by Silicon Valley entrepreneur David Welch. Students Matter is supported by Michelle Rhee and Students First, Parent Revolution Executive Director Ben Austin, billionaire and school privatizer Eli Broad, former lawmaker Gloria Romero, and other corporate education reformers.
Plaintiffs are nine California public school students “who challenge five statutes of the California Education Code, claiming said statutes violate the equal protection clause of the California Constitution.”
Plaintiffs claim that “the Challenged Statutes result in grossly ineffective teachers obtaining and retaining permanent employment, and that these teachers are disproportionately situated in schools serving predominately low-income and minority students. Plaintiffs’ equal protection claims assert that the Challenged Statutes violate their fundamental rights to equality of education by adversely affecting the quality of the education they are afforded by the state.”
The suit challenges California statutes governing due process in teacher dismissals, using experience as a criteria during school layoffs, and the two-year probationary period for teachers.
While there is no doubt this case will become critical in the coming years, it is important to remember that the verdict is simply one by a superior court judge.
The California Teachers Association (CTA) quickly put out a statement calling the ruling “deeply flawed” and vowing that CTA, CFT (California Federation of Teachers) and the state of California will appeal.
“We will appeal on behalf of students and educators. Circumventing the legislative process to strip teachers of their professional rights hurts our students and our schools,” the statement read. “This lawsuit has nothing to do with what’s best for kids, but was manufactured by a Silicon Valley millionaire and a corporate PR firm to undermine the teaching profession and push their agenda on our schools. Today’s ruling would make it harder to attract and retain quality teachers in our classrooms and ignores all research that shows experience is a key factor in effective teaching.”
Judge Treu (pronounced Troy) writes, “This Court is asked to directly assess how the Challenged Statutes affect the educational experience. It must decide whether the Challenged Statutes cause the potential and/or unreasonable exposure of grossly ineffective teachers to all California students in general and to minority and/or low income students in particular, in violation of the equal protection clause of the California Constitution.”
He writes, “This Court finds that Plaintiffs have met their burden of proof on all issues presented.”
He states, “Evidence has been elicited in this trial of the specific effect of grossly ineffective teachers on students. The evidence is compelling. Indeed, it shocks the conscience.”
He continued, “Based on a massive study, Dr. Chetty testified that a single year in a classroom with a grossly ineffective teacher costs students $1.4 million in lifetime earnings per classroom. Based on a 4 year study, Dr. Kane testified that students in LAUSD who are taught by a teacher in the bottom 5% of competence lose 9.54 months of learning in a single year compared to students with average teachers.”
He adds, “There is also no dispute that there are a significant number of grossly ineffective teachers currently active in California classrooms. Berliner, an expert called by State Defendants, testified that 1-3% of teachers in California are grossly ineffective. Given that the evidence showed roughly 275,000 active teachers in this state, the extrapolated number of grossly ineffective teachers ranges from 2,750 to 8,250.”
In his conclusion he exhorts the legislature to write legislation “providing each child in this state with a basically equal opportunity to achieve a quality education.”
The CTA responds, “From the beginning, this lawsuit has highlighted the wrong problems, proposed the wrong solutions, and followed the wrong process. This lawsuit was not about helping students, but yet another attempt by millionaires and corporate special interests to undermine the teaching profession and push their agenda on California public schools and students.”
They argue, “Circumventing the legislative process to strip teachers of their due process rights will not improve student learning, will make it harder to attract and retain quality teachers in our classrooms, and ignores all the research that shows experience is a key factor in effective teaching.”
They add, “California’s due process in performance-based dismissal cases helps ensure teachers are not fired for speaking out on behalf of students, or for teaching subjects some find controversial. They allow teachers facing dismissal to present their side of a case, and to have their case heard by objective third parties.”
“The legislature is the place for policy decisions like this, not through court cases brought by phony front groups created by PR firms and millionaires,” the CTA writes. “This week in Sacramento, lawmakers are working together to pass a bill that would streamline the dismissal process to keep students safe, while protecting the due process rights of educators. AB 215 was unanimously approved by the state Senate and is expected to be approved by the Assembly and signed by the governor. The bill prioritizes, updates and streamlines the teacher discipline and dismissal process.”
The Los Angeles Times editorial board writes this morning, “California’s extraordinary protections for public school teachers were dealt a heavy blow Tuesday when a Los Angeles County Superior Court judge ruled that the state’s tenure laws unconstitutionally deprive students of an adequate education.”
The Times continues, “To this extent, the judge’s opinion was absolutely correct: The tenure laws are bad policy. In almost no other field of work is it remotely as hard to fire someone for incompetence, or for not doing the job at all. Lawmakers have been far too deferential to the powerful California Teachers Assn. over the years, and now they have been given a strong prod to change their ways.”
However, the Times questions the ruling on the basis of its constitutionality claims.
They write, “What Treu’s ruling leaves less clear is why these policies, problematic as they are, represent an unconstitutional barrier to a decent education. Treu quotes one witness as saying that perhaps 1% to 3% of teachers are grossly ineffective. Those numbers don’t indicate that such teachers are the key factor in the state’s achievement woes.”
Likewise the Bee editorial board indicated, “The tentative ruling could reshape public education in California.” They add, “Depending on whom you ask, it’s either a leap toward a new era of educational glory – which is our view – or a stumble down the dark road to a dystopian future in which corporations run the world.”
They continue, “The state, joined by the California Teachers Association, no doubt will appeal. It surely will be ammunition in the November runoff between union-supported Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Torlakson and Marshall Tuck, who is supported by charter schools and wealthy people, so-called reformers in the union’s vernacular.”
“The larger struggle continues between unions and the reformers for control of public schools,” the Bee writes. “It was apt that the judge ended his ruling with a call to the Legislature. Regardless of the court outcome, the Legislature must craft new rules that give students and teachers equal consideration in state law.”
—David M. Greenwald reporting
The CTA, fighting to keep bad teachers in the classroom since 1863!
Good to see that teachers union dues are going to be spent on lawyers to make sure that poorly preforming teachers can stay in the classroom and give the good teachers a bad name. I know I like nothing more than working with a terrible employee that drags down a department and forces you to take on more of their work due to their incompetence.
Glad to see the CTA is going to defend “grossly ineffective” teachers, the bottom 1-3%.
you clearly don’t think like they do. they’re not defending the grossly ineffective teachers, they’re defending the 97% that aren’t grossly ineffective from being accused of being grossly ineffective unfairly.
… by measuring and judging no one, at the expense of our children.
The question comes back to how do you define an ineffective teacher?
Vanguard, quoting Judge Treu: Based on a massive study, Dr. Chetty testified that a single year in a classroom with a grossly ineffective teacher costs students $1.4 million in lifetime earnings per classroom.
It seems that the judge accepted Dr. Raj Chetty’s conclusions without question. Chetty has been one of the strongest proponents of VAM (Value Added Modelling), which uses standardized test scores to judge teacher effectiveness. In his conclusions he is basically assuming that standardized tests are a suitable measure of all that is important in education. Chetty’s model was questioned in a report of the American Statistical Association: source
For the record, I think standardized testing to measure the quality of education is flawed, based on research that includes the ASA report and others.
It all comes down to how do you appropriately measure the quality of education? If you can answer that question convincingly, then other answers fall into place.
In past comments, Frankly has spoken up claiming an answer and promising a blog article. This would be a great time to share his conclusions.
More later…
Rather than wait for Frankly’s answer to that question, I’d be curious what yours is.
At this time I don’t believe you can identify individual performance in a quantifiable systematic way. How do you know if the band director or PE teacher is effective using VAM? When most commentors give anecdotes about ineffective teachers, it mostly has to do with grossly unprofessional conduct — consistently showing up late, doing nothing in class, showing up intoxicated. I think teachers behaving like that should be removed on a fast track. That kind of behavior is clearly ineffective. But the argument given by Chetty and this judge is using test scores as evidence of individual teachers being ineffective. I can think of too many problems with that, especially given that education involves multiple staff and programs working with students.
I think overall systems can be measured, however, say on a district level. I have commented on this before, but I will repeat here, this being data for DJUSD:
Graduation rates
Dropout rates
Disciplinary stats
Healthy kids/Climate survey
Curricular diversity — are students taking appropriately diverse curricular offerings?
Demographic measures
Matriculation to college
I think even these sets fall short of giving a complete picture, but it’s better than using only standardized test scores in math and English Language Arts. Using “test scores to hold individual teachers accountable” to decide whom to keep and whom to dismiss is a losing effort as far as I am concerned. A more successful approach would be to focus on system outcomes.
But if one wants to assert the success of VAM (value added modelling) for individual teacher assessment, there are thousands of school districts out there, and some of them are using VAM.
So pretty much, all that leaves is having it up to the discretion of the principal.
wdf1 wrote:
> At this time I don’t believe you can identify individual
> performance in a quantifiable systematic way.
Funny but every time I talk to people in education (and just about every parent) they can tell me the names of the good teachers and the names of the bad teachers. I agree with Don that I have complete faith knowing that just about every principal will also know the good teachers and bad teachers.
I also know that principals are not perfect and may make mistakes and/or push out a good teacher (say a conservative Republican who thought he would fit in) but in the end (knowing there is on “perfect” system) it should be better than our current system (especially for the poor schools that are a “dumping ground” for bad teachers).
I concur. The dance of the lemons (moving poor teachers from school, to school, to school) moves us backwards.
SoD: Funny but every time I talk to people in education…
Having raised three kids through the Davis schools, conversations I have had or heard of teachers has centered on style and personality, and preferences for certain teachers for certain kids relative to those characteristics. I haven’t heard the gossip of teachers being bad, incompetent and needing to be fired.
Don Shor once related a survey in which respondents rated their own local schools more highly than the general education system.
I had a wrong link in my comment above. It should be:
Demographic measures
I am working on it. The reason for the delay has to do with the need to research what has been done, what is being done and what the education establishment has creatively come up with in opposition.
But I have uncovered what I think is a fundamental issue related to measuring teacher performance. It has to do with deciding the mission of education in general. I think this is where we have to start.
It is my opinion that the general mission of public school education is to successful prepare each and every child for his next step in life… whatever that step should be. And the total mission of education is to create economically self-sufficient adults.
With respect to the former, public schools today do a very crappy job developing a customized education path for each student. More and more the system does the exact opposite… categorizing kids into a shrinking list of template or non-template learners, and forcing them into these groups like so many square pegs in round holes.
When I have asked my educator friends what they think the primary mission of public school education is the most common answer is “to create good citizens”. That is a problem, IMO. And possibly the very source of why things are crappy in so many school districts.
Once we can settle on this primary mission definition, we can then developed the measurements that a teacher performance management system would be developed over. For example, if the mission is to successfully prepare students for their next step, then we would need to measure the level of success for students achieving their next step. And we would need to identify all the teacher and student performance behaviors that help contribute to greater success preparing the kids to be successful in their next step.
There is something unique with respect to the key performance requirements for the profession of public school teaching. The older the student, the greater the engagement challenge. Through forth grade the students tend to idolize their teachers. But each successive year it becomes more difficult for a teacher to hold student’s attention and grab their mind and their heart. A good teacher has an engaging personality and style… just knowing the subject matter is not good enough. This demonstrated “soft skills” area of performance is given scant attention. I think it is the most important area to focus on. Because a teacher that cannot grab the heart and mind of a student is not really a teacher.
I used to tell my kids that my job as a parent involved in their education was to make sure they got through school with successful grades in the UC A – G requirements, sufficient that they could, if they chose, apply and get into a college or university equivalent to UC.
I guess we need to include this in the definition of mission. Is that the optimum design of our educations system… one that relies on this level of parental oversight and involvement? Certainly parental involvement is important in helping a child be successful in launch and life, but how realistic is that as an expectation for the majority of our kids? Frankly, I see academically gifted and engaged parents as an exception and a privilege not much different than another family might have in monetary wealth. I don’t denigrate it. I think it is wonderful. But it cannot be the standard that we design our education system around because it is not common enough. There are many, many children that come from broken families or from families where both parents are working too many hours, or that lack the academic credentials and/ore gifts to help with upper division subject matter.
