Failure by design

If teachers were to grade their students in an inconsistent, convoluted and subjective manner, they would be run out of the teaching profession.

In their crusade to point fingers and direct blame for the failings of our education system, however, our state's leaders created a similar system for evaluating our teachers.

Florida's policymakers turned a deaf ear to the teachers who tried to point out the inadequacies of the Collaborative Assessment System for Teachers (CAST) when it was being fast tracked through the lawmaking process for the sake of winning a pot of gold from the federal Race to the Top (RTT) grant program.

Nevermind that Florida is the same state that continues to refuse expanding Medicaid on the ground that they do not want abdicate states' rights to empower Washington to impose its will on 50 separate sovereign entities.

The rush to create a data-based evaluation system replaced the thoughtful and reflective process of passing laws with a frenzy to chase after federal funding and with a political power grab that still leaves local school districts dizzy with confusion and disarray.

I was encouraged to read in the Orlando Sentinel a thoughtful column by Beth Kassab that exposes the deficiencies in the CAST system and how it actually hurts the teachers whom we trust to educate our children.

For example, she shares the story of how one Central Florida high school is one of the highest performing schools in the state. This 'A' school enjoys a graduation rate that is the envy of others and yet their learning growth was negative.

"How can this be?" asks Kassab, "How can a school with excellent student performance be populated with clueless teachers?" I know how these same education professionals can improve a school grade and yet be subject to the sanctions and condemnation that are designed to punish more than enlighten.

There are serious inconsistencies in how we rate our schools and our teachers. While FCAT is the instrument for measuring student growth in language arts, mathematics and selected science courses, it was left to the individual school districts to create assessments for the non-FCAT courses. This resulted in a patchwork of 67 school systems with varying benchmarks for student success. The state decided that all courses would have some form of assessment for all non-FCAT courses, but failed to support this mandate with funding. Instead of a reliable system of tracking student progress, we are doomed to compare apples with oranges across county lines.

What is the most absurd aspect of the testing and data driving our perception of public schools is that FCAT scores are often used to tell us what non-FCAT teachers are doing for their students. For example, a guidance counselor or an art teacher can be judged based on schoolwide FCAT numbers. Furthermore, reading scores are being used to indicate the quality of a history teacher's work. The measurements are all over the place and can potentially harm those educators who are indeed trying their best.

Besides the assessment part of teacher evaluations, our leaders presumed that the observation-based section of teacher assessments would be equally objective as the CAST instrument invited administrators to monitor their teachers in the classroom based on one day's worth of sitting in a classroom and using this single class period as the basis for judging a year's worth of teaching.

This, in my opinion, is rife with politics because administrators are given free reign to make up their minds based on an hour's worth of what they see. This simply encourages teachers to design lessons that are geared to impress their superiors and these dog-and-pony shows fail to actually reflect the individual talents for which we have trusted our educators with using in their respective classrooms. Once the observation is complete, the evaluator's word is gospel and all else be damned.

In an age of high stakes testing, this is a most perverse form of high stakes evaluations. Failure to make the grade based on these flawed metrics can ultimately result in teachers' pay being frozen or even in their termination. Yes, the beatings will continue until morale improves.

"We can be an 'A' school and conceivably get that [paycheck] bonus, but if we get three negative scores in a row then the teachers can all be replaced," said one prinicpal in a letter to state lawmakers, according to Kassab's commentary.

Yes, this is a messed up system that is supposed to help our students, but in the meantime is destroying Florida's teaching profession.

For more information about Kassab's commentary, please see this link.

Thank you, Diane Ravitch!

My friends at the Clay County Education Association informed me this morning that my open letter to Governor Rick Scott was posted on Diane Ravitch's blog.

Dr. Ravitch is a respected and renowned education advocate and I believe that it is an honor to be included in her blog!

An open letter to Governor Scott

A post-partisan Florida

The political system in Florida is bland and in need of some flavor that truly speaks to the voices of all Floridians. Ever since the Sunshine State flipped in favor of the current ruling majority, we have been missing the kind of red pepper that would bring the spice of variety to our public discussion and would create a system that truly works for all.

