A new report from a public education group called The National Council on Teacher Quality (NCTQ) regarding recent Kansas City, Missouri School District FAIL.
Here's the horribly depressing money quote:
"This report on the policies shaping teacher quality in the Kansas City, Missouri School District finds significant contractual obstacles such as seniority based staffing and layoff provisions that inhibit schools' abilities to build effective teams. Underlying policy obstacles is the historic inattention to basic management responsibilities, such as performance evaluations and record keeping on workforce data. Until KCMSD improves how it conducts its daily business, the district's capacity to implement meaningful and substantive policy changes will be hindered."
And here's my question:
ISN'T THE ADMINISTRATION OF SUPERINTENDENT COVINGTON AND THE TENURE OF SCHOOL BOARD PREZ AIRICK L. WEST BASED ON THEIR ALLEGED ABILITY TO DIFFERENTIATE POLICY FROM GOVERNANCE?!?!? ACCORDING TO THIS REPORT IT LOOKS LIKE THEY AREN'T DOING EITHER JOB EFFECTIVELY!!!
Check the findings of the study that runs contrary to so much feel-good rhetoric that local white-liberals love to hear:
> Principals have little authority over the staffing of their schools. The district assigns teachers to schools without consulting either principals or teachers. In difficult economic times, KCMSD's staffing approach is particularly problematic. Layoffs rules negotiated in the teachers' contract require that the most junior teachers be let go first, even when less effective peers with more experience can keep their positions.
> There is no relationship between the consistently high ratings given to KCMSD teachers and the chronic underperformance of students in the district. Only six teachers received an ineffective rating last year; but 38 percent of those teachers who were rated received an exemplary rating.
> Data systems, even relative to other school districts in the nation, range from nonexistent to dysfunctional, with the result that the district is not accurately reporting even the simplest functions such as tracking teacher attendance.
> While KCMSD's has one of the longer instructional days in the nation, students are shortchanged by a shorter instructional year. The shorter instructional year is largely reflective of a state minimum that requires students attend school for only 174 days a year, more than a week less than the national average.
> Although KCMSD deserves credit for exploring performance pay through various grant programs, it has done little to address underlying structural problems in teacher compensation. For example, the largest raises are reserved for teachers at the tail end of their careers, failing to appreciate the importance of incentivizing younger teachers to stay and invest their career in the district.
Read the full report for yourself.
LINKS:
KCMSD blasted for hiring practices
KC district's teacher placement is called 'horrendous'
Photo babe: Alice Goodwin
Well when you select new hires on the mystic worship of the school board president and the patronage recommendation of Kim Carlos, you end up with some freaks.
ReplyDeleteTeacher contracts and state law play a large role in how much latitude the district has. The report was paid for by Kaufman - who is going into the charter school biz. The new teacher contract will be negotiated this spring. What will the community support?
ReplyDeleteThis is what happens when you wholesale terminate everyone who could have provided the records/information requested. Previous staff worked closely with IT to implement software designed to capture HR data in real time, so that HR and school-based administators could work together to ensure the placement of effective teachers.
ReplyDeleteCovington was trying to discredit those who have worked hard for the district under a number of Sups with varying levels of competence. Instead, the report is yet another
indictment and indication that Covington has no idea what
he is doing. The Emperor's clothes are magnificent!!
Has anyone seen the fiscal audit report? I saw the Board item, but no report was attached. If anyone knows where to get a copy of the report, let me know.
ReplyDeleteWest is too busy running the city! Hey West when is the audit coming telling us "where the money is"
ReplyDeleteOk TKC you can't have it both ways.
ReplyDeleteLets look at the points that you claim display Covington's failure:
1.) Teacher evaluations- The AFT created the watered down evals and they control teacher Tenure that fires younger teachers while keeping older ineffective ones! Yet you say-
"Convington is breaking up the Union"
2.) Principal Hiring- Again the union is in the way trying to protect unqualified teachers which ties up principals hands.
3.) Performance Pay- The super tried and you and AFT blasted that too.
So TKC pick a side. You've been the AFT mouth piece so continue to argue against the changes listed in this report and stop using the Super's arguments for against him.
Go Covington this report should give your detractors and stiffen your spine.
~MidNight Hawk
7:20: My! You're up early this morning, Marilyn. Always nice to hear from you.
ReplyDeleteSilly white people. You have all been hoodwinked by Covington.
ReplyDeleteThe pitfalls of putting economists in charge of education....
ReplyDeleteThis was written by education historian Diane Ravitch on her Bridging Differences blog, which she co-authors with Deborah Meier on the Education Week website. Ravitch and Meier exchange letters about what matters most in education. Ravitch, a research professor at New York University, is the author of the bestselling “The Death and Life of the Great American School System,” an important critique of the flaws in the modern school reform movement.
Dear Deborah,
A few weeks ago, Mike Rose [a professor at UCLA] posted a list of his New Year's resolutions. One of them was that we should "make do with fewer economists in education. These practitioners of the dismal science have flocked to education reform, though most know little about teaching and learning." Mike suggested that so few economists were able to give useful advice about the financial and housing markets that we should now be skeptical about expecting them "to change education for the better."
I agree with Mike.
It is astonishing to realize the extent to which education debates are now framed and dominated by economists, not by educators or sociologists or cognitive psychologists or anyone else who actually spends time in classrooms. My bookshelves are chock full of books that analyze the teaching of reading, science, history, and other subjects; books that examine the lives of children; books that discuss the art and craft of teaching; books about the history of educational philosophy and practice; books about how children learn.
Now such considerations seem antique. Now we are in an age of data-based decision-making, where economists rule. They tell us that nothing matters but performance, and performance can be quantified, and those who do the quantification need never enter a classroom or think about how children learn.
So the issue of our day is: How do we measure teacher effectiveness? Most of the studies by economists warn that there is a significant margin of error in "value-added assessment" (VAA) or "value-added modeling" (VAM). The basic idea of VAA is that teacher quality can be measured by the test-score gains of their students. Proponents of VAA see it as the best way to identify teachers who should get merit pay and teachers who should be fired. Critics say that the method is too flawed to use for high-stakes purposes such as these.
Last July, the U.S. Department of Education published a study by Mathematica Policy Research, which estimated that even with three years of data, there was an error rate of 25 percent. A few months ago, I signed onto a statement by a group of testing experts, which cautioned that such strategies were likely to misidentify which teachers were effective and which were ineffective, to promote teaching narrowly to the test, and to cause a narrowing of the curriculum.
None of these cautions has stemmed the tide of rating teachers by student test scores and releasing the ratings. Last year, the Los Angeles Times published an online database that rated 6,000 teachers as to their effectiveness (one of them, elementary school teacher Rigoberto Ruelas, committed suicide a few weeks later). New York City is poised to make a public release of the names and ratings of 12,000 teachers, if the courts give the go-ahead (in the first trial, a judge ruled that the data could be released even if it was inaccurate).
Airick has been very adept at convincing people that he is a profound change agent.
ReplyDeleteHe really is someone very good at posturing.
So far:
1. The District has lost 6% more of its students
2. Score show really significant turnaround.
3. Schools are becoming more violent (sometimes spilling into neighborhoods).
4. Now an objective, expert assessment says the most important essentials are being absolutely botched.
Airick: this is NOTHING like what you promised the civic community or the anxious parents of the District, when you told them things would get better.
Someone turn out the lights. The District is done.
ReplyDeleteMost of the district's problems are the fault of the kids and their stupid parents.
ReplyDelete