OP-ED | Teachers Keep Pushing; Malloy Says Delaying Reform May Nix CT’s NCLB Waiver
by Sarah Darer Littman | Apr 11, 2012 12:43pm
(17) Comments | Commenting has expired
Posted to: Education, Opinion, Norwalk
NORWALK — Gov. Dannel P. Malloy was in good humor as he started off the latest stop on his education reform tour at West Rocks Middle School in Norwalk last night, where he joked that he was “here to be yelled at.”
The crowd didn’t take the bait. By the end of the evening, it was the governor who was getting testy.
The first five audience questions, randomly selected by Norwalk Mayor Richard A. Moccia, were almost universally in favor of SB24. Despite the governor’s remark, “I don’t want to spend the whole day talking about charters,” the early part of the evening was focused on charter school funding. The governor tried to refocus the conversation on alternative models, including vocational tech schools, highlighting the success of the Rogers School in Stamford that achieved a turnaround by taking on the International Baccalaureate program and becoming a district magnet school.
In response to a question from Stamford NAACP chapter head Jack Bryant, whom the governor acknowledged working with, Malloy said the state might be in danger of not being granted a No Child Left Behind waiver if an education reform package isn’t passed, although he was careful to qualify this as his opinion. He warned that the consequences of not getting the waiver would be much worse than anything contained in the bill.
The evening turned somewhat less cozy for the governor when veteran teacher Heidi Scheckler from Westport, who was attending the meeting with her superintendent and a school board member took the mic. Scheckler asked the governor to consider the evaluation process used in the Westport School District, and to involve more teachers in the SB24 process rather than listening to politicians and outside groups. This got the first loud applause of the evening, and it highlighted the governor’s new strategy. He read directly from the CEA’s report to the legislature at the beginning of the session, and said that he took the proposals for everything that he did in SB24 directly from there.
New Canaan High School teacher Kristine Goldhawk asked why the governor wasn’t willing to accept a year of study for the new evaluation system, since it hadn’t proved beneficial to students in other states.
That’s when the governor got testy. Reiterating the same points that he’s brought up previously, that the unions agreed to the framework through PEAC, there were audible “No’s” from the crowd, but not the shouting seen at previous meetings.
“We believe in an evaluation system, and we will pay for an evaluation system. What we don’t embrace is the concept that we have unlimited amounts of time,” Malloy said, noting that the state is paying $2.5 million to train evaluators. Goldhawk stood her ground, noting that the New York evaluations have a 54 percent error rate.
Malloy stood his ground as well and told Goldhawk, “I don’t think you’re a bad person.”
Perhaps it’s not altogether surprising that substitute teacher Frank Ellison felt that the atmosphere of the meetings was negative toward teachers.
The governor recognized that SB24 is a work in progress. “Is this bill good enough? No. The answer is no. Do we have time to make it good enough? Yes.”
Lt. Gov. Nancy Wyman announced that questions for the governor on SB24 can be .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).
Tags: education, education reform, teacher, CEA, Malloy, Sarah Darer Littman, dh
(17) Comments
posted by: Linda12 | April 11, 2012 2:34pm
Sarah,
Thank you for the email. The other one given out was never working. I am sending the following to his office and will ask him to read them. I would like to know if Pryor has responded to the second one yet.
The Point on PEAC:
http://cea.org/standing-together.cfm
Important Works Remains undone:
http://blogcea.org/2012/04/05/important-work-remains-undone/
posted by: GoatBoyPHD | April 11, 2012 2:55pm
Reform-minded teachers will need to form their own lobby group to get their voices heard if that is indeed their intent.
The Hartford students in the Courant had an interesting take with 4 points ( And I freely embellished):
1) A more culturally sensitive and richer curriculum is needed. Too much emphasis on core coursework and not enough arts and culture and politics and cultural electives.
2) More Accessible Teachers. Too many of the little Miss Avon’s show up 5 minutes before contracted hours and leave 5 minutes after contracted hours. They don’t bond, tutor or encourage. They never take on challenging classes. Prim, proper and always slightly above average and bland as all hell.
3) Parental Outreach and Involvement. Critical when parents are either first generation, don’t speak English or never went to College. They need support to understand the system and process of Higher Education and yes lower education ad language skills.
3) Less Focus On Standardized Tests. Students who routinely pass are overtested and waste weeks in test preparation and review of fairly easy material. Students who routinely fail are socially promoted and are the real focus of these classes. So we keep over testing and over reviewing instead of remediating and retaining because the remediation and retention group will likely fall into certain racial classifications and then the discriminatory testing charges get leveled. So, everyone must suffer the testing and review cycle. It’s lowest common denominator education designed to hold back the best and brightest minorities.
4) Better Use Of Technology. eBook, tablets, online open source textbooks and materials. Archived Video presentations for review and independent study and modular instruction. There’s a great era of technology on the way and in the pipeline. Technology that can drive down costs and improve academic results and make the experience more immersive.
posted by: Noteworthy | April 11, 2012 3:12pm
Malloy and his charter chums just don’t give up. There is too much money at stake and too much power. Connecticut should not be doing anything that has not been tested, tried and found to be delivering outstanding results elsewhere. As a taxpayer, I’m tired of the same old same old crapola where pols throw stuff at the walls and hope it works. Malloy did that with the state budget and we see what a fine mess that is and a whole year has not even passed. Just say no to Malloy’s charter chums and their dreams of becoming millionaires at taxpayer expense.
posted by: brutus2011 | April 11, 2012 3:16pm
Consider this link: http://wapo.st/HxPmFl
How many of us truly understand what is really happening here?
