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Refusing the Ugly

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By Lynn Fedele

I am a teacher. I am also a member of Montclair Cares About Schools. I am proud of both.

My father was a teacher, too, who taught History at North Bergen High School for over 30 years. He was also a union officer. He was proud of both.

When I started teaching 24 years ago, I never imagined I would have to become an education activist in my private life, and when I moved to Montclair 18 years ago, I never imagined I would be faced with such acrimony for speaking out on behalf of children.

Yet despite my failures of imagination, things have gotten a bit ugly in Montclair. A new group of “anonymous parents” with a website and a lawyer – Shavar Jeffries, a charter school advocate who recently lost the mayoral race in Newark to Ras Baraka –  have launched an attack video against MCAS and placed a FOIL request for the emails of a township activist. They have filed a highly dubious ethics complaint against town councilman Sean Spiller. They have said some very hurtful things.

A comment that really got to me was one by Jeffries, published in an article in the Montclair Times. The article states that, according to Jeffries, parents are not speaking out publicly “out of fear that district educational staffers may retaliate against their children.”

When I read this, my first thought was, how in the world did we get to a place and time where it is acceptable to make such malicious, unfounded comments about teachers?

My second thought followed quickly: I’m just glad that my father isn’t alive to see this, because it would break his heart.

Then I cried.

I don’t want to get sucked into the muck and the mire of this. I want to continue to speak and to work for what is best for children – all children. And I will, because Montclair is a place with a long, beautiful history of struggle, of people coming together to face issues that are not easy to face. I moved here because of the town’s history of activism, especially in dealing with race and education. We have been a national model in many ways, and this is due to the people here who have continually striven to do what is right when what it right is not what is easy. Still, there is a much bigger picture here, one that Montclair is a part of and one that because of all the turmoil surrounding public education reveals the chance of something good happening for us all.

Because truthfully, something strange is in the air, some kind of shift in the educational wind. It may not be as dramatic and immediate as I would like, but suddenly, the clouds of “reform” are parting and there is a distinct possibility for hope, for rational discourse about real education. The current animosity cannot be maintained forever, and as more people are waking up to what “reform” really entails, more people are entering into this discussion. This is a very good thing.

Consider:

In the past few months, the U.S. Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions has been taking testimony as it looks into rewriting No Child Left Behind (you can find the senators’ contact information here on the left side of the screen).

Arne Duncan admitted that there has been too much focus on standardized testing in schools.

Last month, in his weekly radio address, President Obama stated: “This year, I want to work with both parties in Congress to replace No Child Left Behind with a smarter law that addresses the overuse of standardized tests, makes a real investment in preschool, and gives every kid a fair shot in the new economy.”

Chris Christie, in speaking with potential Iowa supporters, admitted doubt in his previously unflagging support for the Common Core State Standards.

Test refusal in New Jersey has surpassed everyone’s expectations.

And in Montclair news, superintendent Dr. Penny MacCormack has announced her resignation.

None of this adds up to a complete reversal of the movement toward standardization and testing that has been squeezing public education, but something is happening. And I think this something is causing the moneyed, charter-school, privatization advocates to come out swinging wildly.

Whether we look at these changes and reversals as the hard work of activists bearing fruit, or shifts in the political winds, or the American public waking up to the dangers of standardization and testing, or as simple career opportunism, the fact remains that now is the time for educators to have their voices heard. Because people are starting to listen.

There is a place here and now for us to speak up loudly, to address education issues as fervently as we can. On the local level, we are facing the search for a new superintendent, and this in the midst of troubles surrounding the badly depleted budget Dr. MacCormack will leave in her wake. Nonetheless, we need to create our wish list for change – true education reforms – that will help bring the Montclair Public Schools back to being the innovative, creative, and student-centered places they have always striven to become. There is a lot of work to be done. Fortunately, teachers are quite accustomed to hard work.

So here is  a beginning, a wish list of things I would like to see happen in Montclair:

*More people speaking up. It’s been happening, with teachers, parents, and community members. Keep it coming, The more voices, the more opinions — the more ideas and the more possibilities.

*Fair contracts for paraprofessionals. Their work is never under-appreciated by the students, parents, and teachers with whom they work, but they have been increasingly undervalued by Central Services and the BOE. All paraprofessionals deserve full-time status with benefits.

*Smaller class sizes. We have been watching class sizes in Montclair grow, and educators know how important this issue is. For some of the many reasons why class size matters – including its effects upon the achievement gap – click here. This may require hiring more teachers and re-examining scheduling in some of the schools.

*More special needs resources and teachers.  The district has been losing one court case after another in recent years for deficits in following students’ IEPs. Special needs students need to have curriculum and methods tailored to their needs in order for them to succeed, and these needs should not take a back seat to the demands of unrealistic standards and testing.

*Refocus elementary and middle school curricula on their magnet themes. Yes, the standardized testing will be with us for some time longer, but sacrificing what makes each school a unique addition to the Montclair community will not improve any child’s educational experience. Additionally, cutting back on physical education, foreign language instruction, art, music, history and science will not help our kids be ready for anything in life, never mind college or careers.

*More support for and the extension of small learning communities at the high school. The successes of the small learning communities continue despite increased pressure to standardize curriculum and methodology to fit the tests, and they would flourish if given the necessary resources to develop their programs more fully.

*Support for Imani and a return of The Writer’s Room.  The type of one-on-one student support these programs provide has immeasurable effects, for beyond mere test scores. Education is an extremely personal venture, one that relies upon interpersonal connections and supports.