I lack any basic cooking skills, so I am not necessarily referring to a potluck that would throw someone of their bland diet. I speak metaphorically of the squashing of liberal and progressive voices at the hand of those who are more interested in perpetuating their own political power for their own means than on actually uniting a state that consists of more than just the yes men and women who cater to the needs of the ruling establishment.

Based on the gerrymandering of legislative districts and the wholesale auctioning of our agenda to the moneyed interests, one would not know that registered Democrats actually outnumber Republicans by nearly 400,000. Instead, we are subjected to an overconfident and cocky clique of politicians and lobbyists who wield their power like a club over their foes.

I remember that, in 2000, a mere 537 votes meant the difference between a Bush and a Gore administration for the nation, but the majority party chose to rule by fiat and mandate. They chose to eschew consensus for their ability to bully the powerless and exact revenge on those who disagree with them.

Our state's misplaced priorities were made manifest when they made the private issue of a brain-dead woman their priority while they attempted to write death warrants on public workers, labor unions, trial attorneys, environmental activists and those who stood in the way of their political dominance.

Our leaders did not become drunk with power on their own. The collective silence of the minority gave the false impression that Florida was willing to be led down the primrose path to fulfilling every whim designed by former governor Jeb Bush and the special interests who continued to ignore those who did not have the same access to the powers that be in Tallahassee.

In what may be an outlier of future election cycles, even the young Cubans of South Florida turned 'blue' as they have no concrete memory of the Cold War grudges that inspired a voting bloc to be firmly in the pocket of our state leadership. No longer can they be taken for granted and neither can the moderates and independents who live along Interstate 4. Hillsborough County ultimately held the keys to the White House for our 29 electoral votes and it will surely be pivotal to winning the governor's mansion.

For whatever criticism and abuse that was heaped upon former governor Charlie Crist, he should be lauded for his willingness to understand that leading means more than just pandering to the base of a party that turns a deaf ear to Floridians who are in dire need of representation and are desperate for more unity and less demonizing. The latest attempt by the state legislature to rig the rules of the game in their favor seemed to be a done deal because they had the super majority in the capitol, a lock on the state cabinet and buckets of money being tossed their way. What they did not count on was an equally powerful voice of people who rallied to finally say that they had enough with overreach and abuse from on high.

I am sure that we all assumed that Governor Rick Scott would have understood this when he defeated a Tallahassee insider to win his primary election for governor. We all assumed that an outsider would truly change the system for the better because he successfully made the case that he would do a much better job than the Democratic candidate whom he tagged as part of the dysfunctional system. He won by a slim margin because he showed promise. The promise of serving all Floridians, however, was bogged down by his reaching out to the same insiders whom he opposed when he originally decided to run for office.

While it is a smart choice to be fiscally responsible, the governor swapped his scalpel for a chainsaw with which he made devastating cuts to the educational system he promised to change. He opted to turn a deaf ear to the parents, teachers, school boards and superintendents who warned him that he and his administration were going too far. It did not really matter to our state's leadership because they had a firm grip on the levers of power and they would do anything in their power to stay on top.

I should know the impact of this draconian system of governance because I, along with many public workers, was forced to take a pay cut in order to balance our state's budget. I am confident that our state's Supreme Court will rule that this betrayal of our pension system dating back to the 1970s was indeed an abuse of our state's constitution.

The absolute power that resides in our state government, however, could not abide the rule of law. Our legislators, in their infinite wisdom, decided that it was time to mount a full-on attack on the sectors of government that would not tow the line. The laundry list of constitutional amendments and the assault on our judiciary branch failed because Floridians realized that the foundations of our state's political system were in danger.

What disappointed me most was the efforts of our state to shrink the window for early voting because they were dissatisfied with the results of previous elections. I know of no other time in our history that limiting voting resulted in a positive result for our citizens. I am proud that Floridians saw through this ploy and waited hours in line to show that they will not be scared or intimidated.