If we are going to have a system designed to expect high levels of parental involvement to achieve student success, then it needs to be redesigned. For example, parents are going to need to be educated how to do this work, and we are going to need to supplement their time for doing this work.
It doesn’t have to be parental involvement. But I think that parental expectations are a major factor in the academic success and vocational outcome of the child. In my case, it was just a given that we would go to college. A bachelor’s degree is pretty much the minimum expectation in our family, with most of my generation going on to advanced degrees. And it was understood that college would be paid for. If the expectation is a high school diploma or GED, leading straight to a low-wage job — perhaps because that is all that has been achieved in that family before — then you can predict the outcome. It may be a banality to state that parents need to be partners in the process of educating their children, but it happens to be true.
You left a few things out.
You need to add a “social justice” requirement.
Also, diversity.
Then, global warming.
But teachers still get off at 2:30, and get their summers free.
Frankly: If we are going to have a system designed to expect high levels of parental involvement to achieve student success, then it needs to be redesigned. For example, parents are going to need to be educated how to do this work, and we are going to need to supplement their time for doing this work.
I recommend that school districts do home visits for “at-risk” kids. When you integrate home-environment issues into the equation — poor diet, economic stresses, education level of parents, healthcare issues, environmental safety — then in beginning to address those issues, kids might perform better.
TBD: But teachers still get off at 2:30, and get their summers free.
Maybe you’re on to something:
My wife is a lazy liar
WDF – that is not what I wrote. Here is what I wrote.
“Many teachers seem to work a somewhat light work schedule compared to most other “professions”. Many get the whole summer off “if they choose”. Many also have a work day where children leave at 2:00 or 2:30.”
I appreciate the job teachers do, but like I wrote, a friend who went from business to teaching says that teaching is not nearly as stressful as the business world.
A different friend who works 10-12 hours a day during the week, and 4 hours Sat & Sunday, his wife is a teacher. A few times when I dropped by mid day, his wife – a teacher – rolls up at 3:45 almost every day. Please note I am not uncaring, or a clod. She works hard at school with very young children. But given their age, there is minimal school work to grade, and she has heavy parental involvement, as well as a teacher’s aide. She also has these newfangled “work days” at school when there are no children there. (I forget the exact name of these days.)
I think last I read in her district they had 195 work days in a year?
If you calibrate $65,000 a year out to working 50 weeks a year, without all of the special holidays most working stuffs don’t get, it’s not a bad gig pushing roughly $90,000 per year (if a teacher worked 240 days a year instead of 195 days). And I believe the benefits are great.
You left a few things out.
You need to add a “social justice” requirement.
Also, diversity.
Then, global warming.
Exactly. If the schools were not spending so much time on this leftists indoctrination crap they would be doing more to teach the kids actual useful stuff.
Don – I understand your point about parent expectations, and I agree that it is important. I have a brother that came to this country with his family legally from Mexico when he was seven. His parents still do not speak English. His father expected his sons to get married, get some land and farm and raise some livestock and lots of kids. Tomas and I played sports together in High School. He started spending a lot of time at our house. He eventually became just like a brother to me. He is still doing double duty family stuff with his real family and us his “adopted” family. My point here is that Tomas went to college and graduated because of the exposure and help he got from our family… where the expectations for education and greater economic self-sufficiency were much higher than from his real father and mother.
But here is the thing. We cannot rely on that as a remedy to so many kids dropping out and/or failing to get a quality education. Tomas should have been helped more by the school system to overcome the damaging influence of his parents. He is an extremely smart dude, and I hate to think what his life would have been like without the influence of his second family. School needs to be that completely engaging sanctuary of learning and motivation to learn, grow, aspire, succeed. It needs to overcome mistakes of parents. One bad teacher can do irreparable harm… especially when the home expectations and help are not there.
Frankly wrote:
> It is my opinion that the general mission of public school education
> is to successful prepare each and every child for his next step in life…
So do most (but not all) teachers:
1. Get a liberal arts degree
2. Get a job in the public or non-profit sector
3. Vote for Democrats that give more money to the public and non-profit sectors
A lot has been made about a superior court judge’s ruling. I don’t see anyway this going to hold up. He’s rooting it as a constitutional claim, and I just don’t see it. A 1 to 3% rate of ineffective teachers seems very low and while he’s correct that that translates to lot in numeric terms, its not clear why this is a judicial issue rather than a legislative one.
Let me understand. 1-3% is not a sufficiently large enough to rise to the level of a constitutional claim so we should ignore the problem? How does that play out with other areas of life. Is it okay for the Government to censure 1-3% of blog writers just because? How about we incarcerate them for their rabble rousing? When does it become a constitutional issue for you? 5%? 10%? 50%? When it happens to you?
Aren’t you the one who has been writing about the achievement gap and how we need to address that issue? Do you not think that the quality of the teachers working in poor neighborhoods is a contributing factor to the level of achievement of the children in those schools?
When the government, in this case the Los Angeles School District, selectively puts grossly ineffective teachers into poorer schools within the district it is a constitutional problem. The children in those schools are not being given the same opportunity for a quality education than are children in other schools. If ‘separate but equal’ doesn’t pass constitutional muster, how can anyone argue that ‘separate and grossly ineffective’ should be okay?
“so we should ignore the problem? ”
“how can anyone argue that ‘separate and grossly ineffective’ should be okay?”
I don’t think that anyone, and certainly not David who has written on the inadequacies of the public school system many, many times, is making either of these claims.
What I do believe is that this particular case focuses on an issue that is not as simple as the proponents of the end of tenure would suggest and relies upon measurement techniques
( standardized testing) that do not necessarily measure what they claim to ( namely teaching effectiveness) rather than taking a broader view of performance.
I think that the problem is more basic than weeding out the bad teachers. We consistently fail to attract the best possible minds to teaching. We do this systematically by not only
not compensating teachers materially in the same way that we compensate other professionals, but we actively degrade the profession. The “just a teacher” mentality and
“those who can’t, teach” are prominent in our society. Unless we fundamentally re value teaching as a profession, we can nibble around the edges by weeding out the worst of the worst all we like, and we are likely to continue to have many mediocre teachers. Is this really the best we can envision for the instruction of our children ?
Tia wrote:
> We consistently fail to attract the best possible minds to teaching.
What did “we” (as a society) do to attract you to medicine? If “we” as a society had the “just a doctor mentality” would you have become a teacher?
> We do this systematically by not only not compensating teachers
> materially in the same way that we compensate other professionals
On a per hour basis teachers make more than “most” people. I know a (female with kids) MD that “job shares” with another (female with kids) MD and in her 1/2 a job she works more hours a year than a (female with kids) teacher I know (and does not have the great CalSTRS pension)…
P.S. I know a (Pre Med) UCD student that makes $30/hour tutoring high school kids. If a teacher wants a little more money tutoring from 3-6 every school day will bring in ~$16K a year and tutoring in the summer and on breaks will bring another ~$20k (More than the average American makes working 40 hours a week 50 weeks a year by working an extra 3 hours a day and full time on summer & breaks)
South of Davis
What you have left out of your anecdote about the part time MDs, is that this is their choice. There is no limitation on a doctor’s ability to work part time. They could be working full time and making much more money. This is not the same for teachers who will never have the same earning capacity. You also are failing to mention the artificially low number of openings in medical school which has been held this way for many years to maintain the high potential earnings of physicians should they choose to work full time. While teachers are protected by tenure and seniority, doctors incomes are protected by scarcity, especially in highly specialized fields.
Many teachers seem to work a somewhat light work schedule compared to most other “professions”. Many get the whole summer off “if they choose”. Many also have a work day where children leave at 2:00 or 2:30.
I know a fellow Aggie who went from working in the corporate world to teaching, and he said the difference was night and day. Fewer hours, fewer days, and tons of stress vs little stress. Bored and with time on his hands, he picked up extra hours teaching online, and also does extensive volunteer work. graduate degrees and extra education can also be used to up ones earnings.
TIa:
What does the term ‘grossly ineffective’ mean to you? To me it means someone who is completely incompetent in performing their job. Do you think we should protect Doctors who are found to be ‘grossly ineffective’ just because they have been on the job for more than two years?
“I think that the problem is more basic than weeding out the bad teachers. We consistently fail to attract the best possible minds to teaching. We do this systematically by not only
not compensating teachers materially in the same way that we compensate other professionals…”
You are absolutely right here, we do not compensate teachers the same way we compensate other professions. Every other profession is compensated on the individual’s ability of do their job well. Teachers are compensated based on the number of years they have been on the job, regardless of how well they do their work. We should treat teachers exactly the same way we treat every other profession.
Mark
I am in no way arguing for retention of incompetent teachers any more than I would argue for the retention of incompetent surgeons. I just think that this is a relatively small issue, which while it certainly needs attending to, is only one small part of a much larger issue. My concern is that we focus on this limited problem, make a major ( and untested ) change in teacher evaluation, congratulate ourselves and leave the larger issues unaddressed.
The free market doesn’t demand history teachers, dance teachers, social justice teachers.
I’m all for paying talented, legit science and math teachers more money, say, $10-20,000 more per year, if that might help lure over talented professionals from engineering and such.
What I said was that it does not appear to be a constitutional claim. My comment about the rate of ineffective teachers was not immediately related the constitutional point. But my believe is that this is a legislative matter and I have the same belief about the achievement gap, I’ve never envisioned anything other than a legislative remedy for it.
David, you have repeatedly claimed (twice in emails to me) that this case will not hold up. But you have not really put forward much to defend that position. Can you name another civil case, first decided in a Superior Court, which was later overturned by the Court of Appeals or the Calif. Supreme Court, where they found that the case was “not a judicial issue” and rather was “a legislative one”?
As you know, only a small percentage (19%) of civil verdicts decided in Superior Court are reversed on appeal. This case may be the exception. But if you think it is, then point out similar types of cases which fit the pattern you believe makes it ripe for reversal.
I cannot, I haven’t done a lot of research on it. It’s more of a gut reaction to a decision of this nature and this magnitude and these implications made by such a low level judge.
The students involved in the lawsuit complained about teachers that came to class unprepared, had no control of the classroom, told them that they would never amount to much (non-instructional message), etc.
I would say that an ineffective teacher is one that does not perform the minimal duties of the teacher – Forming a syllabus and following it, coming to class prepared, has control of the class and stays on the task of presenting the material, giving homework assignments, grading them and giving them back to the students in sufficient time for them to review/ improve their work for the next assignments. These things could easily be evaluated by a supervisor. If the teachers could not perform the minimum duties of their job, then they should be terminated immediately. Just because there is a body in a classroom, doesn’t mean that teaching is occurring.
If you are trying to evaluate “good” teachers, then you would have to review curriculum, content of each course and student achievement. That’s different.
What the lawsuit is trying to solve is the existence of “bad” teachers and be able to remove them from teaching. Those should be easy to spot.
A good teacher would provide
David is right to point out that this decision by one Superior Court judge faces a lot of appeals and thus may be overturned at a higher level. I am certainly not enough of an expert on the law–or the politics of the courts–to know if that is likely or not.
However, assuming this decision becomes law, it seems like it is a big win for poor students and a big loss for the all-powerful teachers’ unions. I realize that almost no one* in the California Democratic Party, any longer, gives a rat’s tuchus about the terrible harm bad teachers in our state do to the educational prospects of the poor. That party is largely about protecting the jobs of tenured union members who fund the campaigns of Democrats and decide what elected officials stand for. (Don’t believe that? Ask Dan Wolk his views on this decision.) And while the Republicans may be no better in terms of caring about the powerless and poor, they simply don’t count. They are busy repeating whatever nonsense Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh are expounding.
The next best step is to measure the performance of teachers–generally, I am led to believe, other teachers and site principals can tell you who is good and who is bad–and remove those teachers who are not getting the job done.
I should add that I don’t think the horrible performance of so many of our students is entirely or even mostly the fault of bad teachers or bad schools. Most of the problems start in the homes of children, where dads don’t exist and moms don’t have any idea how to properly nourish their kids. Yet it certainly is the case that very good teachers can improve the outcomes of children; and bad teachers can harm them. We owe it to those kids, at least, to make sure they don’t have a lousy teacher who is just there to collect a paycheck.