*Real Professional Development.  Teachers need to be allowed to be proactive in pursuing the training they know will benefit their classrooms the most. As a one-size-fits-all standard is harmful to students, it is harmful to teachers as well. This should include PD related to racism and to legitimately addressing the achievement gap.
*A budget that focuses on the students. Enough over-bloated administration. The district budget needs to be just as student-centered as the curriculum. Yes, there is a deficit, and one we cannot ignore. But we also cannot blindly trust those who spent a multi-million dollar surplus down to a budget gap. Each and every decision must be made in accordance to what helps students, not in accordance with the ideological beliefs of administrators.
*Piloting the foreign language immersion program. The projected cost is minimal in a budget a large as Montclair’s, and there are long-term benefits to the schools and the children that offset this initial cost. The parent advocates who have been working tirelessly on this for years have more than done their homework. This is the type of creative innovation our township should embrace.

And there is so much more. We need to speak up about alternative assessments, about actual performance based assessments and project-based learning.

So please, add to this list. Write letters and emails. Shout from the nearest rooftops – whatever works. There is a Contacts page on this site; there are BOE meetings to attend.  The time is now. If we do not lead in advocating for true education reform, we can be sure that others – with whatever motives they have – will.

I am not going to stop speaking up for what is best for kids, and I think my father would have been proud of that, too.

2014 075permalink: https://montclaireducationmatters.com/2015/02/18/a-call-to-arms/

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They’re Not Glorified Babysitters

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The link below will take you to a wonderful piece written by a Montclair paraprofessional.

http://www.buzzfeed.com/johnwilliamm2/glorified-babysitters-or-taking-a-stand-for-parap-1dno8

Excerpt: “I want you to think about these things when I tell you that we paraprofessionals and personal care assistants have no job security, tenure, or – in the case of my colleagues in Montclair – no health insurance. Because we’re understaffed, the classroom teacher has to jump into the rotation and work with students, which means they don’t have time to do assessments or train the rest of the staff on a particular child. On top of academics, our job also involves feeding, toileting, and other lessons in self-care. Ponder this troubling fact: Even though it’s a full-time job, most of us need to work a second job to make ends meet because the pay is atrocious and severely inadequate. I was lucky to be making $22,000 a year in a district that is now reportedly in a $6 million hole.”

A Teacher’s Letter on Paraprofessionals

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This letter was submitted anonymously by a teacher in the Montclair Public Schools district.

What is the value of a paraprofessional in our classrooms?  It is really quite simple:  our schools could not run without them.

If you doubt this, pay attention sometime to the rhetoric of the guides on our school tours.  In giving the school the best possible image ever, the tour guides tell parents about low class size, and the amount of paraprofessionals in the room offering extra support.  In fact, this is such a huge selling point for parents entering our school system that the tours fudge the truth a bit, pretending adults in the room at that moment – long term subs, student teachers, a parent volunteer – are full time paraprofessionals.

Our parents understand the significance of having competent paraprofessionals in the room.  It means that their child will receive individual, differentiated instruction as well as tender loving care all day.  It means that when a child needs extra assistance or is easily distracted, that someone who knows him or her well will take the child to a quiet place and go over the lesson with him or her.

Teachers and paraprofessionals in a solid relationship can seamlessly switch roles to serve the needs of the classroom community better.  A teacher can conference with one child while the paraprofessional circulates to help individuals and maintain a peaceful atmosphere.  A paraprofessional can quickly address non-academic needs – a nurse visit or an upset child – without any interruption to the teacher’s lesson or the rest of the group.

Paraprofessionals offer a sense of stability to children.  They go with the children to lunch, recess and to their related arts classes.  Teachers don’t.  The children develop a bond with paraprofessional that is unique and trusting.  Some children who are shy to ask a teacher for help will feel comfortable asking the paraprofessional.

Of course, the paras also serve our most vulnerable children:  those with special needs.  A teacher simply cannot create a classroom environment in which all children can rise to their academic potential without the assistance of the paraprofessional.  They are not merely, “an extra set of hands;” on the contrary, they are extra eyes, ears, a second point of view, and another person who wants to see children feel comfortable and successful in this time of “rigor.”  They are our collaborators and our co-teachers.

To cut the paraprofessional staff is to rob the children of the care they need.  It is to rob the children’s parents of the care that they are promised every year during school tours.  It also robs our budget of needed personnel as it continues to hire people with new titles that don’t come close to servicing real students in real classrooms every day in Montclair.

We are sorry that our district disregards our paraprofessionals and makes them feel like they are unimportant.  It shows a great disconnect between the people who sit in offices all day making large salaries and the ones that barely sit at all unless there is a student beside them, making very small salaries.

Our schools cannot run without an ample staff of paraprofessionals.  Please remember this when considering the upcoming budget.

permalink: https://montclaireducationmatters.com/2015/03/08/a-teachers-letter-on-paraprofessionals/

Support the Paraprofessionals

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Many people in town do not understand how important Paraprofessionals are to the schools and to our children, and because of this many paras are in danger of losing their jobs as the Montclair Board of Education addresses how to close the budget gap. The following statement was submitted anonymously by a paraprofessional who has worked in the Montclair Public Schools for many years.