I believe what the governor, and his hidden backers, is attempting is just short of treason.
We citizens need to back the State Education Committee and end the corporate take-over of our public schools.
posted by: brutus2011 | April 11, 2012 4:33pm
If you can’t get the link to work then go to:
www.washingtonpost.com
and search for Valerie Strauss
You will find interesting articles or opinions on education. If the link I am referring to is not up today it is because it was just published today.
posted by: Linda12 | April 11, 2012 6:23pm
Goat boy…your bias is evident, but please don’t cherry pick your facts. The students also report the following:
In promoting his education reform package, Gov. Dannel P. Malloy talks often about effective teachers and the need to make it easier to get rid of teachers who are ineffective. Most students interviewed Tuesday said they thought most of their teachers are effective and are providing them with a good education.
Conveniently you left that out?
Does anyone know if Dannell is raising goats?
posted by: Speak up | April 11, 2012 6:41pm
Now Malloy’s new tactic is to scare us…we won’t get a waiver. We will have more failing schools. I thought you wanted to take them over for your ConnCon/Achievement First/no prior experience commissioner Stefan Pryor buddies. So that wouldn’t really be a problem for any of you? Just more money in their pockets.
Read this NY Times article: http://nyti.ms/IrCPE6
........surprise,surprise…charter schools spend more on adminstration and less on instruction:
posted by: Linda12 | April 11, 2012 6:57pm
The article in the Courant titled “Students weigh in on improving education” also includes this statement by the students (conveniently left out by the goat guy):
In promoting his education reform package, Gov. Dannel P. Malloy talks often about effective teachers and the need to make it easier to get rid of teachers who are ineffective. Most students interviewed Tuesday said they thought most of their teachers are effective and are providing them with a good education.
posted by: Reasonable | April 11, 2012 7:35pm
Malloy’s General Assembly has postponed teacher reform—for at least nother year, only passing some union friendly concessions.
posted by: CONconn | April 12, 2012 6:39am
Reasonable, that is a completely unreasonable statement. The committee doubled the number of early childhood slots, improved the ECS funding by a little for some of the districts that need it most, and did some damage control on Article 18 and charter funding so that the private entity leaches can’t suck as much out of the system as they would have liked. In the meantime, teacher qualifications actually increased in the new version of the bill. In the original version you could teach a whole career with a bachelors degree. Under the new version, a masters is required for the professional certificate, and additional graduate education beyond that for the distinguished educator designation.
posted by: saramerica | April 12, 2012 8:59am
Goatboy - interesting comment on technology. A media specialist I spoke to in Greenwich is tearing her hair out because the computerized version of the CMT, which the state is going to be moving to, is not iPad compatible. It’s written for older technology. So schools that are investing in up to date technology and tablets are having to figure out how the heck they are going to be able to get enough older platforms to administer the test for all their students. But hey, we might as well blame that ridiculous decision on teachers too. After all, they’re just the ones who are going to have to figure out how to work around a bad and costly decision made politicians and administrators, and how to do it on the most economic budget possible.
posted by: mpalmer | April 12, 2012 11:23am
I’m curious about how many of our current legislators voted to pass the bill bailing out MIRMA that Rell vetoed.
The reason I’m curious is that MIRMA was sold by its supporters and promoters as a solution to provide workman’s compensation coverage to small towns that would provide the best coverage and service while at the same time saving those towns money. It almost sounded too good to be true. Much like a call for “Education Reform” to close an achievement gap. As things turned out, MIRMA apparently worked more like a Ponzi scheme according to some in the industry. The towns that bought into the promise ended up getting hit with assessments to cover the operating deficit that caused MIRMA to stop paying providers. And when the General Assembly overwhelmingly voted on a bill to grant an extension to MIRMA, Rell vetoed it. Rightly so.
There is always an ALEC out there pushing to redirect public money. You don’t need a moral compass to tell you that public education paid for with public funds that has public oversight and accountability of those administering the funds is preferable to calls for privatization that have vague promises about purported results at best.
You want better results? More money, smaller class sizes and more teachers in the early grades would be a start. We don’t need a waiver for NCLB only to have it superseded by a state version of NCLB. We don’t need to go the MIRMA route on public education.
posted by: GoatBoyPHD | April 12, 2012 1:29pm
Sara,
The Mist Application’s technical requirements are minimal (Pentiuim II and 256K RAM). It’s a tiny 4 MB install to lock the computer when testing through the browser.
They have versions for Windows , Linux and Mac. No mention of Android yet.
Windows 8 tablets/eReaders won’t be an issue except for the initial deployment. The install of the test engine is easy enough the kids can do it (and do install it in some districts).
It’s browser based testing.
A nice resource on CT test materials
http://sites.google.com/site/rhhscaptcentral/documents
posted by: DanEd | April 13, 2012 8:34pm
If anyone is paying attention, they can see Malloy’s bill for what it truly is. It is a first step the State is taking to back door the privatization of public education to reduce and eventually eliminate it’s pension obligation. No where in the bill, with the exception of the increased opportunity and funding for early childhood education, does the bill do anything to enhance student learning. It’s all about the money, not children.
posted by: ConcernedVoter | April 16, 2012 7:25pm
The Governor being testy? Now there’s a new one. One and done Malloy, one and done…