————————
*Michellle Rhee and perhaps her partner, Mayor Kevin Johnson, are the exceptions in our state. Nationally, Arne Duncan has stood up for the poor kids, but he is an exception.
Rich, I beg to differ, the GOP doesn’t follow a sinking ship like Sean Hannity. Indeed, the recent avalanche where Cantor was booted out by a university professor may be more relevant. Our president has low approval ratings, but right now the GOP seems to need a new Ronald Reagan to emerge.
My understanding is that less than 5 percent of Appeals are successful. I also wonder if the CTA and their numerous supporters will go “judge shopping” to get this overturned.
I agree with you that the majority of the problem starts in the home, something those on the left rarely mention. I’ve seen two-parent, two-income couples struggle to raise children. How in God’s green Earth does one parent do it? I can also attest that at a recent graduation I attended, 100% of the top performers (awards, recognitions) had “Tiger Moms” or “Tiger Parents” in the home.
I’m not sure what your reference to Rhee or Johnson means, and Kevin Johnson has a very controversial history.
Regarding Rhee: She is an example of a well-known Democrat who is not a shill for the teachers’ unions and a person who cares strongly about improving educational outcomes for the disadvantaged. I don’t honestly know if Kevin Johnson shares her views on educational reform. However, he likely does. KJ got his start in Sacramento politics by taking over Sacramento High School and making it into a charter school, which now performs better than all other inner-city regular high schools, which formerly it did worse than.
Regarding the California GOP: No matter what any individual leaders may think is wise policy, their brand has been destroyed in our state by the views and attitudes of national Republican leaders like Mr. Hannity and Mr. Limbaugh. California simply is not a socially conservative state, and it is very unlikely to put in power a party which calls for things like an end to Roe and the expulsion of 12 million illegal aliens.
I think there is a better opportunity for a second party within the Democratic brand, where moderates like Bill Dodd stand up to the entrenched, big money unions and lawsuit machines. There is some populist appeal along these lines. And, given that the high tech companies (and their rich executives) are paying a great share of our state income tax, there is good reason to push back against the trial lawyers who for a long time have had a big role funding the Democrats.
Rifkin: KJ got his start in Sacramento politics by taking over Sacramento High School and making it into a charter school, which now performs better than all other inner-city regular high schools, which formerly it did worse than.
“Performs better than” as measured by what? Standardized test scores?
Are there other credible performance measures you might offer?
Sac High Charter serves only a third the number of ELL students (relative to total student population) that it did when it was a neighborhood public school. It’s not the same population of students.
I would like to see comparable suspension and expulsion rates before and after KJ, but that data isn’t available. Some charters schools have a record of weeding their student population to one that is more suitable to yielding higher test scores. Some of this involves serving fewer ELL students, fewer disabled/special ed students, and stricter expulsion policies. Expelled students become passed on to the regular public school system.
WDF1:
You frequently question the validity of different performance criteria for teachers, yet as far as I know, you have never offered a method for evaluation yourself. Teachers know who among them is good at their job, and who is not. What criteria do you think should be used to fairly evaluate the performance of teachers?
I mostly criticize standardized tests that have been used so far.
I think other teachers and the principal should evaluate teachers. I think right now at least principals evaluate teachers in DJUSD.
If we were to apply private business best practice in performance management, there would be four primary criteria:
1. Customer assessments – Objective measures
2. Peer assessments – Objective measures
3. Objective measures of company performance and relative contribution.
4. Manager assessment relative to regular job accountabilities and organization guiding principles. This is combination of both objective and subjective measures. Managers need the ability to make adjustments in the performance review as they see fit. For example, if a good employee gets bad customer assessments and/or bad peer assessments, there might be a good reason to give less weight to those during a period where the employee was tasked with difficult work.
There should be a fifth for new employees or employees taking on a new responsibility… that is demonstrated progress relative to developing mastery skills.
Starting with #3, for education, I would include some student test results and drop-out rates… but I would shift to measuring the success of all students for the next step 1, 2, 3 & 4 years after the school year. This is easier for the earlier grades since the kids would still be attending public school. After high school graduation it becomes more difficult. I would support federal legislation to at least require colleges to follow up. The assessment would say “During the end of your senior year of high school, you worked with a school career counselor to completed the following list of goals you wanted to achieve over the next 1-4 years. Please rate your level of success achieving those goals.”
I don’t underestimate the amount of work that would be required for something like this. And it would take a lot of discussion and refinement to get the assessments and measures dialed in. But the same is true for all companies doing stuff like this. Note that it is so important to the success of the organization that the best companies all do it.
I’ve read that Rhee was a reformer, but she also came to the ‘Rescue” of Kevin Johnson when he was in hot water for unbecoming and problematic alleged behavior.
You’re right that the GOP stance on abortion and such items hurts them. How we deal with 20-45 million illegal immigrants is something that is less clear cut. The gov’t and Democrats won’t even give us an honest estimate of their numbers in our country, the 12 million figure is laughable and silly.
The GOP “brand” is tough to sell when the Democratic Party has gotten the populace addicted to the fantasy that Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy are real. Our State is hemorrhaging red ink, and the Big Gov’t Machine still wants to give away more Free Money! Now we have ObamaCare, which we know won’t work when we just take a look at the VA scandal. On top of this, Gov Moonbeam wants to build a White Elephant Bullet Train to nowhere while we are somewhere near $1 Trillion in debt, which I assume he wants to pay off with illegal immigrants made legal to work at McDonalds, while blue collar wages are hammered downward by excess Supply, hereby lowering state revenues. Makes no sense to me. Sounds like a race to the bottom.
Also, Mr. Rifkin, you typically provides somewhat honest assessment of political situations, but not in this response. The GOP is *not* lobbying to deport 12 million (20-45 million) illegal immigrants. One faction of RHINOS is pushing for Amnesty. A second faction is pushing for a step-by-step process, starting with closing the border, and employers using E-Verify.
Professor David Brat “in an upset for the ages” defeated Majority Leader Eric Cantor of Virginia, the second-most powerful man in the House. Professor Brat appealed to Reagan Democrats and common sense Americans.
Rifkin: She is an example of a well-known Democrat who is not a shill for the teachers’ unions and a person who cares strongly about improving educational outcomes for the disadvantaged.
I was originally somewhat dispassionately interested to see what Rhee would do for the Washington, D.C. schools. I have grown to dislike her efforts for two reasons.
1) Her idea of educational reform centered specifically on raising standardized test scores, and that teachers/principals that didn’t do it were fired. While that came across as a “no nonsense, no excuses” kind of person that appealed to the general public, it was simple-minded and revealed weakness of her depth of study of the problem.
2) She also believes that educational improvement can take place without concern for or in spite of the environment that students live and grow up in outside of school. There is a direct correlation between educational performance and income. Rhee would support the narrative that the correlation is due to crappy schools and crappy teachers. I think it’s a narrative that actually drives nearly any potentially dedicated teacher away from wanting to teach in poorer communities and eventually becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Teachers in lower income communities deal with students lacking a healthy diet, adequate healthcare, environmental safety, dealing with ecomonic stress, parents lacking strong educational background, strong fluency in English.
I think a better approach is to better integrate social services around public schools: have an onsite social worker (counselor) and nurse at each site, healthy meals, after school homework help and enrichment, summer enrichment services, for parents, adult ELL & GED prep services and connections to local community college programs. Throw in there good pre- & post-natal care and pre-school.
Whatever shred of hope I may have had in the regime of standardized testing under NCLB was eliminated when I read of the work of James Heckman, a U of Chicago economist, in studying the outcomes of test-takers of the GED.
source
You would need to control for people that got a GED diploma from drop-out-ite-is and those that get one as an alternative. If are going to compare the contribution toward success for each method, we would need to control for the reasons.
My girlfriend in high school about broke my heart by taking the GED at the end of her sophomore year. She then went on to community college. Then she realtors license and eventually opened her own business and became very successful. The reason she split was that school was a drag for her. It was/is a drag for a lot of kids… she was just smart enough to not waste so much time.
With respect to time… the other consideration is the advance of the Internet. People know walk around with a hand-held computer containing access to almost all the known information in the world 24×7, 365 days a year. We would be better off spending a few months teaching them how to use the devices to develop knowledge and find answers to questions, then to subject them to months and years of lectures from uninspiring human educators.
Doesn’t this really prove that the GED is watered down?
BTW, I know 2 people who got a GED, one has a law degree from a top-10 law school, the other is on his way to finishing nursing school and may get a Masters degree.
You can google James Heckman and GED and get tons of hits, including his published academic papers. He studied equivalent populations for each, those who received a HS diploma & those who passed the GED.
The GED has been around since after WWII when it was impractical for returning GI’s to go back to high school (those that didn’t finish before enlisting), and many clearly showed evidence of having high school grad equivalent skills. The U.S. military and education system needed a mechanism to decide that returning GI’s could have a HS (equivalent) diploma and go on to college. It was not originally intended as an alternative to a high school diploma as an ongoing program, but that’s what happened.
The reason she split was that school was a drag for her. It was/is a drag for a lot of kids… she was just smart enough to not waste so much time.
I don’t doubt that we can cite anecdotes of individuals who defied the trends of the study, nevertheless the trends exist, and they indicate that one is likelier to have better longterm results from finishing HS than taking a short cut with the GED. I know personally a handful of acquaintances who passed the GED and have model lives but also several (including a couple of cousins) who passed the GED and missed having as promising future.
In the latter category I can see where non-tested “non-cognitive” skills — creativity, ability to delay gratification, ability to work with others, longterm strategic thinking and planning, ability to present one’s self before an audience, leadership, citizenship, etc. — were lacking. Commonly we don’t even speak of high school in any terms beyond “what classes do you have to take?” as if it’s a menu of knowledge sets – math, English, science, history, etc.
GI’s who dropped out of high school to join the military clearly had an education beyond that of a high school diploma. And to succeed in the military, one needs those non-cognitive skills, listed above. The military is, in part, about developing those skills. I also read recently (I will have to do some searching to find it, maybe it’s actually James Heckman himself) that the military preferred having recruits who graduated from high school over those who passed the GED.
We would be better off spending a few months teaching them how to use the devices to develop knowledge and find answers to questions, then to subject them to months and years of lectures from uninspiring human educators.
We would be better off expanding our view of foundational (grade school) education as being more than “finding answers to questions”.
Expanding the school year would help. Frankly, after a lot of recent contact with teenagers, many of them are coddled, and their youth / lack of maturity is extended by their parents. Generally speaking, I don’t see kids with chores, rules, structure, life lessons being taught, etc. It is the “parent as friend” model, and the acceptance by many of frequent drug use and wanton behavior. I don’t recall parents in the 60s or 70s or 80s not knowing where their children were at 1 AM, over and over and over.
While we have gained in technology, we have lost common sense know-how that kids used to get on the farm or helping around the house / neighborhood. And I think the iPhone being an appendage to the head, and rap music, and twitter, just aid all of that nonsense. In some ways it is very frightening to see where this will lead.
I think a lot of this is reflective of being a rich nation. We’re decades away from the Depression and it’s lessons.
TBD: I don’t recall parents in the 60s or 70s or 80s not knowing where their children were at 1 AM, over and over and over.
I think you’d find that every generation frets over its youth, how they’re raised or not raised, how much worse the youth are today compared to “when we were growing up”, how awful the education system is, and how everything is probably getting worse. So it was with you in your youth, your parents in their youth, etc. Your comments are a sign that you’re turning into your parents, like it or not.
wdf1, I have witnessed many (not all) parents today who seem more interested in being friends with their children, instead of parents.
Parents will parent in whatever way they think works. It is typical to criticize parenting styles, but you won’t win that argument unless perhaps they ask you for suggestions which probably would be rare. Are you a parent?
I wouldn’t call giving a child most or everything they want / “enabling” / spoiling a child a “parenting style”. I’d call it rolling over.
Almost the exact opposite of the Tiger Mom style.