“Until I worked in the schools, I had no idea how important the Paraprofessional roles are. The kids are alone with us for 45 minutes a day. They are with us more than they are with the classroom teacher. We organize and monitor lunch and recess; we attend all related arts classes with the children. If there is a teacher out or an emergency arises, I can sub anywhere. I have been the tech teacher, the gym teacher, the music teacher, and a 5th grade math teacher.

” I do this job for the love of children and for the convenience of my family. When I took this job several years ago, it was a real eye-opener for me as a parent to see the inside of a school and see how it really functions. Schools are very busy places, and there is so much to be done at once. Kids need a lot of help, attention, support and encouragement in order to learn to the best of their abilities. That’s what we do.

“EVERY school had teachers who got up to speak at BOE meetings last year and spoke of how they needed more paras. They asked to have 1st grade teaching assistants back. You want to talk about closing the achievement gap? That is not going to happen without competent, trained paras – those who know what to do and how to do it – in the classrooms for the early grades, and the special needs students will certainly not improve if they do not get the care and attention to which they are legally entitled. The teachers are stretched beyond their limits with the new standards, curriculum, materials, RTIs and SGOs, and this is on top of their regular duties; they need us and the kids need the work we do.

“When the BOE mentioned outsourcing, I thought of all of this. I was thinking of how the Board members have no idea of our role in the schools.The stress throughout the years at every budget meeting has me wondering how these people can make these decisions. And now they’re thinking of firing us.

” The kids that I have had throughout the years come back to me for hugs and hellos. We are constants in their lives for 6 years.”

Who the paraprofessionals are is important to the children, the parents, the teachers and the principals – in short, they are important to the schools are deserve greater respect than they are currently receiving. At the time of publication of this piece, the BOE is not considering outsourcing the paraprofessionals but laying them off instead, and as many as 34 hardworking people may lose their jobs. How many of our students will lose the help and attention they need? Balancing the budget on the backs of special needs and early elementary students is wrong.

Please come to the next BOE meeting on 3/16 2015 and speak up about the budget.

permalink: https://montclaireducationmatters.com/2015/03/07/support-the-paraprofessionals/
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Bradford School Comments

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Comments to the Board of Education 12/15/14

The following comments were made to the Board by concerned teachers from the Bradford School.

I am here to speak on behalf of the Bradford faculty about two concerns: (1) the district’s exclusive use of the Developmental Reading Assessment (or DRA) to measure reading progress and (2) serious problems with the current referral process to special education our district is using, known as RTI.

My collegues and I are troubled by a tremendous over-reliance on the DRA to make important decisions about children. The DRA is overlooking children with weak phonics skills and it over-identifies children as having poor comprehension who are merely poor writers. These problems have been identified by our veteran teachers, reading specialists, and even our novice teachers. Yet the DRA score is given far more weight than a teacher’s professional opinion.

No single test should be used to make critical and complex decisions about children, and a teacher’s observations & judgment should always be relied upon when interpreting scores.

Currently, there is more red tape to get children extra support than ever before. Teachers are required to provide so much data to document a student’s weaknesses that there is little time to conduct meaningful interventions. For each child who struggles, the teacher must document specific weaknesses with work samples, observations and test results, describe the interventions and then chart their frequency. The teacher is expected to administer tests to struggling children every 2 weeks.

The documentation and red tape is so burdensome that under these conditions, only the weakest students get services, and children with milder problems are neglected until their problems become a severe hindrance to their ongoing development.

In addition to problems with documentation, RTI takes too long. District policy dictates that children can’t officially move to a higher level of support until the start of a new marking period. This has been problematic for a Bradford student who requires speech services. The child’s needs were evident on the first day of school, and supported by our speech pathologist’s screening. However, the child’s teacher was not able to refer him for a formal evaluation and told to wait unti the start of the next marking period. This means he’s unlikely to get services until February or March.

We are frustrated by the administration’s response to our concerns about students. When requesting extra support, we are too often told that our students cannot quality because their DRA scores aren’t low enough. It’s appalling tha the expertise of teachers and specialists are disregarded in favor of a DRA score.

The district is grossly misusing RTI. Rather than using is to proactively help children, it’s used to reduce referrals to special education and make it appear as though the district is eliminating the achievement gap. In reality, this gap is widening for more children and at a faster rate than ever before.

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I am here to speak on behalf of Bradford MEA members – about our concerns regarding teacher professional development, communication and technology.
We have district-mandated PD days – that are one-size fits all workshops and are not beneficial to all of us. We are at widely varying stages of our professional lives and can identify our own strengths and areas for improvement. We yearn for quality professional development in areas that we choose according to our needs. We are expected to differentiate our instruction for children. We want that same respect paid to us.
For example, in October, teachers attended a workshop about guided reading that many of us could have taught. Substitute teachers were hired and our students lost yet another day of real teaching. When a teacher at our school requested funding for an out-of-district workshop given by experts in the field, she was told that “the district already gives PD in this.”
There are more “professional development” days planned for this school year – more days away from our students, more funds spent on substitutes. The Board has been told that this PD is “invaluable” to the teachers. What would be “invaluable” to us would be to receive funding and release time for professional development of our choosing that addresses our needs. Stop taking us from our students! Stop listening to the administrators’ misrepresentation of how great the district professional development is. LISTEN TO THE TEACHERS!
Communication between the district & teachers is lacking and misleading when directed by the district to the parents. Parents are led to believe when it comes to the Common Core, benchmark assessments, and PARCC preparation that teachers are resistant to change and don’t like having to work harder. THIS IS NOT TRUE. We embrace change when the change is appropriate and beneficial to our students. We are not opposed to more work!
Communication is also last minute. Central Office sent an email on the last day of a 2-week time period given to complete reading assignments that gave additional instructions, new tasks and new procedures for entering reading grades on the report cards. Most of us had already completed the DRAs and entered the grades. The information came too late !
Regarding technology – we are asked to implement curriculum that requires technology that we do not possess. We are using Pearson Envision math with an online component. We were told that use of this Pearson product would be reflected in our observations & our evaluations. At Bradford – some of us have Smart Boards – some us do not. For those who do not, the program is used by gathering about 25 students around one old small computer screen – often with buffering internet.
If we have to use technology – YOU MUST SUPPLY IT ! Do not tell us that funds are not in the budget ! A budget that supports bonuses to the superintendent & members of her staff should not plead poverty when it comes to servicing students.

