I asked readers to report on the destructive reforms imposed in their state. No one has tried to collect this information or to pull it all together into a national picture.

Everyone seems to think that their own state is off on a binge of legislation that is anti-union, anti-teacher, and anti-public education.

From what I observe, this is a national “movement,” and it has two sources: 1) ALEC model legislation, which provides templates for conservative state legislators, on how to destroy unions, dismantle the teaching profession, and eliminate public education; and 2) Race to the Top, which promotes obsessive testing and evaluation as well as privately managed charter schools.

If the hammer blows came only from the right (ALEC), it would be bad enough. But when you add to them the harmful policies of Race to the Top, and the cozy relationship between Arne Duncan and the rightwing governors, it creates a terrible, almost desperate situation, because it means that both parties are allied in a campaign to private public education and to deprofessionalize it.

I got so many responses to my question–what is your state doing in the name of “reform”–that I can’t reproduce them all. But I will report on a few and invite readers to look at the comments following my post “Reformers vs. Democracy” and “Add Your State to My List.”

When you review the dozens of comments, which come from states across the nation–from Maine to Florida to California to Hawaii–it gives a devastating portrait of the effects of the “reforms.”

This is indeed a national movement. It is harmful to children, to teachers, and to education.

Diane

Is Wisconsin the Worst State?

http://dianeravitch.net/2012/06/18/is-wisconsin-the-worst-state/

This response to my request for information suggests that Wisconsin has the worst, most anti-teacher, anti-public education reforms:

Wisconsin. No more collective bargaining. A line in WI Act 10 that specifically states “No local agency or school board shall enter into any collective bargaining agreement…” So much for local control. After that was passed, Gov Walker easily passed with bipartisan support sb461 which is now WI Act 166 titled “Read to Lead” which makes 50% of teacher evaluation based on test scores, mandates the PALS test out of U of VA to every Kindergarten student in the fall for a cost to the taxpayers here $780,000 with the intent of carrying it up through 3rd grade with an ongoing exploration of public private partnership funding options. If funds are available also PreK. Test will be minimum twice per year and mid year optional. In the bill $400,000 is allocated to Gov. Walker to award in grants as he sees fit with no oversight to (this is the best part) “any agency or organization other than a school board.” (this stuff is impossible to make up) This week the State of WI signed a contract with the people from VA licensed to subcontract the rights of the test to us here. I obtained a copy of the contract and in it the VA folks are given access to our kids’ “education records” and the VA group (defined as a government agency btw) is defined as a “School Official” under FERPA laws. Later in the contract the VA agency is required to do background checks in accordance with federal and state law but explicitly states that the VA agency will not provide those records to the state of WI. So, they have access to my kid’s records(without my permission) but I don’t get theirs. Sounds fair. Read to Lead also creates a Task Force chaired by none other than the Governor himself. On the task force is a member of the Value Added Research Center (VARC). According to VARC website major funding is provided by the U.S. Dept of Ed and the Joyce Foundation (BIG money special interest group). Finally, Wisconsin applied for flexibility to NCLB from King Arne Duncan but was told “not good enough. make changes.” I believe Vermont was given the same feedback. To my understanding Vermont told Arne to keep his waiver. Gov. Walker instructed State Supt. Tony Evers to make the necessary changes which we all know equals Race to the Top, which will cause teachers to Race from the Axe and my kid will suffer.

Washington State: So Far, OK.

http://dianeravitch.net/2012/06/18/washington-state-so-far-ok/

Readers of this blog are reporting on what is happening in their state, and the extent to which corporate reform has intruded into the schools. The toxic combination, when in full flower, consists of legislation to ban collective bargaining, so that there is no group strong enough to fight against budget cuts and anti-teacher legislation; of anti-teacher legislation and of legislation that allows for-profit corporations and privatization.

Washington State has been a holdout. Voters have three times rejected referenda to permit privately managed charter schools, despite the fact that the Gates Foundation is based in Seattle. Last fall, the state’s PTA came out in favor of charters, which may or may not have anything to do with the receipt of a generous grant from you-know-who.

Parents and teachers in Washington State have been working together to defend their public schools against privatizers. The Seattle chapter of Parents Across America is vigilant. Keep your eye on them.