“I agree with you that the majority of the problem starts in the home, something those on the left rarely mention”
I agree with you that the majority of the problem starts in the home. I disagree that this is rarely mentioned by those on the left. As a left leaner, I can state that I have often commented on the familial problems as the core of educational problems. Hunger, lack of stable housing, lack of effective preventative medical care, lack of something as simple as being read to on a regular basis are the keys to lack of performance. I just feel that this is a circle. Unless you are planning on dictating who can and cannot have children and enforce your standards on the population, how do you propose to keep the poorly educated adults that we have now from procreating. I would love to hear your real world solutions to this dilemma spelled out in anything other than preachings and platitudes about how people “ought” to live their lives.
“how do you propose to keep the poorly educated adults that we have now from procreating.”
I don’t think anyone suggests we need to prevent ‘poorly educated adults … from procreating.’ However, I do think we could help these folks–particularly the young women who end up stuck with the kids.
One thing I favor–though I suspect it is still highly unpopular–is to give all young women who come from disadvantaged circumstances* an incentive to delay pregnancy until they are stably married or gainfully employed or at least 25 years of age. Along with that, we need to make free birth control much more widely available.
It costs us about $48,000 per year to house one person one year in a state prison. I suggest we proffer that amount of money to each qualifying young woman who puts off pregnancy until she (and hopefully her husband or other stable partner) is ready to raise the child. In other words, let her finish her own childhood, learn some sort of profession or at least job skills, and establish a stable relationship BEFORE she has a kid. As things now stand, we do the opposite. We offer a lot of aid to young women (from very poor circumstances) if they have children, and then they become trapped in a cycle of poverty and usually bad life decisions.
With $48,000 in their pockets, and no children yet in need of them, these young women would have the capital to turn their own circumstances around and eventually have a middle class living and family. Sure, some would just blow the money. But others would use it like an insurance policy, saving some for a rainy day. And a few would invest it wisely. Whatever happens, it seems to me a good societal investment, compared with the cost of incarceration, which is so often the outcome their sons will encounter.
*I am not exactly sure how to define disadvantaged circumstances. But I would imagine it includes someone who grows up in poverty, from a broken home or a home where one parent is in the prison system, and the family relied on welfare, food stamps and Section 8 housing to survive.
Rich wrote:
> One thing I favor–though I suspect it is still highly unpopular–is to
> give all young women who come from disadvantaged circumstances*
> an incentive to delay pregnancy until they are stably married or gainfully
> employed or at least 25 years of age.
I think something like Rich’s idea would help, but I think that my idea of forcing any guy that gets a girl pregnant to either actually raise he kids, pay full child support to EVERY kid EVERY month or live in a “boot camp” (run by former Marine drill instructors) learning job skills until they can pay full child support EVERY will DRAMATICALLY reduce the number of guys having sex without a condom (and as a bonus we will have less people on welfare, less criminals, and less hookers).
Our current system of letting guys like this have 22 kids walk around (looking for more women to get pregnant) without paying a penny in child support is not working:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zOzMgTA8lfU
Stop rewarding poor life choices.
I would recommend rewarding good life choices, which in turn would require recognizing that the “free market” which some idealize does not always reward hard work, persistence or intelligence.
TBD wrote:
> I agree with you that the majority of the problem starts in
> the home, something those on the left rarely mention.
The left (including Tia) will talk about “problems” in the home like “Hunger, lack of stable housing, lack of effective preventative medical care”, but they won’t talk about the “real” (not politically correct) problem that some homes just have smarter kids (as talked about in the book the “Bell Curve”).
This is not a racial thing it is a fact. Anyone that thinks that the kids of Yale Law Professor Amy Chua (the famous Tiger Mom who wrote the book) who went to Harvard and Harvard Law and married Yale Law Professor Jed Rubenfeld who went to Princeton, Juilliard, and Harvard Law are no smarter than the typical kid in a housing project is either ignorant or so caught up in political correctness that they could not say the sky is blue if that color became “un PC”.
This is (despite not being a big fan of the teachers union) why I agree with most teachers that it is not fair to set pay based on test scores since teachers in Portola Valley with an average parent IQ over 120 will end up making way more than the teachers in Sausalito (where almost all the kids live in the Marin City Housing Projects) with an average parent IQ under 100 even if they work twice as hard.
Rich
Now we are talking.
We pay a lot of lip service to how young people should “wait until they are married” to have children. However, if we do not provide ready access to effective birth control, what we are really saying is that they should wait until they are married to have sex.
Good luck with that approach.
I am a strong proponent of incentivizing the behavior that we want rather than verbally and socially demonizing them for not following our “holier than thou” prescriptions. I strongly favor free, readily accessible, long acting, reversible contraception ( IUDs, sub dermal implants, and injections ) as first line with the birth control pill, patch and ring, as second choices. I would further monetarily incentivize both men and women for each year that they remain childless as well as for each year that they stay in school or training program.
I feel it is very important to provide incentives for both men and women equally as both are equally responsible for the act that leads to conception although they pay disproportionally for the consequences when conception occurs.
If everyone has health insurance, and health insurance is required to cover reproductive medicine regardless of where that person works, then that problem is largely solved.
I think countries like Iran and Mexico, where their fertility rates have dropped dramatically, not only “cover reproductive medicine,” but they have also actively engaged in “reproductive health educational programs,” and at least in Mexico, they have added to that by encouraging “emergency contraception” to avoid unwanted pregnancies.
In other words, it’s not just covering the costs of birth control. It’s actively teaching birth control among those who are not yet ready to be responsible parents.
Rich
“In other words, it’s not just covering the costs of birth control. It’s actively teaching birth control among those who are not yet ready to be responsible parents.”
This is definitely the case. It is also the case that public education on all aspects of sexual health, reproduction, and what it really means to be a parent all should be part of our curriculum just as we should teach personal and family economic responsibility, how to manage personal finances, how to prioritize, establish and maintain a budget.
Many people here have recognized that not all parents provide this kind of education for their children. And yet many of these same people feel content to demonize the individuals who have never had a chance because they were not taught these skills either by their own family, or by the schools and therefore have no possibility of passing on to their own children skills that they themselves do not possess.
… but they have money for movies, beer, cars, clothes, sometimes drugs, but they can’t buy condoms?
TrueBlueDevil
So you know these folks and you know what they spend money on…..or perhaps you are just telling a stereotypical story that you have come to believe. And, as I previously pointed out, even with the purchase of condoms, there will still be a 1/5 to 1/6 chance of a pregnancy occurring if that is the only means of contraception.
Of course, we could take the radical step of making birth control pills over the counter as they should be based on their safety. They are far, far safer than either alcohol or tobacco.
I’ve lived, I’ve been around. What angers me are the people with 5 and 10 tattoos who complain that they don’t have enough money to feed their children, or can’t get a decent job. Hello! We can’t protect people from stupid, but maybe I am just from another generation. But showing up for an interview tatted out, or with bags under your eyes from getting high the first week into your job just doesn’t cut it.
[edited by moderator]
Tia Will, after seeing some of the problematic behavior I have seen with teens and their developing brains, the apparent increased use of marijuana, and the skyrocketing use of ADHD / mood meds, and the often checked out or half-checked-out parents… yes, I would have to give some thoughts to your suggestions.
Having a 19-year-old HS dropout girl pregnant is a recipe for disaster. On top of that, odds are more likely it will become cyclical, as she will not have the skills to pass on to her children. Many of these teens are also dealing with an exploding gang culture.
As far as the men / boys, I think a major way to bring them into the loop is by changing the laws to require the girl / woman to identify the father, and to then hold the male financially responsible. There was a legal case years ago which through this out, which really just gives the bad boys free reign to create havoc in our society with few consequences.
I’d also revisit the changes that Obama brought to the welfare reform that Bill Clinton signed which had some major successes.
South of Davis
I do not dispute IQ distribution or the fact that genetics plays a role in intelligence just as it does in eye or hair color. This has nothing to do with being “PC” which for me is a meaningless term which those who are not left leaning love to sling at those who are.
While you are providing examples, I will provide you with another. My father was a ship fitter in the Navy Yard
with an income that put us in the “working poor” category until he died when I was nine ( we were just plain poor after that). My mother never made it past 9 th or 10th grade in school. Of course this was before IQ testing was common, so I have no idea how the genes were tossed as far as IQ. What I do know is that my parents recognized the importance of education. My mother read to me daily until I was old enough to out read her sometime in elementary school. My point is that while my route to medical school was much more circuitous and laborious than that of the majority of my peers, I was ultimately successful and for the last 20 years of my career, did exactly the same job for the same pay as the graduate from Harvard whose office was down the hall from mine. This is a multifactorial issue and cannot be consigned to a simplistic “nature vs nurture” point of view no matter how much more convenient that might be for either side of the issue.
Tia Will, congratulations on all of your success.
However, I would disagree with you that PC is a meaningless term. Dr. Ben Carson gave a wonderful speech at a White House Prayer Breakfast that includes his thoughts on Political Correctness (PC) and how it is affecting our society (and free speech).
PC is just a conservative pejorative now. It used to have a broader meaning, but not any more.
It defines quite well the thought police of the Left.
It often – today – has to do with avoiding or hiding basic facts that might hurt someone’s perceived feelings, especially protected classes (i.e., anyone who isn’t a straight white male).
I’m not even sure hunger is a problem, today it is more likely obesity.
Try 5+ hours TV, no Fathers, minimal expectations, no discipline, etc.
TrueBlueDevil
Food insecurity is still a major problem in this country. Many people during the recession had to resort to food banks to be able to feed their children, many of these for the first time.
Tia wrote:
> Food insecurity is still a major problem in this country.
When you define “food insecurity” as a 220 pound 12 year old girl who is “worried” she might not get candy after dinner (or donuts in the morning) then we have “food insecurity”, but it is not a “major problem” in the US.
I believe childhood obesity is the real issue. Children rarely walk now, and sit at home in front of the TV or iPhone or Other device. Parents also have quit (not all, but many) pushing vegetables and fruit.
In fact, I was surprised to see at a local school that they will send home food for the WEEKEND if they fear a child may go without food. So let’s see… there is WIC… there are food stamps… and now elementary schools are sending home food for the weekend?
TBD
“When you define “food insecurity” as a 220 pound 12 year old girl who is “worried” she might not get candy after dinner”
But I don’t define it that way. And I don’t believe that anyone who is not employing extreme sarcasm does either. If you really want to know about food insecurity, I would recommend talking with those who run food banks. I am sure that they have more accurate information than either you or I.
TBD, exercise is part of the equation. However, a much bigger factor is how much sugar a person (child or adult) consumes. Our obesity epidemic has largely blown up as sugar consumption has increased. For children, a major problem is the consumption of sugary drinks.
Take a look at this graph: http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-l0R86eSVPQU/Tz8qOHNKoTI/AAAAAAAAA4I/4poy7FVHMv0/s1600/Sugar+1.JPG
For everyone, a good rule of thumb is don’t drink your calories. Don’t drink fruit juice, eat fruits with lots of fiber instead. Don’t drink coffee or tea with sugar or other sweeteners. Don’t ever drink those highly processed creamer products. Don’t add sauces to your foods which are loaded with sugar: ketchup, for example, has more sugar per ounce than a Coca-Cola.
Rich
Your dietary suggestions are all accurate. Also I would mention that switching from soft drinks with large amounts of sugar to so called “diet sodas” is an ineffective strategy for weight management. The theory is that because they are very sweet, they trigger a positive feedback mechanism that causes our bodies to crave still more sweets, so although the drink itself does not sugar, it feeds our inborn desire for sweetness thus sabotaging our weight management efforts. So what should we be drinking……obviously water.
SoD: When you define “food insecurity” as a 220 pound 12 year old girl who is “worried” she might not get candy after dinner (or donuts in the morning) then we have “food insecurity”, but it is not a “major problem” in the US.
Food insecurity means a lack of access to a healthy diet. A Twinkie or a small bag of Cheetos is cheaper than most individual fruit or servings of lettuce or a stalk of broccoli. There are places where lettuce or broccoli is hard to come by (food deserts).
Food insecurity like that leads to obesity, diabetes, cognitive disfunctions, poor immune system, in general, poorer health.
” There are places where lettuce or broccoli is hard to come by (food deserts).”