At the heart of Bradford School, is a concern for the importance of equity as well as respect for the work that the paraprofessionals do each day. We could not possibly meet the needs of our most vulnerable students without these dedicated and experienced professionals. At Bradford School, we have a large number of children with special needs and we work hard to be inclusive. We have been mulling over the importance of equity and how that relates to the importance of paraprofessionals since October 13th, a day when the entire district came together to hear Dr. Chris Emdin speak about equity in education and, ironically enough, a day for which the paraprofessionals have NOT YET BEEN PAID. We are simply appalled that the BOE prefers to pay more to enter into a grievance process than to pay the paras for this day of work.
It is not possible to separate the importance of equity in education from the important role that the paraprofessionals play in supporting the students of Montclair. Paras work one-on-one with children or with small groups of children to provide specific interventions for children such as: helping children focus, breaking down tasks into manageable chunks, and reviewing strategies not yet grasped. Equity is about providing our students who are furthest behind with the support needed to succeed and eventually close the achievement gap. On a side note, we would like to echo the call from others to disaggregate the achievement gap data in Montclair according to socioeconomics.
Yet, paras are not valued for the vital role they play in the education of our students. A few years ago, they were threatened with outsourcing and stripped of their benefits. The district has made significant cuts which has left the classrooms with paras for classified students ONLY. Currently, most paras are spread very thin – often assigned to three or four of our neediest students. So, it is inconceivable that classrooms are threatened with a 30% down-sizing of paras again. Moreover, there are an increasing number of paras being hired as long time subs without contracts. If we continue to disregard our para professional’s work conditions, we will not attract high caliber individuals and our students will suffer. Despite these conditions, our paras arrive each day at school bringing dedication and their unique talents to the children with different learning styles. Paras show infinite patience and resourcefulness. They continually go above and beyond, are asked give up lunch periods, and asked to perform tasks designed for highly trained specialists.

One final note, despite the repeated outcry of every school in our district, our MEA president Gayl Shephard’s place on the board meeting agenda has not been reinstated. Last year you provided each school with a forum to speak. This year we are given no voice at all, so we rely on Montclair teachers who reside in town to speak. Your efforts to silence us have not gone unnoticed. Your efforts to silence us have not worked.

permalink: https://montclaireducationmatters.com/2014/12/18/bradford-school-comments/

Montclair 250

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Board of Education Meeting Comments 12/15/2014

The following comments were written and presented by members of Montclair 250, an organization of Montclair residents who work for the school district.

We are Montclair. We live here; we work here; we are parents of children who have or still are part of the Montclair school system that has always been a source of pride for our town. We are your neighbors, friends, and educators. As educators we say change is good, and there are many changes throughout the district that we would welcome.

The history of Montclair is steeped in the freedom to disagree yet still have a voice. It has always been part of the culture of this town and part of our respect for each other and our differing opinions. Lately, many voices of varying dissent are being silenced. This is not the norm for Montclair and we are not comfortable with this leadership that seems out of touch with what families want for their children’s education.

We are sad to say that it is our experience that members of this board and administration seem to have a need to separate people from one another: Principals from teachers, parents from teachers, and teachers from paraprofessionals. You have removed people from the agenda, ended a tradition of having teachers speak for their schools and have taken names out of order when calling people up to speak. We would never teach our students to jump ahead of line. Yet this is what is modeled at these meetings.

This kind of separation is attempted through breeding distrust. However, we, as a town, are all together – unified in whatever we agree and disagree about. It is the culture of this town: a culture that is more important than some may realize.

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Succeeding in separating groups of people cannot go very far when it is based upon the misinformation, disrespect and inconsistency that affects our students. The current administration and some members of this board are no longer trusted to be honest or respectful to others. Most important of all, they are not trusted to be concerned with the quality of education for all of our children. Instead, this board and administration continue to pass blame for any failings on past administrations, present employees and still attempt to set one group against another.

For example, at the last board meeting, after a round of public comments from many parents in this town who took the PARCC and were not pleased, the Board discussed this. Rather than listen to what the citizens of Montclair said, David Deutch stated “This is simple economics. The PARCC is going to count in teachers’ evaluations. It gives them the incentive to be negative about it.”

Let us be clear with you: the issues educators have with the PARCC are not based on the fact that we will be evaluated. Rather, it is that we have evaluated the PARCC, and find it developmentally inappropriate for each age group it covers, and of low quality. Much more important, is the stress it puts on our students, while offering no benefit to them or instructional direction for teachers.