Here is a report from that state:

I live in Washington State near Seattle, otherwise known as Gates’ Town USA. I teach in a high poverty Title I public school.Voters have successfully defeated Gates’ AstroTurf and ALEC funded legislation to promote charter schools in 3 different elections. However, they continue to try to beat voters down and recently http://www.diffen.com/difference/Category:Politics convinced our State PTA to promote legislation that would allow charter schools here for the first time.One of the reasons we have been so successful in fighting back charter schools is: Washington State has over 500 TRUE “innovative public schools” – no voucher programs and FAKE “public charters”, but REAL public charters without lotteries, selection, or culling of students by race, class, or ability like most charter schools across the country do.Seattle’s Parents Across America and teachers won big when we got the Broad former Superintendent Maria Goodloe-Johnson fired. (Unfortunately, Broadie Goodloe-Johnson has moved on to do more edDeFormer work in Michigan.)Seattle’s School District lost a battle in keeping Teach For America out of Seattle School District after Goodloe-Johnson’s replacement, Dr. Susan Enfield and others backing them let the camel’s nose of TFA under the tent.

Now something smells rotten in Renton after a week ago when the district sent out a press release saying they would NOT contract with TFA, but now this week a new press release stating the opposite on the DAY of the school board meeting, leaving Renton Education Association and parents with their hands tied.

Will teachers and Parents Across America learn to work together to fight back charter schools and Teach For America this time, before it’s too late?

We have a huge gubernatorial race in front of us that the whole nation will be watching, one that will have HUGE implications for education. GOP Rob McKenna is backed by Karl Rove, for one. Democrat Jay Inslee is running behind in his campaign funding.

Washington voters proved recently they could be bought by Costco’s big $22 million investment in liquor privatization. Will Washington unions organize in time or will we be the next Wisconsin?

But another reader warns that the corporate reformers are at the door:

Here in Washington State, we are trying to fight a charter school invasion supported by the rich people, Stand for Children, TFA, Alliance 4 Ed, the TFA alum and current dean of the College of education at UW Tom Stritikus, etc. FOIA releases of emails have shown that some of the rich players like Jon Bridge of Ben Bridge jewelers and all of the Ed deform groups have been “guiding” school board members and the Seattle interim supe – totally unethical and against rules. One email even has Jon Bridge saying that what the teachers think doesn’t matter. Some WA State legislators like Rueven Carlyle and Sharon Tomiko-Santos are all drinking the charter Kool-aid and taking “donations” from the Ed deform groups. If initiative 1240 goes through and the GOP gov candidate McKenna is elected, then Louisiana’s story will soon become Washington State’s story.

And a third reader sees danger signs:

Towards the end of our most recent legislative session, a couple of education reform bills passed. One takes away the rights of teacher unions to bargain for their health care. Another bill changes the way Washington teachers will be evaluated. School districts must evaluate teachers using one of four different frameworks stipulated by the state. Also, I think student growth measures (i.e. test scores) must also now be part of a teacher’s evaluation. I believe teacher evaluations and student growth measures will play a part in layoffs, devaluing teacher seniority. All this legislation is at the stage in which the law is being transferred to policy language that must be followed so we will see how it all comes out soon. Out last legislative session was crazy, with bills being dropped at the last minute and legislators voting on bills they hadn’t even read and I don’t think we will really know what happened for a couple of months, but I fear it’s not good news for teachers and kids.

Is Michigan the Worst?

http://dianeravitch.net/2012/06/18/is-michigan-the-worst/

In the ongoing effort to learn what is happening in the states under the guise of “reform,” here are reports from readers in Michigan:

This is a pretty good list. Let me expand a bit: as with much of the country, we had a huge wave of victories by “tea party” backed candidates in the 2010 election cycle, where anti-government folks consolidated control in the state Senate and took back control of the state House. They started by embracing the new governor’s priority for a business tax cut, giving up to $1.7 billion in tax reductions to business but effectively raising taxes on lower income families and removing about $1 billion in funding from education at all levels. (School operating funding is centralized in Michigan, and is determined each year by the legislature.) Schools now face this dramatically reduced funding level as the “new normal,” and funding for next year does not even keep up with inflation.

Against this backdrop, what we have here is a strange alliance of so-called “reformers” with local reactionaries who campaigned on the promise to “downsize government” and in particular to “get government out of our schools.” Last summer, a package of bills that was designed to “reform” teacher tenure by eliminating seniority and making tenure nearly meaningless was rammed through the legislature with considerable help from Students First (which spent some $1 million in media buys to secure key Senate votes). Added to the bills at the last minute and never discussed in committee was a huge new teacher evaluation outline. While there is still discussion about what model will become the mandatory state evaluation “tool,” already in law are requirements that at least 50% of a teacher’s evaluation must be based on value added measures using “objective measures of student growth” (i.e. test scores). Other factors must be included, but there is no minimum weight for anything other than test scores.