I have no doubt there is some truth to that in some places in the United States. However, you should not discount the demand side of the equation in what food is sold in these (usually urban) food deserts. There is plenty of highly processed white bread, sugary barbecue sauces, alcoholic beverages, sodas, Kool Aide, candy bars, sweet teas, pork products, etc., etc. Why do stores sell those items? Demand. Why is it much harder to find fresh fruits and vegetables and quality proteins? Again, it is mostly a matter of demand.
It’s also true that in a lot of inner-city “food deserts” there is no Safeway or Albertson’s or Kroger’s or other major supermarket, which ordinarily carries a wide variety of healthy foods and a ton of junk as well. I’m not exactly sure why these chains avoid locating in some poor neighborhoods. However, having lived in the West Oakland ghetto, I can give my own personal experience with the Safeway we had, which was (and still is) about 3/4ths of a mile from where I lived.
That store had a lot of problems. First, there were 5 or 6 armed robberies at that store in the few years I lived in West Oakland. Fortunately, I was never there when a robbery took place. But I spoke with neighbors who were, and they told me they’d never go back. It was too risky.
Second, as a result of the robberies, you could not just walk into that Safeway. There were armed guards out front and inside the store, and you had to pass through a metal detector. If you looked suspicious to the guards, they would pat you down or tell you to leave.
Third, a related problem with the store robberies was the repeated theft of delivery vehicles. I recall going there one time and finding the police investigating the theft of a meat delivery truck, contents included. Some gang-bangers beat the tar out of the driver, threw him to the pavement, and stole his truck.
Fourth, that neighborhood–at least back in the late 1980s–was a haven for the Nation of Islam and an offshoot black Muslim group which operated a bakery a half block from Safeway. Why that matters is, because you always had to queue up to pass through security before entering the store, the NOI men and their competitors would essentially harass black customers (and shun whites), by offering them “bean pies” for sale. AFAIK, no one wanted to buy one of those things, but many people were intimidated and felt like if they did not give some money to the men in bow ties, they would be beat up or robbed by them later on. As much as anything, those groups drove customers away from Safeway.
Finally, because the neighborhood was mostly poor, a lot of shoppers used food stamps. This was before recipients were given food stamp debit cards. The fact was that just processing the food stamps took more labor time, and that made the store less profitable.
I have not been back to that store in more than 20 years. However, that neighborhood has a lot more non-blacks (mostly Asians), and it has a lot more people who are not poor. I am told the black Muslims no longer harass people out front. And so it’s a different world. But the point is: chains probably don’t think they can make profits in a lot of inner-cities, given the social realities.
Tia, I think there was a typo or mis-reading … I didn’t define “food insecurity” or a “220-pond 12 yo girl”… I think you’re referring to someone else’s post.
I believe there are multiple issues at play. Single-parent families, which puts tremendous pressure on one person. Busy lives, a lack of priorities (families somehow pay for multiple iPhones, but not veggies?), a lack of exercise, many children no longer walking, parents rarely pushing children outside like parents did in previous generations, fear of crime (a reason why some parents don’t want their children walking to school), TV as a baby sitter, and more. “Play” used to be very unstructured, out in front of the house / on the playground; now, families sign up their children for structured “play” or classes, which they drive to, and which often cost money.
As one small piece, some schools have found multiple positive results from what they call the “walking school bus”.
FYI, planting a garden, and having fresh veggies in the summer and fall, is pretty inexpensive. And it provides exercise!
Rifkin: I have no doubt there is some truth to that in some places in the United States. However, you should not discount the demand side of the equation in what food is sold in these (usually urban) food deserts.
I had in mind urban food deserts, as well.
A supply side factor is that most processed foods (Twinkies and Cheetos, for instance) contain some component or by-product of wheat, soy, or corn, which are heavily subsidized by the government. Farmers get paid to plant or not to plant those crops, either way. On the other hand, I have yet to hear of any government subsidy to grow broccoli. This is a point that Michael Pollan articulates very well, though he’s not the only writer/researcher to make that point.
Rich, the same thing still happens in many urban areas. I worked for such an urban grocery store when young, and the police were there 5 days a week, minimum. High insurance premiums hence drive away a lot of stores.
On top of that, I can’t remember how many people tried to hit what some called the “ghetto lottery”. The first time I saw this, I didn’t know what it was. A woman had slipped in the produce department, and was in pain! Call the ambulance! I was worried, but the department boss rolled his eyes and let me in on the ‘scam’ that I would later see another dozen times… one person slipping, and another always there to prove that they saw the slip, and prove that they saw the water on the floor.
Despite these challenges, new immigrants from asia, central and south america have access to a lot produce. Times have changed.
Gardens are still cheap for those who have a flower bed. (There is plenty of room to plant veggies in some parts of South Central and Oakland.
WDF: “A supply side factor is that most processed foods (Twinkies and Cheetos, for instance) contain some component or by-product of wheat, soy, or corn, which are heavily subsidized by the government.”
Actually, that is not a supply factor for food deserts in urban areas. Those products you mention are all sold in places like Davis, too, where we also can buy fresh veggies and good proteins and so on.
If your claim is simply that junk food is made cheap by ag subsidies and that cheapness is what appeals to low-income people, I doubt any serious scholarship would support that claim. Keep in mind that sugar, which is in most junk food, costs 5-6 times as much in the United States as the world market price. That also is due to ag policies here, which restrict the supply of imports (in order to benefit wealthy sugar growers in Florida, Hawaii, Texas and Louisiana. (Yolo County used to be a major source of U.S. sugar beet production.)
Your analysis/theory robs poor people of the power to decide what they choose to eat. It’s as if you think farm subsidies for certain crops magically make junk food popular. My view is that the poor in general, but not entirely, make bad food choices, and they need to learn what they should be eating and what they should avoid. They buy too much with sugar, even though sugary foods are relatively expensive, given our import restrictions and supply chokes. Wheat is subsidized, but they don’t buy whole grains, they opt for processed bleached white flour products. Too many don’t eat apples, they opt for fiberless apple juice.
All of these sorts of bad choices are not just made by poor people. Look around Davis. Half the people with decent amounts of money are fat, due in large part to many bad food choices, too.
And while this problem is worse among the poor in most U.S. sub-groups (especially Latinos*, blacks and southerners of all hues), it’s generally not the case with poor immigrant Asians who, despite having little money, eat a fairly healthy diet.
(Side note: As Asians integrate into the U.S. culture over generations and eat like most other Americans do, they are also getting very fat. I grew up with a lot of Asians in Davis, all of whom were either born in Asia or their parents were, and they ate Chinese or Korean or Japanese food at home, and none of them were fat. Now, take a look at the UC Davis student body, which is half Asian. As a percentage, that group has as many fatties as the whites have. And generally, these are not poor kids coming from food deserts. They are, unfortunately, removed by a generation or two from a leaner Asian diet. They are drinking sodas and high-calorie Starbucks drinks and so on.)
________________
*The crazy country now for fat people is Mexico. It’s the one country on earth which is fatter than the U.S. They don’t have those policies you refer to. My suspicion is the problem in Mexico is largely about sugar and soda pop. Not only do Mexicans drink an ungodly amount of soda, but their preference is for soda which is much sweeter and has much more sugar than in most other countries. It’s bad that U.S. makers put High Fructose Corn Syrup (originally developed in Japan, FWIW) in our sodas. But really, Mexican soda with cane sugar is even worse, because it is so much more sugary.
Rifkin: Keep in mind that sugar, which is in most junk food, costs 5-6 times as much in the United States as the world market price.
Except that sugar isn’t used as much. Try HFCS (high fructose corn syrup)
I mentioned HFCS in my post. I know all about it.
You should know that the reason it was adopted here by many food processors was because the import price of sugar here was made artificially high by U.S. ag policies designed to enrich U.S. sugar growers. Its adoption was not directly a result of corn subsidies. As it happens, corn prices in the U.S. are the same as the global price. The subsidies are cash payments to corn and other grain farmers, including all the grain farmers in our area. Those subsidies do not lower the price of corn. In fact, a different U.S. policy, which encourages the conversion of corn into ethanol, greatly raises the price of corn here and abroad.
“Except that sugar isn’t used as much.”
That is actually not true. We consume far more cane sugar by weight than we consume HFCS. You can see the data here: http://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/sugar-and-sweeteners-yearbook-tables.aspx#.U5vW6RboaX0
Rich, Mexico (and Mexicans) having a weight problem bigger than ours isn’t just about soda pop.
Lots of Mexican foods are fried. I am not a nutritionist, but what is eaten also seems to lack variety. There is a joke that goes, “What is in a burrito? Flour tortilla, beans, rice, cheese, onions, cilantro, meat.” What is in enchilada? “Tortilla, beans, rice, cheese, onions, meat.” What is in …
At least from what I have witnessed, there is also a lack of exercise, even walking, and a lot of TV watching.
We are also importing the poorest of the poor, we’re not importing the Mexican middle- or upper-class. Many have not even formally studied their own native language.
“We are also importing the poorest of the poor, we’re not importing the Mexican middle- or upper-class. Many have not even formally studied their own native language.”
Very interesting dialog on food and food insecurity.
I am a sort of a food snob. I am the cook in the family. My dad was the cook growing up. I have experienced the difficulty of changing the bad eating habits of my wife, her family and my friends. It has been exhausting, but I am usually successful for all but the most screwed up and stubborn.
One thing I have learned is that it is the adults – mostly the parents – screwing up their kids. The cycle cannot be broken until and unless the adults are broken of their terrible eating habits. And then the real work begins.
We can blame all the producers of food products, but that will never solve the problem. The solution is a massive education campaign… beginning with the parents of young children.
I believe we train our palette… eat something a few times and it will become normal. So, eat healthy and it will become normal. I paid my kids to try things they said they would not eat. I just had to do it a few times, and then they learned to like it. Now they crave the food that is good for them.
TBD, keep in mind that Mexicans have been eating tortillas, beans, rice, cheese, onions, cilantro, meat and so on for hundreds of years. It’s only in the last 40 years that they have become so fat. I am sure that less exercise is a problem, there, as it is here. But the number one thing which has changed in the Mexican lifestyle over the past 30-40 years is their huge increase in sugar consumption, and most of the added sugar they now consume is in what they drink, namely sodas.
Frankly, someone close to me has their kids addicted to mayo by 4! By mustard, 0 calories, is never used.
Is this how Latin children can eat hot foods?
I agree, tough to get kids to eat good food when the parents set a bad example.
These are all good reasons to support a garden in every school (thank you, Delaine Eastin), and a national emphasis on healthy eating for children, food gardening, and a focus on ‘food deserts’ — all initiatives of First Lady Michelle Obama.
Don Shor: These are all good reasons to support a garden in every school (thank you, Delaine Eastin), and a national emphasis on healthy eating for children,…
Also, the school parcel taxes supplement the school cafeteria offerings, including a salad bar. I remember that specific component of the school parcel tax was bitterly opposed by at 1 or 2 commentors on this blog a few years ago.
Rifkin: …keep in mind that Mexicans have been eating tortillas, beans, rice, cheese, onions, cilantro, meat and so on for hundreds of years. It’s only in the last 40 years that they have become so fat. I am sure that less exercise is a problem, there, as it is here. But the number one thing which has changed in the Mexican lifestyle over the past 30-40 years is their huge increase in sugar consumption, and most of the added sugar they now consume is in what they drink, namely sodas.
And a reasonable remedy is to have appropriate and accessible pre-natal/post-natal care available to lower income families, in Spanish if necessary. A lot of what you observe comes of ignorance — a lack of access to credible and understandable information (in Spanish) about what an appropriate healthy diet should be, and possibly where and how to access that diet. Timely and relevant information would save lots of money later on.
Don
“If everyone has health insurance, and health insurance is required to cover reproductive medicine regardless of where that person works, then that problem is largely solved.”
While I agree that this is a huge step forward, it still does not address the issue of being proactive as a society.
I daily meet women who are deterred from obtaining effective contraception by the sheer volume of misinformation propagated by those who will stop at no amount of lying to scare women into following their preferred version of morality. I recently met a young woman who was not using effective contraception because she believed the church provided information that birth control pills would make her sterile and or cause her to have cancer. This is not rare although it is an extreme example. My conversations daily need to counter a barrage of misinformation and exaggeration of genuine concerns.
