F.A.C.E. to FACE
F.A.C.E. BULLETIN
8/24/05
Dear Friends,
(Keep Best Teachers By Paying Them Accordingly) by Tampa’s own Lincoln Tamayo (VP of Operations for the Academy Prep Centers) and Tampa Tribune Columnist.
(Black-white gap: Whose fault?), St. Pete Times Staff Writer. What about parental school choice as a reform tool? Hello!
An interesting commentary in the Knight Ridder/Tribune News Service, (Brown: A great decision - except for schools). Dr. Peterson makes some excellent arguments that need serious consideration by opponents of parental school choice.
We typically try to send only issues affecting Florida, but this article in the Washington Times is worth the read (Teachers union mortgage will finance campaign).
Thank you for Stepping Up For Students,
Michael A. Benjamin
Executive Director, F.A.C.E.
Florida Alliance for Choices in Education
Aug 10, 2005
Keep Best Teachers By Paying Them Accordingly
As we begin a new school year, let's acknowledge outstanding public school teachers who often work in stressful environments to help mold our children into productive citizens.
Our society must do a far better job of honoring these teachers with the accolades and the pay they deserve. To do that, we must severely curtail the power of the teacher unions in determining teacher pay.
Flawed System
Teacher union leaders operate as though their teachers work in communes, where everyone is expected to enjoy an equal outcome. They habitually confuse the basic American right of equal opportunity with a nonexistent right to equality of outcome. This commune mentality has infected the entire public school system, as reflected in great part by the disastrous consequences of social promotion in thousands of our schools over the past four decades.
Why do we continue to abide a system wherein sheer talent and quality of output have little, if anything, to do with how a person is compensated? Why do we continue to abide a system that treats our teachers as though they're widget-makers in a factory?
It is absurd to continue with a salary scale that determines pay almost exclusively on the basis of seniority and education level.
Assume, for example, that there are two teachers at the same school with equal years of experience and the same level degree. Teacher A consistently taps the great potential of her students, always volunteers to work well beyond her responsibilities and has a tremendous rapport with her peers and parents. Teacher B, on the other hand, does the bare minimum to prepare for his classes, which consist almost exclusively of readings from texts or obsolete and dull videos. Teacher B gets to school precisely when the collective bargaining agreement dictates he must arrive, and you can bet the farm that his jetpack is on and he is out the door as soon as the agreement allows him to leave.
Unfortunately, the teacher unions have created a scenario wherein Teachers A and B get paid the same. If that isn't a surefire way to create the least common denominator of productivity in a school, then I don't know what is.
To its credit, the Hillsborough union has made a minor concession to bonuses for strong veteran teachers who agree to teach in some of our worst schools. (Why don't union leaders agree to merit pay/bonuses for all outstanding teachers?)
How does the Pinellas teacher union respond to this? In a recent newspaper article, Jade Moore, executive director of that union, is quoted as follows: ``Are you willing to pay more to get the best teachers or the greediest teachers? We like to think every teacher is a high-performing teacher. Money is not going to be a motivator.''
Note the commune mentality.
Better Jobs Elsewhere
It's amazing that a teacher union leader would associate higher pay with teachers' greed rather than rewarding meritorious service. One must wonder whether folks like Moore are descendants of Lenin.
We must allow for real flexibility in paying our best teachers, as we do in so many other professions that honor good work through higher pay. Until we implement flexible pay scales, we will continue to lose great teachers to higher-paying professions.
And until our education and political leaders muster the courage to tell the teacher unions to take a hike, we may be assured that our best and brightest public school teachers will continue to languish in the school communes the unions have created or, worse yet, take a hike themselves.
Lincoln Tamayo is vice president of operations for the Academy Prep Centers of Tampa and St. Petersburg.
Black-white gap: Whose fault?
The Pinellas school system may argue in a trial that "societal factors" are at the root of the disparity between black and white students.
By THOMAS C. TOBIN, St. Pete Times Staff Writer
Published August 17, 2005
TAMPA - The Pinellas school system is trying to close the achievement gap between black and white students but can go only so far, the district argued Tuesday before three appellate judges.
If forced into a trial over a lawsuit that blames the school system for fostering the gap, the district would defend itself by citing a variety of "societal factors over which we have no control," said Hala A. Sandridge, a lawyer with the firm of Fowler White Boggs Banker, which is handling the case for the district.