Bills were introduced, and passed, that removed most caps from the number of charter schools in the state and effectively removed numerical and enrollment caps from fully online “cyber” charters. Most Michigan charters (70-80%) are managed by for-profit management companies, and amendments to require non-profit EMOs were uniformly defeated. Many of the for-profit charter managers here were formed with both ideological and religious motives, to layer on top of the financial interest.

Most recently, a “parent-trigger” bill came back to life after languishing in the Senate for several months, and a spate of bills have been introduced that would water-down the state graduation requirements because they are too “college-prep” in focus.

While ideas from ALEC and national lobbying groups have played a role and provided a lot of money, much of this legislation was a product of state politics and a huge ideological shift here. It remains to be seen what will happen in the next cycle.

And here is another:

Since Michelle Rhee and ALEC came to Michigan with the purpose of influencing our legislators, the following legislation has been passed under the guise of ‘student choice’ and ‘keeping effective teachers in the classroom’: (1) no seniority, reduced tenure rights and removal of ‘just cause’ in the case of dismissal – teachers can be fired for any reason; (2) evaluation based on student achievement and a subjective number system that is demoralizing to teachers; (3) no retiree health benefits for new hires (THIS will attract the brightest and best to the profession?!) (4) cap lifted on charter schools with little accountability to the taxpayer; (5) increase in the number of cyber schools with no regard for quality and very few safeguards for students and taxpayers; (6) Emergency Managers can now swoop in and take over struggling communities and school districts, removing elected officials. Legislation in the works is the ALEC parent trigger act, reducing graduation requirements, reducing teacher pensions, and eliminating certain requirements for teacher certification (paving the way for the Teach For Awhiles). In addition, our legislature cut business taxes and took millions from the School Aid Fund – another attempt to choke off funds to our community schools so that they will be forced to close. All of this, and the majority of teachers and parents remain either ignorant or apathetic. The reader added this postscript:

And I also must mention the increase in the number of standardized tests our students are being subjected to…..in order to evaluate teachers. I was actually at a meeting where an administrator stated that ‘we need one more measure for our teacher evaluation tool’ (in addition to the three or four we already have in place). She didn’t even try to make it sound like it was ‘for the student’. Also, there was talk of not subjecting our students to the MEAP (Michigan’s standardized test) next year, but……Michigan is under contract to Measurement, Inc. to the tune of $68 million. But it’s all about the kids, right?

Is North Carolina the Worst?

http://dianeravitch.net/2012/06/18/is-north-carolina-the-worst/

A reader writes from North Carolina, where far-right Republicans control state government and are more than willing to hand public schools over to the private sector to mine for profit:

In North Carolina, the Republican dominated legislature lifted the cap on charter schools, provided a fast track approval process, and created a new certification board stocked with corporate cronies and charter school proponents. Now communities like mine, Chapel Hill, that love their neighborhood schools are having new charters, many of them run by for profit franchises, rammed down our throats with state approval and backing.

New Jersey Has a Bad Idea

http://dianeravitch.net/2012/06/18/new-jersey-has-a-bad-idea/

A reader sends this note, relevant today, but relevant beyond today. It is part of the rightwing assault on the teaching profession. The state gets to define “effective,” then can take the right to due process away from those who don’t meet the benchmarks arbitrarily created by the state, which is eager to fire teachers and make room for teaching temps. I have said it before and I’ll say it again. Teachers without the right to due process may be fired for any reason or for no reason. Teachers without the right to due process will never teach anything controversial. Teachers without due process rights will never disagree with their principal. Teachers without due process rights have no academic freedom.

IN NEW JERSEY TODAY (6/18), tenure reform bill S-1455 (the TEACHNJ Act) will be voted on in committee. But not by the Senate Education Committee which discussed this bill at length during its March meeting. No, on Thursday 6/14 this tenure reform bill was “transferred” to the Senate Budget and Appropriations Committee for a quickie vote to be held Monday 6/18. The main purpose of this tenure reform bill is to dismantle the right to due process by making it not only something a teacher can earn but also something a teacher can lose. If an administrator should give a teacher two summative performance ratings on the lower half of a 4-point scale (“ineffective” or “partially effective”), that teacher will then lose his/her previously earned right to due process and can be fired without the opportunity to appeal the decision to a third party. So in other words, in New Jersey a teacher will be able to EARN the right to due process but it will then be TAKEN AWAY precisely when the teacher might actually need to exercise that right.