Perhaps listening to the many parents and educators who have recently taken the PARCC and trying to work within a framework of compromise (at a minimum) instead of attacking educators would be more helpful. Those who work with students are the experts. It is time that all realize that how to educate is best left to the educators.

During a meeting at the Bradford school, between parents and teachers last March, Dr. MacCormack, discussed how 46 states were adopting the common core and how wonderful it was. A parent stood up and asked, “If the common core is so good, then why have several schools spoken out against it at the board meetings?” Dr. MacCormack said “Because it’s hard.” She then went further and explained to the parents that it is difficult for teachers to change, that the common core is very different for them – it’s rigorous. Change is hard for the teachers. This same line has been given to parents at meetings they’ve had with Gail Clarke. It has become the central office’s mantra. One parent said that Gail Clarke made the common core so clear to her, and then followed up by stating that “I know no one likes the extra work, but it’s good for our kids.” Can you imagine anyone walking around stating “Oh, they just don’t like change—it’s too much work” about people in other fields? Again, this is misinformation to separate the community and to continue abusing our children’s education: because all of this dishonesty, and micro-management of who says what to whom, and retribution or intimidation for speaking up is just that—abuse of our children’s education.

Let’s step back to one of the first powerpoint presentations by Dr. MacCormack at a board meeting. Dr. MacCormack’s data showed that the achievement gap was much wider in Montclair than previously thought. She showed that the previous administration (again, the blame sits elsewhere) did not include the socioeconomic data and said this is something she would not leave out. In the most recent presentation of data that included the achievement gap, she did just that. Data and budgets change seamlessly. Responsible approaches, collaboration, any transparency and honesty are lacking in this top-down, corporate model of management that is not working for education. It ends up reducing the role of the educators, excluding them from the planning and decision making in a way that decreases the ability to move our students forward.

Not one member has addressed the budget with any real transparency. In addressing the budget, this district recently reported that they ended the year with no deficit balances and no line item over expenditures. However, with all the money marked for technology, why did they have to take money from principals’ building budgets to fulfill their spending on technology? Forget deficits – where has a surplus that could have been used for students gone? Again, this is something that greatly affects our students.

Also stated in the district’s budget report was that as this district prepares for the development of the 2015-2016 budget, they continue to address increasing expenses in the areas of special education costs, utilities and employee health benefits. This district changed health insurance companies to save a vast amount of money. They muddled through this quickly, not researching CIGNA enough. Much quality has been lost. The CNA determined that Cigna denies roughly 39.6% of all claims (compared to competitors such as Aetna who denied about 5.9% of all claims in the same time frame.) The district did not research other companies, get bids on the insurance, or discuss it with the MEA. After handling this in so incorrect a manner to save money, we do wonder why employee health benefits is under the label of increasing costs.

More importantly, this district claims that special education costs are increasing. They certainly are. When the needs of our students are not met, parents will take their students elsewhere and our district and taxes will foot the bill. Out-of-district placement is up. In this administration’s short tenure legal fees have tripled from the $200,000’s to the $600,000’s. This upsets us greatly. We work hard to make a difference in our students’ lives even without the needed resources in materials and staffing. Our students are our neighbors and their parents our friends. By taking away materials and paraprofessionals, and worrying more about seeming to close a gap rather than really closing it, once again, the board and administration of this district have frayed the edges needed to help our next generation of students succeed.

The meetings held with parents early in this administration’s tenure introduced the idea that the brightest and the best would be brought in. First of all, the insult inherent in that statement to all the existing staff is offensive. Many of the brightest and best have been here much longer than this administration and have helped thousands of students, both academically and emotionally, from kindergarten through their senior year of high school. So far, incorrect data, misleading statements, poorly thought out plans, and a lack in the ability to motivate, train, and advance educators is all we have seen. We are still waiting for the brightest and the best.

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Last year offered little professional development to teachers or paraprofessionals. Until late in the year, most of the Professional Development offered was a repeated overview of the Marshall Rubric. We are educators. As educators, we have dealt with a vast amount of rubrics in our careers. We could figure out the Marshall rubric. So after a year of this, Central Office decided to get back on the academic track. They offered specific Professional Development. This was offered with the promise of more. Gail Clarke specifically said that the Balanced Literacy Professional Development was geared more toward newer teachers, even calling it Professional Development 101, but would move forward from there. It has not moved forward.

Many of us have years of experience and a wealth of knowledge. We would like to go outside of district for more in-depth professional development. We are told no—the district provides it. We have to miss a day of teaching our students to come to these Professional Development sessions that do not offer growth. If the Professional Development is geared toward newer teachers, then why does the whole district have to lose teaching time and pay substitutes? Just as we differentiate our teaching for our students, we expect the district to be held to the same standard. It seems that our definition of Professional Development and our district’s differ.

For example, high school history teachers were recently told to bring their students to the assembly for a meeting about Amistad. As the students entered, Davida Harewood, district supervisor for social studies, asked if any students would like to ask questions of the presenter afterwards. Students did raise their hands. Those students were handed pre-written questions to ask from Ms. Harewood. The Common Core demands higher analytical thought, yet our students are being taught to read someone else’s questions, putting their own thoughts aside. As students left the auditorium, Ms. Harewood told them to always question – make sure they question their teachers all the time. Professional Development should always model best practices. Later that day, all the teachers found Professional Development certificates in their mailboxes, from Central Office. Just for walking their students to the auditorium. Yet this district talks about raising the bar.