The arrogance of the likes of State Senator John Thrasher are even more pronounced as they claim to be victims of a powerful federal government that forces the states to relinquish their powers. The balance of power, however, has been ruined over the past generation as Tallahassee chose to usurp home rule in our 67 counties and our countless municipalities in the form of revenue policy that shifts the burden to local government, forces unfunded mandates onto our local governments and claims to be the advocates of less government.

The tide is turning in favor of more level-headed political discourse and I look forward to this trend continuing in 2014 as our state has a real debate on ideas and vision as opposed to wheelbarrows of cash pouring into the same hands that drove us into the mess that we are in today.

The red pepper? Former senator and congressman Claude Pepper is the kind of politician who we need to bring back balance to a truly purple state in a time when our leaders are less interested in leading than in dictating.

"If more politicians in this country were thinking about the next generation instead of the next election, it might be better for the United States and the world." - Claude Pepper

Learning knows no color - my Times-Union commentary

Four decades after strife and struggle marked race relations in our nation, Florida appears to be taking a step backwards in our work with minority children in the classroom.

In 1965, President Lyndon Baines Johnson addressed Howard University on this very issue, telling Howard University of the perils of freedom when Americans have been playing a catch up game with regard to all Americans having a fair chance to succeed.

You do not take a person who, for years, has been hobbled by chains and liberate him, bring him up to the starting line of a race and then say, "you are free to compete with all the others," and still justly believe that you have been completely fair.

While I understand the reasons behind the state Board of Education’s directive to set student progress goals by race, I respectfully disagree on the grounds that this new policy directly contradicts the goals that we have planned for real accountability in schools.

All along, teacher and parent organizations chafed at the punitive approach that our state’s leaders have taken with what was supposed to be standardized testing to diagnose the ills that are harming our students. All along, teacher and parent organizations pleaded with the state to take into account the factors that negatively affect our public schools.

Our problem is not racial, our problem is poverty. We miss the point when we believe that an African-American student in a relatively prosperous ZIP code needs to be given a pass in meeting the standards. I would point out that students, regardless of race or ethnic group are struggling because they happen to come from disadvantaged backgrounds.

Look at the neighborhood schools with high percentages of students who are on free and reduced lunches. The data will point out that failure knows no color. Socioeconomic status is what really dictates how students will perform on standardized tests.

While it is easy for us to change the rubric for student success to yield better numbers, the real work at hand is for us to change the circumstances that hobble our young people.

Regardless of our ideology, we all continue to fight a losing war on poverty that can only be addressed in ensuring that all citizens prosper with better jobs, better wages and better quality of life.

This, of course, is not going to be easy because we have been fighting a recession that seems to be as endless as the number of students who are dropping out of school and being lost to the criminal justice system or the welfare state.

The beginning of the real solutions is for our state’s leadership to finally listen to the people and to finally set aside petty partisan grievances and games to afford all Floridians a chance to work together for better schools that work for all.

The obvious answer, say many, it to divert more public funds to charter, private and parochial schools. This neglects the fact that we still have to operate public schools as our state constitution mandates in accordance with a paramount duty to do right by our students.

We are right to decry efforts to water down standards for minorities for the sake of moving children of color along. We are right to question Affirmative Action programs that ask more from white and Asian children simply because of the color of their skin.

What frustrates me about this issue is that this is a bed that we have made and now we are being forced to sleep in. What frustrates me is that we are tacking the same problems that we were warned about when FCAT turned from a helpful tool to a cudgel with which to assault educators who toil daily to meet the needs of all children.

The right thing for us to do now is to stop and repair this dysfunctional system that begins not in the classroom but in the pocketbooks that deprive many of our young people of an equal chance to succeed and in the economic policy that can put more people to work.

John Louis Meeks, Jr. currently resides in Jacksonville, Florida where he teaches social studies at Mayport Middle School. He is a 1998 graduate of the University of North Florida and a veteran of the United States Air Force.

Source: http://jacksonville.com/news/florida/2012-10-14/story/florida-taking-step-backward-setting-standards-based-race