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Teachers Unions to OPPOSE More $$$ for Education
Written by on February 04, 2010, 12:08 PM
By James Rufus Koren, One battle over a federal education grant program ended last month in Lawmakers in January passed legislation to make Teachers' unions have historically opposed any move to link teacher evaluations to student performance, and observers are pessimistic that many unions will go along this time. "We can at least have a conversation about what (an evaluation system) should look like," said Pat Mazzulli, president of the Fontana Teachers Association. "We find it objectionable, but if that's what's going to happen, we want to have that conversation." The effort to link student achievement and teacher performance comes at a time when school districts nationwide have been battered by budget cuts. Thus, the billions of dollars provided under Race to the Top couldn't come at a better time. But that money will only be available to districts that make the required changes. The Fontana Teachers Association is one of the more cooperative unions in the area. It signed onto a memo from the Signing that memo, Mazzulli said, means the union is at least willing to sit down with the district and discuss teacher evaluations and other issues. Other area school districts, including San Bernardino City Unified and Pomona Unified, sent memos to the state, but couldn't convince their teachers' unions to sign on. "It's not reflective of the teacher's teaching skills because you have to understand that students are different and there are different types of learners," said Tyra Weis, president of Associated Pomona Teachers. "Some kids are not good test takers, so should that be the way you evaluate a teacher?" Mazzulli agreed that evaluating teachers based on how students perform assumes that all good teachers will produce students who perform well. But, he said, "the measured results of the student are not necessarily related to whether that teacher is a good teacher." Fontana Unified Superintendent Cali Olsen-Binks, superintendent of the "It will entail sitting down with the teachers association and looking at what would help make students the most successful," Olsen-Binks said. "We've had a long-standing history of successful collaboration with the teachers association." She said that discussion will be especially important because similar requirements could be on the way in the form of changes President Barack Obama wants to make to the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, also known as No Child Left Behind. But while unions stake out their positions, it's difficult to tell exactly what they're opposing. As yet, no one - districts, unions, lawmakers, academics - knows how districts might use student data to evaluate teachers. "We're in the dark," Mazzulli said. "The thought is that teachers need to be evaluated based on (student) data. But a lot of it is unknown because they haven't told us everything - they haven't told us how to do it." In applying for the federal Race to the Top grant program, part of the 2009 stimulus bill, the state Legislature knocked down some of the legal barriers that have previously prohibited the state and school districts from using student test scores to evaluate teachers. But lawmakers didn't make clear how districts would do it. "Most districts are still waiting to see the final conditions," said Erik Johnston, superintendent of the Phelan-based Some lawmakers, as well as academics who have studied teacher evaluation, have talked about what they call a "value-added" system. "What the measure is trying to look at is how much has a student's achievement increased compared to how much we would have expected them to increase," said Matthew Springer, director of the National Center on Performance Incentives at Vanderbilt University. "If it's more, we would say there was value added." But it's not clear that schools in Even the Tom Malkus, principal of Instead, they look at student test scores to determine where a teacher might be struggling, then ask the teacher to teach a sample lesson that covers those areas. "I can't even mention (test scores) in the evaluation process," Malkus said. "What I can do ... is get their data and, in an indirect way, go in and probably find the problem with their instruction." Administrators use that information to see where they can help teachers improve, he said. Area districts say they already do something similar, though it's not part of the evaluation process. "All the teachers in a certain grade level, we get together and everybody looks at the data," said Curtis Dison, who teaches computer applications at For now, districts and unions can only wait to see how much Race to the Top money comes to Louie Rodriguez, a professor of education at Cal State University San Bernardino, said none of those questions have clear answers. "There's kind of a cautionary suggestion that it may (work)," he said. "But I haven't seen a whole lot of evidence that we should just run with it." New Comment |
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