"That is going to devolve into a series of minitrials for thousands of students," she told the Second District Court of Appeal in Tampa. For example, Sandridge said, the district might want to show that individual students do poorly in school because of poverty, poor parental involvement or too much television watching.
Other students do well, she said, arguing that race is not a factor.
The lawsuit contends that race is the primary reason for the gap and that Pinellas suffers from a systemwide failure to educate students of African descent, in violation of Florida's laws and constitution.
The plaintiffs are a black father, William Crowley, and his son, Akwete Osoka. But Pinellas Circuit Judge James R. Case broadened the case last year to class-action status, meaning it now represents all 21,000 black students in Pinellas public schools and those who may enter the system in the future.
The district is appealing the class-action ruling, resulting in Tuesday's hearing. It is unclear when the appellate court will rule.
To overturn Judge Case, the court must find that he abused his discretion, said Guy Burns, the Tampa attorney representing the plaintiffs. Sandridge, citing other cases, urged the court to consider how unwieldy the case would be if allowed to go to trial.
The achievement gap has been debated and examined by everyone from teachers to governors to Harvard scholars. The theories about its causes are numerous and controversial - from alleged racism on the part of white teachers to a purported lack of emphasis on education by many black families.
The Crowley case, if successful, would bring that multifaceted national discussion into a Pinellas courtroom. Its goal: to compel the district to find the silver bullet that so far has eluded other school systems.
Pinellas' gap is considerable and can be measured in many ways. For example, 63 percent of white students in the district scored at their grade level or better on the reading portion of last year's Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test. Only 30 percent of black students scored as well, lower than any other minority group.
In 2004, 72 percent of white students graduated from Pinellas high schools in four years with standard diplomas. The figure for black students was 43 percent.
Numbers like that result in poor job prospects or lives of crime for many young black people, and they are "foreclosed from society," Burns said in arguing for the plaintiffs.
"It's time for us to stop this cycle," he said. "They need the access to this court and this (legal) system to help the process along."
If Tuesday's arguments were any indication, a trial would zero in on some of the core issues in the gap debate, namely: Why it exists and who is responsible for closing it.
"We are saying that the school board needs to address this on a systemwide basis," Burns said. "If something is happening that causes this hugely wide disparity, I think it's fair to say the opportunity is not equal" for black students. He was referring to Florida's constitutional promise of a "quality education" for all students.
Sandridge countered that the state promises students "the opportunity" to get a quality education but can't guarantee success for each student. She said it remains "a bit of a mystery" what remedies a court might prescribe.
"There is a program" to alleviate the disparity, she said. "We are concerned about this achievement gap. We are not ignoring it."
Both sides also used food analogies.
Burns likened the education system to a cafeteria where each student gets a scoop of "educational hash." Black students, he argued, don't digest it "in the same way as white students," and it's up to the school system to find out why.
In an interview after the hearing, school superintendent Clayton Wilcox compared the system to a banquet table.
"We set it," he said, "but at some level you've got to lift your arm and lift your fork and go for the nourishment."
Copyright 2004 Knight Ridder/Tribune News Service
Knight Ridder/Tribune News Service
Knight Ridder/Tribune
August 23, 2004, Monday
COMMENTARY
Brown: A great decision _ except for schools
By Paul E. Peterson
Oliver Brown _ the plaintiff in the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision _ sued a school board, not a public park commission, even though such facilities were also segregated. Within the private sector, discrimination was pervasive.
Yet, today, we see marked progress toward racial equality in parks, recreation programs, politics, communications, commerce, and industry _ but not in schools.
The irony is all the greater, inasmuch as the Supreme Court, in Brown, outlawed only school segregation _ on the shaky grounds that such segregation harmed the "hearts and minds" of African-American children.
But at a time when the workplace is more often racially mixed than not, Brown's educational consequences remain ambivalent. On the plus side, most school districts have become as integrated as city demographics allow. But the price paid for this integration has been high _ involuntary busing that separated schools from families and communities; large, difficult-to-manage school campuses; white flight; and lowered expectations for students of all social backgrounds.
Worse, the performance of African American students has continued to trail that of whites. Although the gap narrowed in the 1980s, it opened again in the 1990s, a time when the principles of Brown should have been firmly entrenched.
