Dayton Education Association makes (weak) case for rejecting RttT
Last week I, and others, took the Dayton Education Association to task for its decision to scuttle the district’s participation in the state’s Race to the Top application. To understand this criticism, consider that the union rejected RttT funds in the face of a $5 million budget shortfall caused by rising home foreclosures and delinquent property taxes.
Further, Dayton’s school district has seen 10,000 students flee for charters and other places in the last decade (shrinking from 24,000 students to about 14,000 students) and enrollment in the DEA has dropped from 2,000 in 1998 to about 1,100 in 2008. During this time the union has steadfastly resisted any serious reform, despite real efforts by different superintendents and school boards over the last decade. Dayton is perennially ranked as one of the lowest performing districts in Ohio, battling the likes of Cleveland and Youngstown for the dubious distinction of worst in the Buckeye State.
If any urban school district in America needs reform, it’s Dayton, and the reforms embedded in RttT are steps in the right direction. When asked why the DEA rejected RttT funding, here is what the union president had to say:
How would you like your job to be based on criteria over which you had no control? Let’s say you are an editorial writer for a city newspaper. How would it be for your evaluation to be based on how many ads your paper sold? Understand, you are not being evaluated for your skills as a writer, but for something completely out of your control.
Similarly, a number of teachers in the Dayton school district felt that tying test scores to evaluations was unfair and had no bearing on a teacher’s skill.
…Now we see the teachers are being attacked for questioning a federal program that is very vague, offers little that is new and simply provides for more high-stakes testing. Consider this: Teachers in Dayton spend, on average, $500 a year of their personal funds for materials and supplies for their classrooms. This translates to more than $600,000 every year donated by Dayton teachers for their students ….We cannot agree to language that eliminates local control over curriculum, has unclear language concerning schools’ performance standards and makes the entire process a bureaucratic mess.
This excuse-making by the DEA, and its decision to “rob Dayton kids” of much- needed funds is what I’d call a “mess.” Reformers in Dayton face a tradeoff. Do you try to achieve reform within the district (requiring that you spend energy trying to convince a bankrupt teachers union with views this absurd) or do you instead support any and all alternatives to it?
-by Terry Ryan
Related posts:
- Dayton Daily News appreciates “Fordham’s honesty” in new book
- Did you know: Part 3 – If Ohio wins RttT, who will funds reach?
- Reevaluating the meaning of teacher commitment
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January 21st, 2010 at 10:18 am
You will know them by their words.
“How would you like your job to be based on criteria over which you had no control? Let’s say you are an editorial writer for a city newspaper. How would it be for your evaluation to be based on how many ads your paper sold?”
The stupidity of this remark is self-evident–If the newspaper doesn’t sell enough ads, than NO ONE has a job!
I just wish these socialist would at least be intellectually honest enough to actually live their own lives the same way they expect others to accommodate them.
January 21st, 2010 at 9:50 pm
I don’t know the district well enough to tell if DEA has resisted sensible reforms over the last decade, but since many of the so-called “reforms” of the last decade backfire in precisely the way a fad diet backfires, maybe they were actually opposing lousy ideas. The reality is that, like in any bureaucracy, the people in the central office have ideas that sound great on paper but don’t work very well in the real world, and teachers happen to be the people who know this.
I also didn’t read the entire DEA reply, but from what you posted, they are absolutely right on the facts. Both test-driven education and merit pay have long histories of failure, and locker-room logic aside, there are few things with a poorer track record in education than competition. (Works a little better short term for rote knowledge, is worse for everything beyond that, including behavior and long-term motivation and high-level student outcomes. So, Duncan put together three of the biggest serial failures in education, gave it a clever name, and teachers had the audacity to oppose it?! Shocking.
Test-driven education has been avoided by many of the countries with the most well-respected education systems, and now China, Japan, Singapore and Korea and moving away from standardized test-driven education, and are moving TOWARDS what we are throwing away–more individualized whole child education and less emphasis on testing. China in particular has done test-driven education long enough to know how much it has hurt them.
Most of what matters for children’s and America’s future is not on the tests, focusing on tests means neglecting many of the student outcomes that matter the most for real-world success. Furthermore, why fund merit pay plans when they simply don’t work?
They should fire the teachers if they didn’t have the good sense and guts to oppose RttT, and stand up against these misguided policies. This is America, not North Korea, and presumably our citizens are not supposed to grovel for any handout the government sends our way.
Test scores are fatally flawed assessments of the student outcomes that matter most to parents and teachers, and if politicians and CEOs and so-called “reformers” don’t wake up to this reality, and stop trying to build reforms around these test scores, America and our children are in for a very long, very unpleasant ride.
As for the idea that ANY solution is automatically better than the status quo, there is simply no system of logic that accepts that kind of thinking. The devil one doesn’t know is often worse, and in Ohio, the charters are often noticeably worse than the public schools. I wish there WERE a great system of alternative schools in Ohio, but there isn’t.
January 24th, 2010 at 2:34 pm
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April 25th, 2010 at 3:28 am
Now THAT’S what I’d deem an interesting position on this subject. What I would suggest though is speaking to other people actively involved in the scene and bring to light any different points of view and then update your site or create a new article for us to stew over. I hope you’ll take my advice, I’m looking forward to it! Try to cover off on some graffiti characters as well if you can, they’re everywhere at the moment.