New Jersey’s Department of Education states that the definition of professional development is one that is aligned with student learning, educator needs and embedded in educators’ daily work. It further states that that PD shall have as its primary focus the improvement of teachers’ and school leaders’ effectiveness in assisting all students to meet the Common Core Curriculum Standards.

Neither change nor rigor is hard for teachers. We change consistently and constantly to meet the needs of our students, not Central Office’s need to have us teach to tests. Whatever anyone’s issues with the Common Core, let’s understand that our Central Office has been doling out propaganda for Pearson Publishing and keeping the curriculum narrower and narrower so that we are teaching to a test. That is not what we do. We educate. There is a vast difference between teaching to a test and teaching our students to have a love of learning. Enriching the lives of our students is what matters. We are critical of the changes, not anxious about change. It is time that this difference is understood.

Permalink: https://montclaireducationmatters.com/2014/12/17/montclair-250/

Dissecting the PARCC Propaganda

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By Lynn Fedele

The Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC) website offers a vast array of information about this new, untried assessment system, and it is designed to sell the PARCC assessments to parents and educators on all levels. As the PARCC is tied to the Common Core State Standards (CCSS), the website does a good job of promoting those standards, too. Published within a handbook for “State and District Leaders” in implementing the PARCC and the CCSS is chapter 4, titled “Organize to Implement: Getting the Message Out.” It is a 14-page long public relations manual, replete with charts and graphs and all sorts of useful suggestions.

The Montclair Schools have had an interesting relationship with the notion and function of public relations over the past year, and this year Central Services has hired its own public relations professional. While Mr. Frankel is indeed busy in selling the notion that all changes coming from the state and through superintendent MacCormack are working wonderfully, the public relations efforts to support the CCSS and the PARCC go beyond one man’s effort and employment with the school district. A close look at the PARCC’s chapter on organizing public support is telling; while any public relations work needs to be tailored to local populations and concerns, there is a good deal in the handbook that resonates loudly and clearly here in Montclair.

So let’s take a look at what the PARCC suggests.

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The chapter begins this way:

“One risk faced by any change effort is ‘undercommunicating by a factor of 10, or even 100.’ The communications effort should receive the same amount of effort as the implementation effort.” While this may seem innocuous enough, the implementation effort includes redesigning curriculum, updating technology, ordering and adapting new materials, and accelerating the level of instruction (frequently beyond grade level). These efforts have taken countless hours, a lot of money, and have upended many of our classrooms, not necessarily for the better.  That public relations should take as much time and effort is troubling. There’s an old cliche, “A good idea sells itself.” This opening statement seems like an admission that this is not a good idea and that the community will take a lot of convincing to get on board.
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Their first suggestion? It’s the first section, “Build a Base of Support by Establishing a ‘Guiding Coalition.'”
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First, they address why this has to happen:
“Flagging public support can push implementation off the rails. Pressure to water down student expectations may build, for example, once new assessment results show that students are not as prepared as once believed.”
The students are being assessed by a system that is largely untried. They are being assessed on standards that are being found to be frequently developmentally inappropriate. It’s not a matter of our students being under-educated, or our schools being underdeveloped, or of our teachers not having high expectations for learning; it is a matter of the PARCC being an unfair test.  What PARCC characterizes as “pressure to water down student expectations” is the joined voices of teachers, parents, education specialists, and students themselves saying that curriculum and assessment need to be fair, to be developmentally appropriate, to be focused on creating skills for life-long learning; these are voices saying clearly that demanding too much too fast is damaging  to children.
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The section continues, “Inevitably, state and district leaders need help in keeping rigorous expectations for students at the heart of their agenda. Though the strategic implementation team (district administrative employees responsible for getting the schools ready to administer the test) plays a key role in supporting their agenda, a small group of highly visible and credible leaders are needed to sustain effort in the face of pushback.” This small group is, of course, the guiding coalition. Locally, who do we have to fit this bill? Will the SATPs be further co-opted? The Achievement Gap Panel? Members of the Board of Ed? Time will tell. Certainly, spending public tax money on a P.R. consultant will help, too.
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Of course, publicly disparaging those who oppose the CCSS and PARCC is part and parcel of local corporate-reform efforts. Teachers are speaking out? It’s all too easy to paint teachers as lazy or, in Dr. MacCormack’s words at a Board of Ed meeting last year, “afraid of change.” Parents are concerned? Members of Montclair Cares About Schools are “uncivil” or are a fringe group or are engaging in personal attacks. Of course teachers and parents want children to learn; it’s silly to think otherwise. But it’s also silly to think that by echoing the word “rigor” proponents of PARCC and CCSS are actually advocating what is best for students.
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But what is best for students is not the focus of the P.R. chapter, and what comes next is disconcerting. According to PARCC: “The role of this ‘guiding coalition’ is to remove bureaucratic barriers to change, exert influence at key moments to support implementation and offer counsel to the strategic implementation team.”  Many of the “barriers to change” are actual democratic structures put into place to keep the public schools accountable to the public. How much more quickly would Dr. MacCormack ‘s and the corporate reformers’ changes be in place if they were not open to public scrutiny? And upon whom should the guiding coalition “exert influence”? What kind of “influence” are they implying with this? The chapter does not clarify.
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What the chapter does clarify, though, is how to keep the propaganda manageable.  The handbook, in referencing pushback, states “The best way to ensure that this does not happen is to play offense — make sure your messages and goals reach key audiences first and are regularly reinforced by credible messengers. In fact, don’t be afraid to communicate even if your implementation plan is in flux.”  This need for constant top-down message communication, even in the midst of “flux,” could explain the discrepancies in information this year. For instance, parents were given a list of PARCC skills that are being covered in the middle schools while the middle school teachers were not informed of their responsibility to teach these skills. Parents and teachers have been told there will be no test prep. In fact, in her posting on the Montclair Board of Education website “Why PARCC,” Dr. MacCormack writes, “As superintendent, I set the tone for how these tests will be interpreted in the district, regardless of the State’s mandates, and I will not support teaching to the test.” Yet some schools are giving practice PARCC tests. One administrator told a roomful of parents that a paper version of the PARCC will be available while other administrators are saying this will not be. The district’s powerpoint presentation to parents about the PARCC contains discrepancies about the time it will take to administer the test.
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Yet there are other areas of manageability that the district seems to be adhering to quite well, in particular the simplicity of the overall message itself. The PARCC recommends developing and repeating “three key  messages” and instructs “Repeat, repeat, repeat these messages across all communication channels and by all public messengers.” They even give suggested messages, including:
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PARCC: “State standards and assessments have historically been set too low, offering an inaccurate view of how well our students are actually achieving.” (Dr. MacCormack paraphrased this at a Board of Ed meeting earlier this year, and in “Why PARCC” she writes “Problems with the NJ ASK were numerous. For one, NJ ASK was not well aligned with classroom instruction, and therefore many teachers spent time doing test preparation. Turnaround of test results was slow and provided few concrete insights into student learning.” This comes despite the fact that the New Jersey standards have been proven to be among the nation’s best.)
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PARCC: “The Common Core State Standards and aligned common assessments are more rigorous than what we have [had] in place… and will provide an honest picture of how well our students, schools and system are achieving on the most critical knowledge and skills.” (Data, anyone? Dr. MacCormack writes in “Why PARCC,” “In addition, data gathered from assessment tests can also guide educators toward improving classroom instruction and foster the sharing of best practices for teaching our students.This is the ideal, but for more than a decade, under the State of New Jersey’s NJ ASK testing program, the ideal has been too far out of reach.”)
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PARCC: “Implementing the Common Core State Standards is a critical step toward ensuring that all students receive the true education they need for success in life.” (Last year, Dr. MacCormack and several Board of Ed members touted the CCSS as a means of addressing the achievement gap. In “Why PARCC,” Dr. MacCormack writes, “the NJ ASK offered limited measures of a student’s critical-thinking and problem-solving skills, key indicators of a student’s future success.
PARCC assessments, on the other hand, are said to provide a more thorough examination of student development than prior tests, with more writing and greater focus on critical thinking and problem-solving skills.”)
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What is happening in Montclair is part of a national agenda — PARCC even uses the word “agenda.”  They’ve published their playbook; we don’t have one. We can only speak the truth.
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Permalink: https://montclaireducationmatters.com/2014/12/14/dissecting-the-parcc-propaganda/