During a week of rural outreach in Honduras, I saw what a government policy of simply telling women the truth about contraception, providing the means for free for all regardless of ability to pay, and offering free reversal for a planned pregnancy will do for the proportion of planned vs unplanned pregnancy. If we as a society were serious about lowering the rate of government dependence, we would seriously consider lowering the rate of unintended pregnancy as a primary public health policy. We Know from multiple examples around the world how this can be done, we just lack the political will and the separation of church and state to enact an effective policy.
Tia wrote:
> if we do not provide ready access to effective birth control
Correct me if I am wrong but I’m pretty sure you can still walk in to any Planned Parenthood or campus health services office and if you don’t have any money they will give you free birth control (like just about everyone I know did in the 80’s and 90’s).
> I recently met a young woman who was not using effective
> contraception because she believed the church provided information
> that birth control pills would make her sterile
If you want to stop this you need to talk to the person telling lies and tell them to stop. If they will not stop post their name and the name of the church to this site (and maybe write the Enterprise) so the community can hopefully shame them so they stop lying to women.
There are more than 10 types of birth control for women and despite what most women say if they get pregnant they either wanted to get pregnant or just didn’t care since it is not hard (or expensive) to not only use birth control but to insist your partner also does (I bet there is not a single person in America that got pregnant while on Norplant with a partner using a condom).
SouthofDavis
Your assertion is incorrect. Even the most statistically effective means of BC, the IUD and the Nexplanon have an efficacy rate of < 1/100 per year. They are not 100% effective. That is true of only abstinence. So if you have 150 to 200 women using one of these methods, one of them will become pregnant in one year statistically speaking. That doesn't mean she was attempting pregnancy, or just didn't care. All of the other means are less effective. Condoms
while great for the prevention of sexually transmissible diseases are a very ineffective means of bir th control with a 1/5 to 1/6 chance of pregnancy in a year.
As for your last assertion, I don't know about that particular combination, but I have had one couple in my practice with the following situation. She had had a tubal ligation, he had had a vasectomy, and they were pregnant. People tremendously overestimate the efficacy of all methods short of abstinence.
I’m not a MD but I can tell you that if someone actually had a tubal ligation and/or vasectomy they will not be involved with a pregnancy.
Was the lady from the same religion that told her birth control would make her sterile? I know there are religions out there that “pray” for things to happen (and they usually don’t happen).
I know quite a few guys who have had a vasectomy and just like any electrician will check for current (so they don’t get electrocuted) after “cutting” the power I don’t know a single guy that did not have a MD confirm that they are “shooting blanks” after getting “snipped” (so they don’t have more kids).
We can’t “fix” stupid and just like we will always have people driving drunk we will have people that think the condom in their wallet will prevent pregnancy (or that guy offering vasectomies on Craig’s List for $100 is a real MD)…
“I’m not a MD but I can tell you that if someone actually had a tubal ligation and/or vasectomy they will not be involved with a pregnancy.”
You can certainly tell it, but that does not make it true. This happens to be within my area of expertise. Female sterilization carries with it a failure rate of greater than
18/1000 depending on what type of procedure is done. These surgeries are not 100% effective as any surgeon would be able to tell you.
Even vasectomy is not 100% effective. A reliable surgeon will inform prospective patients that it is greater than 99% effective and this is true. What makes it less than 100% effective is the body’s amazing ability to heal itself, in this case to perform what is called recanalization in which the vas performs a feat of recreating a channel for the sperm to pass.
Just because you do not know anyone to whom this has happened does not make it impossible, or even particularly rare.
I needed two vasectomies… the urologist actually accused me of playing a trick on him using another man’s sample. He missed something on the first procedure. Lucky me. My wife said it was fair since she went through two difficult pregnancies.
So, yes, sterilization procedures are not 100%.
And, yes, birth control is not 100% effective.
But stupid seems to be the primary cause of unwanted pregnancy. So, let’s focus on fixing that.
“But stupid seems to be the primary cause of unwanted pregnancy. So, let’s focus on fixing that.”
If you would agree to replace the word “stupidity” with “ignorance” or
“ill informed” I would agree. Again, for anyone who believes that it is stupidity, check out those pseudoscience sites on the Internet and then tell me, based on the distrust of the medical community frequently encountered ,that it is stupidity and not misinformation and ignorance that prevents folks from availing themselves of statistically effective contraception.
“Correct me if I am wrong but I’m pretty sure you can still walk in to any Planned Parenthood or campus health services office and if you don’t have any money they will give you free birth control (like just about everyone I know did in the 80′s and 90′s).”
You are correct that this can be done easily here in Davis or in the Sacramento area. You can only access student health for free if you are a student in most systems. Rurally and in our inner cities, not so much so. And recently Planned Parenthood has been under relentless attack from those who refuse to look beyond their abortion policy to recognize that they have been a major provider of women’s health care to those with no other options.
“If you want to stop this you need to talk to the person telling lies and tell them to stop. If they will not stop post their name and the name of the church to this site (and maybe write the Enterprise) so the community can hopefully shame them so they stop lying to women.”
Well that might work well if it were one individual or organization. Unfortunately we are talking about something that is fairly widespread. Check out just a few sources :
http://www.bbc.co.uk/ethics/contraception/against
http://www.rsrevision.com/GCSE/christian_perspectives/life/contraception/against.htm
If you don’t believe this is widespread, just google arguments against contraception and you will be amazed at the number of anticontraceptive sites and the breadth and depth of mis-
information that they offer. Now if you happen to be a health science major, you can probably wade through much of the falsehoods and figure out what is true. Unfortunately, even the college educated can be fooled by much of the pseudoscience that is being propagated.
one thing seems amiss: how do you blame what has been called systemic failure on 1-3%?
i’d also like to guess that few industries have such a low failure rate as 1 to 3 percent. and while you can make an argument that the difference between teaching and other jobs is tenure, i’d like to see the termination rates across similar levels of education and income before i buy into the rhetoric.
DP wrote:
> one thing seems amiss: how do you blame what has been
> called systemic failure on 1-3%?
The problem we have is that the 1-3% who fail get stuck teaching the bottom 1-3% and the union denies that fact that they are failing and won’t let the school districts fire them.
It would be like GM selling 1-3% of all cars with flat tires and selling them to the poorest 1-3% and then having the UAW tell them that the tires are not flat and that they can’t get new ones.
I’m sure it is higher than this, but they are simply targeting the worst of the under performing.
“It would be like GM selling 1-3% of all cars with flat tires and selling them to the poorest 1-3% and then having the UAW tell them that the tires are not flat and that they can’t get new ones.”
And then telling them that they can’t return the cars because of the UAW contract.
And then telling you that the grossly incompetent mechanics had a job for life!
The way I see it, our society has removed individual judgment and discretion from our institutions in the name of fairness. Tenure, a law aimed to protect teachers from being fired capriciously, in practice means that a number of teachers are not taught/expected to improve and are not open to improvement. Perhaps ironically, teachers and administrators enforce our society’s “zero tolerance” policies on our students. The system does not treat students like the developing people they are; they are either conformists or not conformists.
The cost to our democracy is huge. We’re making Science Fiction come true, replacing capricious monarchs with unfeeling bureaucracies. Under both of these cases, “failure” then adopts a new definition. A failed teacher is a teacher that the administration will actually make the effort and spend the $200,000 plus to go through the process of removal. A failed student is a student who actually needs instruction to learn the habits needed to conform to academic standards.
Well said. I think a summary point to this is that we have evolved the system with extreme protections for teachers and this has devolved the system with respect to protection for students.
We have layered rules specifically because there is a lack of trust for administrators to do the right things with respect to treating teachers fairly as employees of the system… but then the teachers bristle and block rules that attempt to do the same for the customers of the system… the students.
Why the difference? It should actually be the reverse?
It is the union-political connection. Teachers have it, students do not.
“there is a lack of trust for administrators to do the right things with respect to treating teachers fairly as employees of the system”
Interesting that you make this point now in view of the criticisms of how the administrators handled the Peterson/Crawford controversy and the GJ accusations with regard to top
administrator Sheriff Prieto. There must be a balance between blindly trusting the actions of administrators and heavy handed top down enforcement of protections for those whose actions warrant improvement, not protection. We just haven’t found that balance. I see no need to demonize either side in attempting to find the optimal regulatory format.
And these supervisors and administrators we don’t trust can make upwards of $200,000 per year!
i think the bigger cost to our democracy is the abject rejection of science in the south and evangelical pockets of this society. i can’t see how we are going to succeed with this attitude toward science. that worries me far more than tenure.
Hence we import science students from India and China.
and east asia as well.
DP” I think the bigger cost to our democracy is the abject rejection of science in the south and evangelical pockets of this society. i can’t see how we are going to succeed with this attitude toward science. that worries me far more than tenure.”
Worries me too.
MrsW: …a number of teachers are not taught/expected to improve and are not open to improvement.
Based on what kind of observation(s)?
wdf1 wrote:
From the New Yorker (you can read about more “rubber rooms” all over the US for the next week if you have the time):
“These fifteen teachers, along with about six hundred others, in six larger Rubber Rooms in the city’s five boroughs, have been accused of misconduct, such as hitting or molesting a student, or, in some cases, of incompetence, in a system that rarely calls anyone incompetent. The teachers have been in the Rubber Room for an average of about three years, doing the same thing every day—which is pretty much nothing at all. Watched over by two private security guards and two city Department of Education supervisors, they punch a time clock for the same hours that they would have kept at school”
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/08/31/090831fa_fact_brill
I don’t have any problem fast-tracking dismissals for that kind of gross professional misconduct. But why use standardized tests such as Chetty discusses (mentioned above) to catch this kind of incompetence? Are my kids taking all these standardized tests in order to catch these kind of abusive, molesting teachers that you present?
As a parent, I have never had or heard this conversation: “Oh, I hope my child doesn’t get that teacher. He/She is bad. I understand that he/she hits and molests kids.”
SoD: These fifteen teachers, along with about six hundred others, in six larger Rubber Rooms in the city’s five boroughs, have been accused of misconduct, such as hitting or molesting a student, or, in some cases, of incompetence, in a system that rarely calls anyone incompetent.
First, I hope those teachers get a fair hearing.
Second, this is what the California legislature passed today:
Bill reforming teacher dismissals goes to governor
This has taken how many decades?
Opps, but LOOK! I only read what you posted, but this applies *only* to teachers who are guilty of abuse and “certain drug crimes”!!
So grossly incompetent teachers are still protected. What hogwash! Politics, politics, politics, all at the expense of children.
wdf, I want to answer your question, but I no not want to embarrass my children and I am reluctant to bash specific DJUSD educators in this forum. And the specifics of each story make the case. I can say this generally. I have had children in the DJUSD schools for more than 15 years and if a teacher was observably poor the first time, s/he was poor the second time, etc. I know that many tools are available to teachers to improve their craft, including—but not only–being observed by an administrator or another teacher.
By the way, I don’t think test scores define poor teachers either. I define poor teachers as disrespectful, disorganized, capricious, lacking self-discipline, not interested in developing humans, and lacking a basic enthusiasm for their job, year-in-and-year out .
I echo that definition of poor teacher. In addition, there are some that are just not wired to teach as a profession.
Through out my education and professional career, there have been people that were excellent at teaching me new knowledge and skills, and then there have been those that were terrible. And in most cases there was nothing different between the excellent and terrible except their ability to teach.
the real question is whether tenure is what is preventing these teachers from being terminated. that’s where i think we need to address – i’m not convinced that’s the case.
It is, former Governor Schwarzenegger fought this battle and lost.
It depends on what policies you go for. Schwarzenegger tried for a 5 year probationary period. I think three years would have been better.
So you’re saying that after a 5-year period, we should promise someone a job for life? I don’t know anywhere else where we promise a 28-year-old a job for life… well, except for civil service.
These teachers aren’t doing research, they’re teaching reading,writing, and math.
TBD: So you’re saying that after a 5-year period, we should promise someone a job for life?
Job for life?
I call it due process rights. I think within a probationary period, you will see very quickly if a teacher has what it takes or not. The idea is to make observations of a new teacher and see if they can adjust to being productive. I think it’s hard to determine within two years, but three years is about right. Five years is getting ridiculous. Within three years one would know.
