Posted on June 14th, 2011 by
Thomas Kennedy
Florida School Board Assoc. Spring Conference 2011
Thursday and Friday I attended the FSBA. I was excited to attend workshops and continue my training as a certified School Board member. I was very excited to listen to keynote speaker Dr. Diane Ravitch, Research Professor of Education& Historian of Education, New York University. On Friday morning the speaker was Vicki Phillips from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Last and perhaps most importantly for the conference was the Legislative Review from the FSBA’s presenters.
Dr. Diane Ravitch was appointed to public office by both Presidents of the United States George H. W. Bush and his successor Bill Clinton. Ravitch was the U.S. Assistant Secretary of Education. Secretary of Education Richard Riley appointed her to serve as a member of the National Assessment Governing Board, which supervises the National Assessment of Educational Progress; she was a member of NAGB from 1997 to 2004. She is the author of a book I highly recommend, The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education (New York: Basic Books, 2010). While she originally supported No Child Left Behind and charter schools, Ravitch later became “disillusioned,” and wrote, “I no longer believe that either approach will produce the quantum improvement in American education that we all hope for.” In the major national evaluation, 17% of charters got higher scores, 46% were no different, and 37% were significantly worse than public schools, she said. High-stakes testing, “utopian” goals, “draconian” penalties, school closings, privatization, and charter schools didn’t work, she concluded. “The best predictor of low academic performance is poverty—not bad teachers.” During the Q&A session when asked about ‘teacher merit pay’, she responded, “The subject never dies, and NEVER WORKS!”. Dr. Ravitch shared extensive data that shows that charter schools who are playing a big part in siphoning public school funds to their schools are not performing as well as public schools. She shared that the propaganda movie, “Waiting for Superman” is misleading; one of the schools featured in the movie has a less than 30% high school graduation rate (from middle school through graduation). Dr. Ravitch spoke at great lengths of Finland’s approach to education and public schools. Normally I don’t agree with the approach of comparing the USA public school system to other countries. Why? Because we are not a country that “skims/creams” only some students for higher education. We believe (rightly so) that all students should have the opportunity to freely choose their future. We also educate all students, not just a select group, and we test and publish all of our students’ scores. This is not generally what other countries compared to the USA do. But Finland is the exception.
One of the training sessions I attended was “Empowering Effective Teachers” presented by Stephanie Woodford, Director of Evaluation and Compensation for Hillsborough County Public Schools. Hillsborough won a large Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation grant. This grant involved developing an overhauled teacher evaluation program which included AP merit pay system. This system includes a model of evaluating teachers with 30% based on peer teachers reviews, 30% on administrative/supervisor reviews and 40% on student performance data. The program is impressive in how they are improving teaching strategies and collaboration but it is important to point out that Hillsborough’s program is exempt from the new “Student Success Act” [SSA] (aka: SB 736). SSA requires that 50% of a teacher’s evaluation and pay be based on student performance. Furthermore, it is clear that the system that Hillsborough has developed is costly. SSA provided no additional funds to implement the program and in fact has cut funding for education for next year for Citrus County by near 8% or $11,000,000 less for next school year.
Vicki Phillips is the Director of Education and College Readiness for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Her presentation included encouraging schools to use more emerging technologies and asking schools to stop asking students to “power down technology to learn” and rather ” have students power up!”. I have concerns with the Foundation’s approach to “fixing” the student learning problems in our country because a large part of the Foundation approach includes more charter and virtual charter schools which I believe is not in the best interest of our students, communities and country.
The conference ended with a Legislative Review. Florida Senator Bill Montford, a former teacher, principal, superintendent and champion for public school education in our great state, began the session sharing about how challenging it was from his perspective. One presenter after another spoke about how rough a session this was and how different this session was. SB736 (“Student Success Act”) was talked about at great lengths but many critical questions still exist about how to implement it. Budget reductions in education and increased funding to charter schools, along with broader laws to enable charter schools to open was another concerning issue that was addressed. The next legislative session begins early next year on January 10th, 2012.
While at this conference it was at times difficult to not be angry with what the legislators have left us with. They have inappropriately and incorrectly targeted public education and public school teachers as bad and ineffective. I do not and will not accept that belief about our Citrus County schools.
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