Conventional liberals blame "politicians" for inadequate funding or "society" for its abiding, if now hidden, racism. But money has seldom bought educational progress, and one is hard put to explain the survival of racism in schools when it is on the wane elsewhere.
Conventional conservatives are more apt to "blame the victim," suggesting that the child-rearing practices of the African-American family are the root cause. Yet the disparities in black and white achievement are smallest among preschoolers _ the age at which family influences are pronounced and school influence nil.
Closer to the truth are those who blame Hollywood, television and the fashion industry for fostering a drug-infested, anti-learning, "hip-hop" youth culture that burgeoned in the 1990s. But if street culture is the problem, then assigned neighborhood schools are not the solution. Only in rare instances can traditional neighborhood schools suppress the seductions of their immediate environment.
Learning is better fostered when schools draw boundaries that separate classroom life from the street-culture opiates. Because good private schools have discovered this secret, African American students who attend them are much more likely than their public school peers to complete college.
Unfortunately, some still argue against school choice on the grounds that African-American families are too ill-informed to pick good schools. But interest, knowledge, and commitment will come naturally to all parents, once choice is made available. To claim otherwise is racist in the extreme. School choice is, indeed, the civil rights issue of our time.
___
ABOUT THE WRITER
Paul E. Peterson is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and a member of the Koret Task Force on K-12 Education. He is a professor at Harvard University. Readers may write to the author at Hoover Institution, Stanford University, Stanford, Calif. 94305-6010.
The Washington Times, Thursday, Aug. 18, 2005, Page A3
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20050817-115602-6177r.htm
Teachers union mortgage will finance campaign By George Archibald
THE WASHINGTON TIMES Published August 18, 2005 The state school union in California, the nation's largest, has refinanced its headquarters
building near San Francisco to fund its more than $54 million campaign against Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's Nov. 8 ballot initiatives on teacher tenure and "paycheck protection" for union members.
The refinancing allows the 335,000-member California Teachers
Association (CTA) to receive an immediate bank advance on $60.3 million in increased union member dues over the next three years.
The CTA's 800-member state council voted in June to increase members'
annual union dues $60 for each of the next three years to pay for its
statewide anti-Schwarzenegger TV and radio ad campaign, which started in March, and a get-out-the-vote drive to defeat the ballot initiatives.
Barbara Kerr, president of the state teachers union, said the mortgage
allowed the CTA to borrow against the additional revenues from the dues
increase and spend as much as necessary to defeat Mr.
Schwarzenegger's agenda.
The governor is pushing a ballot with three propositions: Nos. 74, 75 and 76. Proposition 74 would increase the probationary period for new teachers from two to five years before they receive tenure, and modify the process by which school boards can dismiss teachers.
The so-called "paycheck protection" -- Proposition 75 -- prohibits use of public-employee union dues for political contributions without prior consent of individual union members.
Proposition 76 limits state spending to the prior year's level plus three previous years' average revenue growth. It also permits the governor, under specified circumstances, to reduce budget appropriations of the governor's choosing.
"The governor's special election [in November] impacts public schools,
it impacts our teachers, it impacts our students, and it impacts nurses, firefighters, public employees, and goes against everything we stand for," Mrs. Kerr told the Sacramento Bee.
Polls show that 61 percent of likely voters in California approve of the measure to lengthen teacher probation, and 32 percent oppose it. Also among likely voters, 57 percent approve of the measure to require prior union member consent for political use of dues, and 34 percent oppose it.
Many teachers are backing the initiatives.
"Tenure is an embarrassment," said Lawrence Sand, an eighth-grade
history teacher and National Education Association (NEA) member in Los
Angeles. "In reality, a 23-year-old who has been teaching in California for two years and gets tenure has just received a lifetime position. Is there any other type of employee on this planet who has such a deal?"
Mr. Sand said the paycheck-protection initiative is aimed at "defanging" liberal Democrats, whose political activities and union contributions are opposed by about two-thirds of NEA members nationwide.
"Where paycheck protection has been voted in, the union's coffers have taken a serious hit," he said.
"Although the NEA's rank and file is very mixed politically, their political spending tilts left about 90 degrees. This must come to an end."
Florida Alliance for Choices in Education (F.A.C.E)
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