Is Louisiana the Worst?

http://dianeravitch.net/2012/06/18/is-louisiana-the-worst/

Louisiana is a very strong contender for the worst state in the nation in relation to its treatment of teachers, students, and public schools.

Governor Bobby Jindal has been hailed by rightwing privatizers for his bold plan to dismantle public education. And indeed, his legislation established vouchers, charters, and a punitive regime for teachers. If teachers can’t cause their students to get higher scores year after year, they will be rated ineffective and terminated. This is my personal candidate for the worst state in the nation, but I don’t know the details in every state and there are still more states vying to be even worse than Louisiana. It is just hard to imagine how much worse it can get than Louisiana, where the money for vouchers and charters will come right out of the public school budget and where teachers are treated so shabbily.

Readers write from Louisiana:

Louisiana here. Since the tabula rasa that Katrina offered, New Orleans and now the entire state has been given reform in the way you mention—-more dictatorial than democratic. There seems to be a well organized symphony occurring across the U.S. with ALEC, TFA, DataCorp, PacificMetircs (two data companies with contracts totaling 120+ million dollars), New Teacher Project and Students First (Rhee’s two $ generating non-profits) all playing towards a crescendo where public education is a thing of the past. Additionally, our Gov. Bobby Jindal, has been mixing vindictive style politics into this whole mess by yanking any ‘nea’ votes on his ed reform legislation from committee chairmanships and vice chairmanships as recent as this week. Another reader writes:

It’s tough being a teacher in Louisiana. Public funds for education have been cut while private and charter schools are getting all the funding. Increased pressure on public schools via test scores continues while private schools receive vouchers with no way of knowing if they really provide a better education. Teachers are being evaluated using COMPASS and no one really knows how those scores are computed.To top it all off, we have a Supt. of Education who has no concern for improving failing schools, offers no solutions except moving the students to other schools, and is a lap dog for a Governor who runs the state like a fascist dictator. Another reader writes:

As a parent with sons in public schools, I would love REAL education reform. However, ALEC, through the Jindal administration, rammed vouchers for private schools that teach children with DVD’s, lowered teacher qualification requirements – while maintaining “high expectations” of student performance, all while under the guise of parent choice though they never brought parents to the table to ask what choices they actually want.An obvious set up for failure… what’s going to happen now to our children who already in one of the lowest performing states in the nation?

Another reader writes:

It’s worse than people realize. Most of the true data people are gone or silenced. The longitudinal.database the feds gave Louisiana millions of dollars for has been abandoned and the halls of LDOE are being filled with politicians pulling down exhorbitant salaries as long as they parrot the governors agenda. Who needs data when you just invent your own data to support your agenda as you go along? They also refuse to release data to anyone who won’t write something favorable about them, hiding behind FERPA. They actually discussed that openly while I was there.

Is Ohio the Worst State?

http://dianeravitch.net/2012/06/19/is-ohio-the-worst-state/

As we scour the nation to identify the state that has reached the zenith in its efforts to destroy our public education system and to discourage its teachers, our eyes must necessarily turn to Ohio. Here a Tea Party Governor, John Kasich, is working in tandem with a Republican-dominated legislature to do their level best to achieve the dubious distinction of creating the most toxic school reforms in the nation. Readers may recall the battle last year when Kasich’s SB 5–which banned collective bargaining–was rejected by 61% of the voters in a referendum. Some observers thought he made a mistake by including police and firefighters along with teachers. That created a united front against SB 5. Of course, that was a minor detail in the ongoing effort to reduce the status of  teachers and their ability to have a say in what happens in the schools of Ohio. Ohio is incredibly welcoming to for-profit charters and for-profit cybercharters.

Here are some readers’ comments:

Ohio is beginning the same idiotic system this coming school year, only 50 percent of our evaluation will be based on student test scores. I hope none of my students have an ear infection, are hungry,had their grammy put in the hospital or their dog run away because my future would be at risk. Does anyone see how absurd this is?

Here in Ohio we have been under attack on a state and local level. We have a union busting governor who tried to take on the firefighters, police and teachers with his infamous SB5 which was put to a vote in 2011 and defeated by a large majority. Recently, the mayor of Cleveland (also in charge of schools because of legislation from a previous mayor), went on the assault of the bargaining rights of teachers and of course it was essential that his proposed legislation be pushed through in Columbus quickly for the sake of the children.