Myths and Truths of Teacher Evals

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AchieveNJ and Teacher Evaluations

The new evaluation system implemented by the state of New Jersey is serious, and educators across the state are feeling incredible pressure.  Myths abound as to the focus, purpose, and effectiveness of the evaluations, and the truth is as complicated as the new system itself. Many in the public arena interpret teachers’ criticisms of the new process as whining, and some go as far as to accuse teachers of resisting evaluation on the whole, insinuating if not stating that teachers do not want to be assessed because they fear being found incompetent. But it’s easy to make such broad statements when you don’t have the facts. There are a lot of myths going around – so what is the truth?

Myth: Teachers do not want to be evaluated.

Truth: Not true. Teachers always have been evaluated. We’re very accustomed to it. Having an administrator observe a class is nothing new, and many teachers welcome the opportunity to introduce principals and supervisors to the wonderful things that students do in the classroom.

But we want the evaluations to be fair. The criteria for what needs to be included within a teacher evaluation has changed since the advent of Race to the Top, and New Jersey has answered by developing AchieveNJ.  This is a highly complex system that includes classroom observations, Student Growth Objectives (SGOs), and Student Growth Percentiles (SGPs). While this seems fine on the surface, problems can arise if any administration chooses to use the observation portion as retaliation against teachers for practicing free speech or when the state introduces SGPs aligned with brand new tests (PARCC) that have never been used before and about which there is no information about accuracy or reliability.

Myth: Classroom observation criteria are fair and objective.

Truth: Well, that largely depends upon how one defines “fair,” and observations are always subjective, which is not necessarily a bad thing. There are 5 observation rubrics available to all districts in NJ, and Montclair is using the Marshall Rubric. There is too much to summarize here, which implies that there is too much. Read the rubric; how much of a difference is there between earning a 3 or 4 in most categories? Between a 1 and a 2? Look at the number of categories. How can any teacher show all of this during any given observation? Can any administrator see all of this? If any administrator in any part of the state wanted to target a teacher, he or she could easily do so, as teachers can defend themselves on evaluation procedures but not on evaluation ratings on the rubrics. Whatever an administrator says, goes.

Myth: No administrator would be so vindictive as to use evaluations to target specific teachers.

Truth: Yes, some would. While we have yet to see a case brought to public attention through the courts in Montclair, it has happened in Newark. Read about it here.

Myth: SGPs are a fair way to use data.

