Want To Know What Teachers Think?
Seattle Times' editorial writer, Lynne Varner, had a piece today about good teachers. Regarding Seattle schools:
"I'm eagerly awaiting a study about teacher quality in the Seattle Public Schools. The report, from the nonpartisan National Council on Teacher Quality, was supposed to have been released during the summer. It will be similar to a study by the council — and funded by the Gates Foundation — that examined school policies and teacher contracts in Hartford, Conn.
"I'm eagerly awaiting a study about teacher quality in the Seattle Public Schools. The report, from the nonpartisan National Council on Teacher Quality, was supposed to have been released during the summer. It will be similar to a study by the council — and funded by the Gates Foundation — that examined school policies and teacher contracts in Hartford, Conn.
Now slated for early next month, the Seattle focus will be welcome because of fast-moving policy efforts on teacher accountability at the federal and local levels."
Also, I asked her about what teacher blogs she read. She sent me a link to Teacher Magazine that has many blogs. Want to know what teachers and other educators think? Here's a plethora of blogs. I'm particularly interested to read what the Teacher of the Year who went on the road to schools around the country thinks. There seems to be a teacher blog for every subject so check it out.
Comments
It is a Washington D.C.-based politically connected organization that was established in 2000 concurrently with the start of the G.W. Bush "No Child Left Behind" presidency.
I am not convinced that it doesn't have an agenda or that it is objective.
At least two of its core staff are from Teach for America -- which promotes placing inexperienced, not necessarily trained, young (and underpaid) people in teaching positions.
[http://www.nctq.org/p/about/staff.jsp] How that jibes with claims elsewhere on its site to care about teacher "quality" and training, I'm not sure.
I've heard its MO is to try to get itself "invited" to school districts throughout the nation where it somehow gets involved with teacher contract negotiations.
What exactly they do in these negotiations or why they are here in Seattle is unclear.
I have heard that CPPS initially tried to bring NCTQ to Seattle to be involved in the teacher's contract negotiations this year. For some reason, that didn't happen.
But then word got out that NCTQ had come to Seattle anyway, quietly, unpublicized, un-voted on -- under the aegis of the Alliance for Education.
Is NCTQ paid for its services?
If so, how much and who paid for them?
What exactly are its "services"?
Why is it here?
Here's an article that casts a critical eye on NCTQ, its scope and agenda: NCTQ Earns a D+ for State Teacher Quality Report
http://teachingquality.typepad.com/building_the_profession/2009/02/nctq-earns-a-d-for-state-teacher-quality-report-.html
Here's who funds NCTQ (private foundations): http://www.nctq.org/p/about/funders.jsp
My own skepticism is influenced by the fact that there has been a lot of disturbing (verbal) teacher-bashing in Seattle this past year, and accusations leveled against teachers primarily by "education reformer" types who like to blame them for all the failings of public education.
Local legislators have played a part in this unseemly behavior.
The Superintendent's irrational layoffs of nearly 200 teachers was used by some in the District to pit young teachers against older teachers, and parents against teachers, when all the while the layoffs were avoidable and questionable. Enrollment is up 1200 kids over expected this year. Our kids need their teachers. Tacoma, meanwhile, did not lay off any teachers this year in its budget cuts.
I feel these accusations against teachers by and large are false and have been whipped up by those with an agenda that includes breaking the teacher's union.
So-called philanthropic organizations and personnages like the Broad Foundation and Bill Gates have been particularly disrespectful of teachers (not to mention ageist toward older, more experienced educators). Both Broad and Gates' support of privately run charter schools within the public system, which typically don't allow teacher's unions, is another factor to keep in mind when you read that one or both of them has financially supported a "teaching evaluation" group.
And Gates seems obsessed with testing. I would much rather teachers spend valuable class time with the kids, actually teaching them in person, than interrupting their learning with endless computerized tests (like MAP). Enough of the testing. It's a vestige of No Child Left Behind, a failed policy that has devastated our schools.
I have family members and friends who are both long-time and new teachers. I already know what many teachers think -- teaching is a difficult, demanding job that is under-appreciated in our culture. And no one goes into the profession if they want to be rich or lazy.
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Again, I and many others ask: What are politically motivated, outside organizations like NCTQ and the Broad Foundation doing in Seattle?
And if what they are doing is so positive and productive for our schools, our kids, our teachers, why is their presence so clandestine?
It seems to me that Varner's article is the first public reference to NCTQ being in Seattle that I've read in the local press.
Was the presence of NCTQ ever brought up or voted on at the School Board meetings?
If anyone needs to be investigated for "accountability" in this District it is the John Stanford Center itself, and its ballooning, overpaid staff.
Our teachers deserve respect and support, not inquisitions.
Is pro-corporate, pro-oligarch, anti-union, anti-democratic, considered "non-partisan" these days? Why, because they don't put a "D" or "R" next to their name?
NCTQ is just another, phony, NON-grass roots shell (and shill) organization doing the bidding of big money and big business elbowing its way into public education to suck profits from it. Don't be bamboozled into believing anything else.
They are nothing but a supposedly "non-profit" cottage industry think tank that sprung up after NCLB's implementation to "standardize" the teaching profession like private testing companies sprang up to help "standardize" our children.
Our community of parents, teachers and children did not ask for NCTQ to come to Seattle, although CPPS folks thought it was a good idea at one point. (Hopefully they've cooled on the idea a bit). Of course, NCTQ's preferred tactic is to circle in the sky until they induce a local group to "invite" them to town. That's their "fig-leaf of legitimacy" game, when in fact, they are hired guns. Just watch.
If the city took over, I would expect this unofficial dance with privatization to finally be revealed for what it is.