My mom was a bilingual teacher in an inner-city elementary school in Texas. Principals came and went. One principal tried to get my mom out of school because she (principal) really didn’t want the bilingual education program. The principal set out to show that my mom was incompetent. But the bilingual program was district policy. She needed union intervention and what due process rights she had in order to fight back. My mom was awarded “Teacher of the Year” shortly after that principal left.
Sure, it’s my mom and you could say I’m biased, but I saw up close the kind of work she put into her job, especially on the home front. A couple of times I got to hang out around her classroom to see her in action. She appeared to function as well as any teacher I ever had, except generally she had students who were more challenging than who I grew up with.
I have seen how arbitrary that decisions of teacher competence can be.
Some folks in Davis thought Julie Crawford was incompetent as a volleyball coach, others disagreed. We saw what a lack of due process evaluation looked like in the coaching program.
Tenure = job for life. I don’t see why we should anoint a 28-year-old with a job for life when few other occupations have this bennie.
Why make it such a massive undertaking to remove clearly incompetent teachers?
You saw what happened to Julie Crawford. There are many ways in which teaching becomes unduly politicized and the ultimate weapon is to get someone fired.
Why make it such a massive undertaking to remove clearly incompetent teachers?
That’s what this is for.
I also think there has a been a significant failure to invest in ongoing professional development for teachers. That is a major way to remotivate and rejuvenate your workforce.
Do you think the teaching profession is attractive enough for you to make a go of it?
wdf1, what happened to Coach Crawford, and Coach Choate, was a travesty. (Have we ever even seen a full accounting of what the lawyers spent their time on? Because according to Ms. Choate, for her complaint, she was only interviewed for one hour, and non of her witnesses were interviewed. But the law firm racked up the hours! On what?)
The same thing happens in private industry, except there are few protections unless you are in a protected class. Can we legislate away stupid or petty people or decisions?
Should we allow 10, 20, 30% of students to have below-average teachers, because we are too afraid to evaluate them or ship them out?
My old post: “Why make it such a massive undertaking to remove clearly incompetent teachers?”
You wrote: “That’s what this is for.”
The link you provided looks like the teachers unions and the Democrats came up with a way to give a red herring to the serious and substantial flaws in being unable to get rid of poor or under-performing teachers.
You asked: “Do you think the teaching profession is attractive enough for you to make a go of it?”
If I were younger, I would think long and hard. I have friends who have had decent careers, wonderful interactions with kids, had second part-time jobs to take their yearly pay to near $100,000 per year, and still taken some or most of their summers off and traveled the world. Some have taught in India, others Ireland, and / or done volunteer work throughout the world.
The retirement, work week and time off in the summer is almost impossible to get in the private sector, let alone the job stability.
TBD: The link you provided looks like the teachers unions and the Democrats came up with a way to give a red herring to the serious and substantial flaws in being unable to get rid of poor or under-performing teachers.
You’re arguing that it’s bad because it’s not perfect in your eyes, and in part, it seems, because “the enemy” passed it. Perhaps you notice that it passed unanimously (including Republicans), which suggests that your political position might even be to the right of the most conservative legislator.
I see it as an important step in the right direction. We can identify gross unprofessional behavior, so let’s deal with it. The rest of the supposed 1-3% we’ll end up arguing about for longer.
Did I write that it was bad? Or a red herring? A red herring … window dressing that will allow the CTA and Democrats to drag this out another 5 or 10 years. I said nothing about “perfect”, that is your exaggeration.
Here is an example of what Michele Rhee did when she was in charge of the Washington DC Public School System. From Wikipedia:
“Referring to the 266 teachers she laid off, Rhee told a national business magazine: “I got rid of teachers who had hit children, who had had sex with children, who had missed 78 days of school. Why wouldn’t we take those things into consideration?” At the time, she did not provide evidence of her accusations nor comment when asked why these accused teachers were allowed to be in the district prior to the dismissals. Union leadership asked Rhee to apologize to the 266 teachers for making remarks that were without basis in facts.[35] Rhee refused to apologize, but clarified that only one teacher was dismissed due to sexual abuse allegations.[36]”
wdf1: I don’t see why we should congratulate or call “an important step” when we are finally addressing a simple, common sense, logical actions which should have been done 20 years ago.
Indeed, I call the previous inaction either incompetence, or political gamesmanship … at the cost of our young people.
TBD: I have friends who have had decent careers, wonderful interactions with kids, had second part-time jobs to take their yearly pay to near $100,000 per year, and still taken some or most of their summers off and traveled the world.
A second part time job while they’re teaching? I don’t have a problem with a summer job, but during the school year, that’s something I don’t want to see happening as a parent. I know what the home front looks like for a conscientious teacher, and it wouldn’t allow for a second part-time job. If a teacher is taking a second job, then there isn’t time to put in what it takes to be effective. A teacher’s job doesn’t end for the day when class is dismissed.
I would enjoy grade school teaching, and I think I’d be pretty good at it. But the pay is not attractive for me.
TBD: Here is an example of what Michele Rhee did when she was in charge of the Washington DC Public School System.
I don’t have any problem with fast-tracking the professional incompentence examples listed — physical, sexual abuse, habitual absence or lateness — as long as they get a fair hearing.
Beyond that, you will have a hard time establishing what is or isn’t bad teaching. All I’ve ever heard is a “I know it when I see it” kind of answer, and “everyone knows who the bad teachers are”. I have had my kids in classes with teachers that at least some parents publicly declared to be bad teachers, and I disagreed with that assessment.
TBD: what happened to Coach Crawford, and Coach Choate, was a travesty.
What happened to Crawford (& Choate) was indeed a travesty, but some parents decided that Crawford was incompetent and others disagreed. That is what a lack of due process rights (“tenure”) looks like.
MrsW makes the case another way. I concur.
A NYT (6/12/14) debate on the recent Vergara decision: Does Tenure Protect Bad Teachers or Good Schools?
wdf1 wrote:
> If tenure prevented achievement, Mississippi (no teacher tenure) would
> have stellar schools and Massachusetts (teacher tenure) would have
> failing ones. The opposite is true.
That is like saying that involved parents have nothing to do with student success and “prove” it by pointing out a single example of a kid with crack smoking parents who goes to Harvard and a single kid who has involved 140 IQ parents that drops out in the 10th grade.
I don’t think that anyone has said that getting rid of teacher tenure will make the schools in South Central LA have the same test scores at Davis or Portola Valley, but if we make it just a little easier to fire the guy who plays games on his smartphone 4 hours a day some poor kids might do a little better.
SoD: That is like saying that involved parents have nothing to do with student success and “prove” it by pointing out a single example of a kid with crack smoking parents who goes to Harvard and a single kid who has involved 140 IQ parents that drops out in the 10th grade.
I’m not sure I fully follow your point. The problem is that the typical national narrative, which I think you embrace, is that if we direct our focus most on improving the quality of teaching (which in this argument seems to be defined by standardized test scores), then everything will get better. “If we just get rid of those 1-3% ‘grossly incompetent’ teachers, then we’ll start to see some improvement. I argue that this strategy is not going to work out, and that this is really a distraction and a delay for addressing bigger issues affecting the quality of education.
The first order factor to address is childhood poverty, not teacher tenure or union busting. Massachusetts has a lower rate of childhood poverty (15% vs. 35% source) and a better social safety net for kids, including better healthcare. Whatever Mississippi is doing or not doing is not helping their childhood poverty issue, and thus that poverty is likelier to continue into adulthood.
High childhood poverty rates tend to be a marker of poor communities and social structures and a higher likelihood of not having parents involved in the child’s education.
For their kids, South Central LA needs more social service assistance than Davis or Portola Valley.
SoD made a simple point, I wonder why you’re not following it. Responses like this make me wonder if you’re really more interested in protecting the jobs of grossly incompetent teachers, let alone inadequate teachers. On top of this, you add “straw man” arguments to detract from a serious discussion.
I didn’t read where he said “we direct our focus most” on anything. This is one big issue that has ripples effects. We can identify and solve it, whether it improves education 10% or 50%.
We’ve tried all of the theories on the left, and they haven’t helped much. We decreased class sizes, we upped funding to 50% of the state budget, we have tenure, we have a short school year, and still we are near bottom in the whole United States.
You are right that we avoid bigger issues, like closing the border. When we import millions of children that don’t speak the language, don’t know their own language (this has been stressed to me by 2 teachers), and may not have a culture that stresses education, dropping school test scores are logical. When you import millions of poor people from an already poor country, this is no surprise.
The destruction of the family is also a key point. You’ll notice that ethnic groups that have great success have typically solid 2-parent families – Jewish-American, Korean-American, Ethiopian-American, and Nigerian-American to name a few.
But liberal politics have made mentioning this not PC. Fifty percent of poor families are headed by a single parent, so this addresses your concern.
Closing the border would also decrease the Supply of cheap labor, which would raise the wages for those on the lower end of the economic system.
TBD: On top of this, you add “straw man” arguments to detract from a serious discussion.
Well, you’re right. I don’t follow you. Please explain your “straw man” point. If it’s about the 1-3% grossly ineffective, well that comes right out of the judge’s ruling:
” Berliner, an expert called by State Defendants, testified that 1-3% of teachers in California are grossly ineffective.”
which you yourself seemed to embrace right here. (By the way, Berliner actually disputes how he was quoted by the judge)
We’ve tried all of the theories on the left, and they haven’t helped much. We decreased class sizes, we upped funding to 50% of the state budget, we have tenure, we have a short school year, and still we are near bottom in the whole United States.
And what about childhood poverty? The correlating factor affecting educational performance is poverty.
We can identify and solve it, whether it improves education 10% or 50%.
If you think that having weak teacher protections will improve the situation, you have 50 states, thousands of school districts, dozens of education systems in other countries to point to as examples of policies to follow. There is loads of research to check on, if you think your point has validity. I don’t think doing away with teacher protections will improve things one bit. What I expect is that it will drive away good teachers. Again, look at Massachusetts and Mississippi. If you think Massachusetts is an unfair comparison, well you have dozens of other states to look at to compare with Mississippi.
You are right that we avoid bigger issues, like closing the border.
Obama has complied. If you want strict border control, Obama’s your man. Obama would have probably lost many more Latino votes in 2012 if Romney hadn’t embraced the policy of “self-deportation”.
You’ll notice that ethnic groups that have great success have typically solid 2-parent families – Jewish-American, Korean-American, Ethiopian-American, and Nigerian-American to name a few.
You’re also talking about a higher socio-economic status of those immigrants. It is typically families with economic and educational means who succeed in paying for the boat trip or airline flight to the U.S. There are actually plenty of Latino-American kids who perform impressively as anyone else in the Davis schools. But you know what? Many of them are children of faculty and researchers at UC Davis. But there are also plenty of Latino kids who come from lower SES families.
Again,
In all of the years I was enrolled in public schools myself and all the years my children have been enrolled, the poor teachers were almost always burned-out older adults, not 3-5 years into their career, but 20-30 years into their careers. The reasons for burn-out are many. Maybe a teacher teaches a course, like computers, because it’s a niche and more protected from lay-offs during times of tight budgets—but she hates the topic and it’s like walking through cement every day. Maybe after raising her own children and relating to hundreds of other people’s children for years, she ready to spend more time with adults. Maybe the generation gap has just gotten too big. Maybe she’s stressed out by all her outside of work responsibilities. Maybe she never sees whether or not her hard work has paid off, and she no longer feels motivated.
But the reason for staying in the job after being burned-out is always the same. It’s for the money and benefits.
Burn-out could be viewed as an occupational hazard. So, why doesn’t the Union use some of their dues for retraining burnt-out teachers into non-teaching occupations? Why doesn’t the Union help their members develop resaonable expecations? Trade-unions do.
Great comments and ideas.
But my guess is that they see the calculations of what their retirement will be, so they are hanging on to make that a bigger amount, and I don’t think going somewhere else is going to replace that.
I’ve also met a few flighty teachers who landed in schools for strange reasons, made friends, and hung on despite only getting 1/2 the job done. I can specifically think of a teacher who was a wonderful person, a member of two “protected classes”, and a poor teacher. The two teachers classes where his students went knew his major deficiencies – and they paid for it.