Truth: SGPs, which are a form of Value Added Measurement (VAM), are student test data used in a formula to impact a teacher’s overall rating. But using VAMs is a complicated and expensive process, one that is known to be harmful to schools in many ways if not done properly. (See links to articles about VAMs on our Articles page.) According to the AchieveNJ website, “SGP is a measure of how much a student improves his or her NJ ASK [PARCC] score from one year to the next compared to students across the state who had a similar test score history.” [There is no PARCC history. How can this count for 10% this year?] The state then takes the median test score of a teacher’s students to use. There are many factors that affect student test scores – from home environment to socioeconomic status to whether or not the student ate breakfast on the day of the test, to name a few – but these are not taken into account.

Myth: SGOs help teachers focus their instruction on standards.

Truth: Instruction is, as mandated by the state, centered on standards. It has been for many years, since New Jersey implemented the Core Curriculum Content Standards (CCCS) in 1996, so the assertion of the NJ DOE that SGOs will help teachers focus on standards is untrue – we already do. Since the adoption of the Common Core State Standards (which replaced the CCCS for ELA and Math), instruction has been aligned with these as well. Evaluation requirements demand a teacher to focus on one standard for each SGO and to complete a fairly long process of documentation. The issue is that the standards, again, are already being addressed. The SGO requirement does not cause teachers to bring in new methods or learn new content or strategies; it does cause teachers to spend a lot of time documenting what is already documented through our lesson plans, which are checked by the administration regularly. Because SGOs must document student growth, teachers must establish a baseline at the beginning of the school year; this is why teachers are now giving tests and assessments in September that they know the students will not do well on. If we have not yet taught a skill or concept, of course the pre-assessment scores will be low. We do not want to waste our time or the children’s time with these pre-assessments, but we have no choice.

Myth: Teachers getting bad evaluations must be bad teachers.

Truth: Not at all. In NJ and in other states that have adopted these evaluations, very good teachers are being put on probation and let go. Think of the teachers who volunteer each year to work with the students who struggle the most. No matter their effort, if test scores are low, they are to blame. Teachers who work with English Language Learners and Special Needs students are also at greater risk for their SGPs and SGOs coming in with low scores. Test scores also reflect student placement. If an administrator schedules a teacher  with many overcrowded classes filled with students with low skill levels, that teacher will do poorly on the SGP (and possibly in the observation as well). Under the guidelines of AchieveNJ, two consecutive ”ineffective” ratings or one “ineffective” and one “partially effective” rating will trigger tenure action by the state DOE. This means that the state can revoke teachers’ tenure even if their administrators want the teachers to be retained; while a district can challenge the state’s tenure revocation, it is limited in what it can do.

There is nothing, not one thing, in the evaluation system that takes into account how factors outside the school affect student performance.

Myth: You’re whining.

Truth: We’re not. Our jobs are at stake.

permalink: https://montclaireducationmatters.com/2014/11/23/myths-and-truths-of-teacher-evals/

Board of Ed Public Comments 1

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Board of Education Meeting Comments 11/17/2014

By Lynn Fedele

Central Services has been very busy lately trying to sell the benefits of the PARCC to the Montclair community. Having recently attended a PARCC workshop and having read Superintendent MacCormack’s newsletter, I find the process of promoting the PARCC to be fraught with unknowns and inconsistencies that reveal Central Services’ support for the new, untried, untested PARCC to be deeply problematic.

At the recent middle school PARCC presentation, Ms. Gail Clark answered “We don’t know” to questions at times, and I appreciate her honesty. What was troubling was the frequency of that answer because “We don’t know” came in response to questions about how the PARCC is developed and scored.

I do not blame Ms. Clark for these non-answers, as frequently on the PARCC website itself, they admit to not knowing some very important things about their own tests. For instance, how are they graded?: “PARCC is exploring a hybrid approach to scoring that includes scoring by both machines and humans.” In other words, they don’t know. In response to what kind of data teachers will receive, PARCC says “the PARCC states are working to develop detailed descriptors.”  They’re working on it. They do not know.

Yet data is one of Central Services’ key selling points. In Dr. MacCormack’s newsletter titled “Why PARCC?” she states that these assessments “are said to provide a more thorough examination of student development than prior tests.” They are “said to.” By whom? On what basis? These assessments have never been given and have no published cut score. Adding to the questionable status of future data is the tests’ structure, as seen in the PARCC’s test blueprints on their website. While there is more writing, there are fewer questions, which weakens their reliability in statistical analysis. Additionally, many questions cover more than one standard. For instance, in the grades 3-5 ELA test, the 3rd task has 5 multiple choice questions* that cover “any combination of standards 1,2,3,5,7,9.” That’s 5 questions, 6 standards. So there’s overlap. In fact, according to the blueprints, almost all ELA and many math test items cover more than one standard, with some covering 5 or 6 standards. If a student gets a question wrong, how can anyone know which standard or standards the student is not meeting? We don’t know.

In essence, in addition to many other concerns surrounding the PARCC, the basic idea that we will have better data is unfounded. Our district must implement PARCC as it is a state mandate; to do so unquestioningly would be foolish; to do so enthusiastically borders on propaganda. Adopting the CCSS and the PARCC at the state level was a political decision. At the local level, it is incumbent upon all parents and educators to protect children and their interests. There should never be blind support for an untried, ambiguous program about which there is so much that we don’t know.

*PARCC does not use the term “multiple choice.” These questions are labeled Evidence-Based Selected Responses and Technology Enhanced Constructed Responses.

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