In my own smaller suburban school district, Brecksville-Broadview Heights, 3 recently voted in school board members won the election based on the premise they were going to give the voters a school district they can afford. We have earned an excellent with distinction report card with the state of Ohio 13 years! However, these school board members have been quoted(not publicly of course) that they were going to “break that union”, “that if you teach in Brecksville you should not be able to afford to live there”,”that the proposed 10 percent pay cut would not affect that many families because most of the teachers are women and it is only a second income”. The school board’s proposed contract also would take away our insurance and replace it with a low level plan, decrease our prep/planning time by 50 percent and even has a clause whereby a teacher drinking an adult beverage at a restaurant, imbibes a little too much could be “reported” to the school board and be reprimanded.

Please check out link on our very public web page Brecksville-Broadview Heights schools an click on the link to “Negotiations” and read the half truths.

Is Tennessee the Worst State?

http://dianeravitch.net/2012/06/20/is-tennessee-the-worst-state/

A reader in Tennessee nominates his state as the worst in the nation in terms of implementing the usual stale ideas to “reform” the schools.

How could it not be in contention to win the race to the bottom when it was one of the first states (Delaware was the other) to win the Race to the Top? That guaranteed that Tennessee would adopt every untested and harmful policy idea that Arne Duncan’s team could think up.

Conservative Republicans control the state, and they like the Obama agenda. Go figure. Could it be because Obama’s agenda is a more muscular version of NCLB? Republicans love the tough accountability, they like cracking the whip on the teachers, and they love privatization of public services.

Where other people (like parents and teachers) look at schools and see children, the reformers in Tennessee (and elsewhere) look at schools and see entrepreneurial prospects and a steady stream of government revenue.

So naturally the state is committed to evaluating teachers based on student test scores, and those who don’t teach tested subjects get evaluated by some other teachers’ work. Makes sense, no? And surely there will be lots of new charters in Tennessee to “save” the children.

Then, to add to that state’s woes, the new state commissioner of education, Kevin Huffman, is not only Michelle Rhee’s -ex, but was formerly the PR director for TFA. That guarantees a very big foot in the door for the ill-trained novices who only Teach For Awhile. Huffman hired a charter school leader from Houston to take over the state’s lowest performing schools. Tennessee will soon be charter school paradise, or at least paradise for TFA.

And then there is all that Gates money in Tennessee, now deployed to figure out how to have an effective teacher in every single classroom in the state. Watch Tennessee overtake Massachusetts on NAEP rankings. Wait a minute, isn’t Tennessee the birthplace of value-added assessment under William Sanders, the agricultural statistician? Didn’t Tennessee start measuring value-added by teachers in the 1980s? Why aren’t they already number one?

Yes, Tennessee is a contender.

Last year, TN and our TfA commissioner of ed and Michelle Rhee’s ex, Kevin Huffman, rushed into use a similar teacher evaluation system purchased from the Milken Foundation (the same Michael Milken of securities fraud fame) that measures teacher competence on a 1 – 5 Likert scale, aptly named TEAM. 1-5 is the same crude metric I used to rate my hotel stay and my car dealership. Sensitive to the effects of nuanced teaching practices, it’s not. If scored according to the TEAM trainer, on 15% of all teachers will gain or keep tenure protection. 85% will be subject to firing.

Tied into the teacher’s average TEAM score is 40% VAM scores from the TCAP state assessments in reading in math. Teachers who do not teach reading and math were forced to use the VAMs of the school TCAP average or arbitrarily assigned either the school reading or math average score. Recommendations by an “independent” committee to improve the system suggested adding more tests to include all subject areas.

With the republicans well in control of all branches of government in TN, teachers here have lost their collective voices. In 2010, Ramsey with the help of ALEC ended tenure, collective bargaining, auto deductions for TEA dues, and kicked all teacher reps off of the state retirement board. Three of the largest school systems in the state have Broad trained superintendents. The day after Walker in WI survived his recall, TN’s Lt Gov Ron Ramsey announced he’d propose vouchers in the 2013 legislative session.

For profit, online teacher education is proliferating. Requirements for certification to teach are being dumbed down at the same time requirements to raise achievement are increased to levels nearly impossible. Further, state university teacher education programs are being evaluated according to their graduate’s VAM scores. Huffman posted the VAM scores on the TN website and guess which teacher ed program scored the best? Teach for America! The results were so skewed and improbable that several schools requested the raw data, only to be rebuffed, with great umbrage, by the state.

TN politicians in collusion with wealthy privatizers in both the Democratic and Republican parties are using the full force of state power to crush involvement of teachers and parents in decisions about our children’s schools. God help us all in TN.