MrsW: Burn-out could be viewed as an occupational hazard. So, why doesn’t the Union use some of their dues for retraining burnt-out teachers into non-teaching occupations?
I argue for better ongoing professional development programs. Teachers also have options for changing their assignments.
I like this approach as the normal first response better.
I’m all for helping, but why are we responsible for their potential burn out?
It offers a more productive and experienced workforce.
Another alternative is to go for the “churn and burn” approach. Work them until they burn out and then grab another worker to fill in.
Slightly off-topic but related by our discussion about the effect of using test scores, instead of discretion, to make important decisions about an individual’s life and future–
CDC reports that last year one out of 9 children was diagnosed with ADHD. They correlate the diagnosis with NCLB’s implementation.
http://www.berkeleywellness.com/healthy-mind/mood/article/adhd-overdiagnosed
“CDC reports that last year one out of 9 children was diagnosed with ADHD. They correlate the diagnosis with NCLB’s implementation.”
The reach of the teachers union and education establishment is astounding. That they could put out junk “science” like this to detract from the embarrassing truth never ceases to amaze me.
The correlation to ADHD diagnosis and NCLB is circumstantial at best. The real reason that ADHD diagnosis has increased is that the education system has grown more and more lazy… doing a worse and worse job keeping energetic and physical learners engaged. Most of the changes have been to the benefit of girls and at the expense of boys.
Certainly NCLB has not helped by putting more emphasis on teaching to the test. However, the root cause is more money going to the education labor force at the expense of choice for the kids. Title IX has also not helped.
If I had young daughters or granddaughters today I would feel much better about their future prospects for academic and career success than I would my sons and grandsons. Assuming all had normal amounts of testosterone.
I happened upon a school schedule from the 1910s or 1920s once from a Catholic school … it had the kids exercising or doing chores / caring for animals 4-5-6 times a day! … they probably didn’t have much energy or time to be fidgety.
I’ve had personal experience with this, and thank goodness we were hands on. A normally energetic boy may have been railroaded toward being medicated … but we were hands on, and simply reducing sugar, and sharing a few tips to and from the teacher, helped to solve the problem. I also think the principal wanted him to have some kind of a special classification so that he could have extra time during the assessment test, but this was unneeded with the common-sense changes that were made.
TBD wrote:
> I happened upon a school schedule from the 1910s or 1920s
> once from a Catholic school … it had the kids exercising or
> doing chores / caring for animals 4-5-6 times a day! … they
> probably didn’t have much energy or time to be fidgety.
Sounds like what the kids at Thacher (see link below) do today.
My friend is a teacher at Thatcher and since as a guy who has helped out in the past on their school camping trips I can’t take all the credit for the success of the kids that go there I’m sure much of the credit can go to the heavy work loads that includes caring for animals.
http://www.thacher.org/podium/default.aspx?t=128024
TBD: …it had the kids exercising or doing chores / caring for animals 4-5-6 times a day! … they probably didn’t have much energy or time to be fidgety.
I don’t argue against this. But the regime of NCLB would argue that this takes valuable time away that could be used for studying for the standardized test.
Frankly: The correlation to ADHD diagnosis and NCLB is circumstantial at best. The real reason that ADHD diagnosis has increased is that the education system has grown more and more lazy… doing a worse and worse job keeping energetic and physical learners engaged. Most of the changes have been to the benefit of girls and at the expense of boys.
NCLB has set the priorities for what’s important and how to account for it (standardized tests).
source
The last paragraph covers the point that there is correlation but not cause. The real causes are identified in the rest of the paragraph. The part that is not identified is the migration of our entire education system to be more oriented toward girls and more hostile to boys. And if you want to argue this then you need to explain the similar correlation with the statistical trends for education achievement by gender.
Part of the reason I am so optimistic about technology replacing humans for delivering instruction is that it removes gender, social and political bias that is rampant and destructive.
Frankly wrote:
> The correlation to ADHD diagnosis and NCLB is circumstantial at best.
Does anyone know when kids with ADHD started to get unlimited time on the SAT?
A friend on the Peninsula said that “every” kid he knows “is” ADHD since if all the other kids are getting extra time you need to get your kid the extra time on the test. He said in the world of Ivy League educated Peninsula parents it is easier to find a MD to say your kid is ADHD than it is to find someone that knows a MD who can write a “medicinal” marijuana prescription at a Reggae concert…
Taking On Teacher Tenure Backfires: California Ruling on Teacher Tenure Is Not Whole Picture
I would add that impoverished schools lack adequate support, leading to teacher frustration and questioning if their efforts are making a difference.
Why that ruling against teacher tenure won’t help your schoolchildren
Mr. Hiltzik’s second paragraph is false, so it makes me wonder what his motives are. Does he have ties to the CTA?
Frankly: Part of the reason I am so optimistic about technology replacing humans for delivering instruction is that it removes gender, social and political bias that is rampant and destructive.
The point you miss is that standardized testing is already a form of automating education. It is taking education to the level of following a cookbook. We are demanding that teachers be chefs, and then insist that they follow directions in a cookbook.
There is a simple experiment that you can do to try out your hypothesis. Take a regular course in person, with live instructor and classmates. Take a similar course using whatever technological replacement for humans that you want. Then evaluate the experience of each.
In prior generations technology existed for replacing humans for delivering instruction. They were called books and TV/video. In my life I have taken an online class, a class delivered by video, and a correspondence course way back in high school. I’m glad that I tried out each, but live in-person instruction by a knowledgeable experienced instructor in a class with other engaged students was the most satisfying.
Another thought experiment to consider is imagine that we had developed a some sort of mass instruction delivery system that took humans out of the equation (MOOCS, online classes, videos). Would Bill Gates, Barack Obama, GW Bush, or the Koch family be convinced to enroll their own children in such a system? I doubt it.
Again, there is more to education than delivering content. You seem to forget that from time to time. Boys need as much or more non-cognitive (e.g., working together, leadership, delayed gratification, creativity, planning and organization) development as traditional cognitive skills (language arts, math, science, history).
wdf “You seem to forget that from time to time. Boys need as much or more non-cognitive (e.g., working together, leadership, delayed gratification, creativity, planning and organization) development as traditional cognitive skills (language arts, math, science, history).”
I really like this statement and I agree with it. What I am struggling with is the idea that removal of “tenure won’t help my children.” It’s true, ending tenure wouldn’t by itself help my children, any more than NCLB helps my children. It’s how laws are implemented by people that will or will not help my children.
So that got me thinking. How would the people of DJUSD respond to the end of tenure, if it were to occur? Would they model grace? Would they model the democratic value of protesting peacefully, if they disagreed? Or would they use instructional minutes to rant to their students about it for the whole school year and forget to teach the curriculum? And what if they had forgotten to teach the curriculum for various reasons for several years, would they still be in the classroom?
Again, there is more to education than delivering content. You seem to forget that from time to time. Boys need as much or more non-cognitive (e.g., working together, leadership, delayed gratification, creativity, planning and organization) development as traditional cognitive skills (language arts, math, science, history).
I don’t forget that at all. I agree with it. But we have cut all of that out and instead have retained and grew all the social justice crap.
We don’t need 2000 crappy algebra teahers. We need one or two of the top teachers with recorded lectures, and sophisitcated software that tracks and manages the content based on the needs of the student, and 24*7 online tutors and some live tutors that are $20 per hour college students, and education track and career cunselors and instuction facilitators. We can reduce the algebraa teaching workforce by 75% and hire these other employees and buy the technology and also cut out the crap humaninities ciriculim that is really just leftist political indocrination and can be looked up a smart phone when needed and save money that can be used for the non-cognitive activities.
Even in independent study such as at DSIS, they have found that separate meetings with fully-trained accredited math teachers were necessary. My son had one regular teacher, and one math teacher. And the math had to be reinforced with weekly group and/or one-on-one meetings. I guarantee, your proposal of teaching by remote control, moderated by college students, would not work in many — probably most — instances. How did your kids do in math? Would they have done better using online modules? I doubt it.
Why do you always use the word ‘crappy’ whenever you discuss education issues? None of my kids’ teachers were ‘crappy’.
I can tell you the work load of Common Core seemed to be half of what it was the previous year. The math work load was probably reduced 75%. No bueno.
Frankly: We need one or two of the top teachers with recorded lectures, and sophisitcated software that tracks and manages the content based on the needs of the student, and 24*7 online tutors and some live tutors that are $20 per hour college students, and education track and career cunselors and instuction facilitators.
There are “virtual charter schools” that seem to fit what you’re describing. Is there one that you can highlight that has credible success?
MrsW: How would the people of DJUSD respond to the end of tenure, if it were to occur? Would they model grace? Would they model the democratic value of protesting peacefully, if they disagreed? Or would they use instructional minutes to rant to their students about it for the whole school year and forget to teach the curriculum?
I think the bigger question is how would involved and passionate Davis parents respond? How would we define “incompetence”? Would we see more cases like Julie Crawford’s?
As for teachers, I suspect that they would teach just as they’ve been teaching, maybe a few would leave if the parental heat became too much. I would hope it wouldn’t be “genuinely good teachers” leaving, if we can agree on how to define that.
And would great teachers rush in to fill positions where needed, especially in poorer performing school districts?
Would we see more cases like Julie Crawford’s?
What does that mean? No tenure would mean that Julie would have the freedom to leave to get a fresh start, if her workplace were intolerable. Maybe if she were free to leave, the adminstration would do their job and provide processes, support and leadership for helping people with conflicts. Maybe if she could leave, the State would reform the rules that don’t let teachers leave their district and move someplace else.
Have you ever worked in a functional respectful environment? Was everyone in golden handcuffs?
“And would great teachers rush in to fill positions where needed, especially in poorer performing school districts?”
I beleive there are many middle-aged adults seeking meaningful second careers who would work in the poorer performing districts in a heartbeat, if it didn’t require starting over on the salary scale. So, yes. If the reforms continue.
As for teachers, I suspect that they would teach just as they’ve been teaching, maybe a few would leave if the parental heat became too much. I would hope it wouldn’t be “genuinely good teachers” leaving, if we can agree on how to define that.
We loose genuinely good teachers all the time. They are young energetic creative and know how to use technology. They also dont have tenure.
MrsW: What does that mean? No tenure would mean that Julie would have the freedom to leave to get a fresh start, if her workplace were intolerable.
It comes down to why is a teacher dismissed? Is it because of standardized test scores? Is it because a school board member or other influential parent tries to get him/her dismissed? How will it be clear enough for everyone what the criteria are so that they won’t be abused? In Julie Crawford’s case, it isn’t quite clear to me why she was dismissed.
Arbitrary standards of dismissal mean that it’s difficult for teachers or district staff to plan longterm how to develop a program. Julie Crawford did not have to keep coaching volleyball either. She could easily have picked up coaching work elsewhere. But she did participate in developing the current volleyball program over several years, and perhaps wanted to participate further in developing it.
We loose genuinely good teachers all the time. They are young energetic creative and know how to use technology. They also dont have tenure.
Only in the first two years when they are in probationary status do they not have “tenure”. Perhaps what you are arguing against is the seniority system?
Keep in mind that the Vergara decision, if you review the article above, was decided based on accepting the assumption that you can measure the quality of instruction and education based on standardized test scores. And that one can identify ineffective teachers based on those same test scores. At one point I thought that maybe that would work. In reflecting on my own experience (I’m someone who tested well on those kinds of tests in school) and in seeing the experiences of my own kids and of others, I think that is a very flawed assumption. It makes me question the judge’s judgment.
Drum roll … did you folks read the Chronicle today? Some very interesting points on the minima response to the tenure ruling. This really stuck out:
“In contrast to most state pols, retiring Democratic Rep. George Miller of Martinez, a longtime education advocate, wasn’t the least shy about stating his feelings.
“I believe in job security, but if you read the decision, it clearly shows that the present teacher tenure laws are a real barrier to low-income and minority kids getting a good education,” Miller said.
Politicians don’t make a peep on teacher tenure ruling
http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/matier-ross/article/Politicians-don-t-make-a-peep-on-teacher-tenure-5553081.php?cmpid=hp-hc-bayarea