Talk Priority Schools

A video of actor Matt Damon defending public school educators went viral this week. MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell expanded on Damon’s comments. “Teachers who have committed their lives their lives to the classroom deserve better than our politics has given them,” said O’Donnell.

Anne Goff, a teacher in Eugene, Oregon responded to O’Donnell’s “The Last Word” segment and addressed the issue of blaming teachers in the letter below:

Mr. O’Donnell,

Thank you, thank you, thank you from one teacher in Oregon. Hearing someone speak out against the current attacks on teachers as you did in your The Last Word segment gives me hope that someday sanity will return to our discussions of public education in this country. You are so right when you list the multitude of factors that impact student achievement. As a teacher for 23 years (the last 14 of them teaching children from low income homes), I see the impact these factors have on students and their ability to learn. As long as all we do is blame teachers, we cannot move into serious discussions of what we need to do to help all children learn.

Again you hit the nail squarely on the head citing right wing politics and an agenda of union bashing as the reason behind the current climate of teacher blame. It has been a vicious attack on teachers, on teaching as an honorable profession, and on our unions. As an active member of my union at the state and national level, I know my union does not stand in the way of student achievement but actively works to support teachers and children. Both the Oregon Education Association and the National Education Association are working to support positive changes in teaching and student learning through the Priority Schools Campaign.

Yes I am a teacher, as are so many, because I love teaching. Despite the long hours, I am a teacher because I care about the kids I teach. Even though it is not always easy, I am a teacher because I know I make a difference in children’s lives. I get to touch the future one child at a time.  No amount of bashing or blame from all sides can change the fact that I teach because I want all my students to become critical thinkers who love learning and who believe in their own potential.

Thank you again for being so vocal, so articulate, and so right.

Anne Goff
Springfield School District, Eugene, Oregon

As attacks on collective bargaining heat up nationwide, a generation works hard to sustain hard-won gains.

By Brenda Álvarez

CHICAGO—Most retirees look forward to play time with grandchildren or good-old fashioned R & R on white sandy beaches and plush green golf courses. But the career of most retired public school teachers does not end with those final marks in well-worn grade books. It often continues in Priority Schools.

“We’re heavily involved,” said Barbara Matteson, NEA-Retired president. “We go back into the classroom to help tutor and mentor students, as well as substitute classes, and we work on teams to help develop programs for struggling schools—we bring experience and knowledge to the table.”

And NEA retired members are fired up about the hostile climate surrounding the labor movement. Often with the ability to build their own schedules for a change, retired members are picking up pickets and phones to call attention to the misguided attacks on public employees.

“We worked hard for the improvements that we bargained for, such as planning time, smaller class sizes and even maternity leave,” Matteson added. “It’s distressful to see state governments try to take those benefits away. We take it personally.”

Retirees know what it takes to bring about positive change to student learning. Take Wisconsinite Marlene Ott, a 45-year high school English veteran who retired from the South Milwaukee School District three years ago.

“When I was chief negotiator for my district we operated under consensus bargaining. We had a very collaborative relationship. When we wanted to change the curriculum, we talked about it and looked at student data to make informed decisions,” said Ott.

Ott continued: “Now, it just breaks my heart to see Governor Walker’s tactics and to see administrators do things arbitrarily without event talking to teachers—it feels like a knife to the back.”

Matteson will end her term as NEA-Retired president come August 31. Picking up where she leaves off will be Tom Curran, a 35 year veteran, who taught seventh and eighth grades in Westbrook, Maine.

As incoming president, Curran will encourage retirees to go back into the community and get involved in the education reform debate.

“As bad as the demands are with testing, being labeled as the ‘bad guy’ in the media or having others know more than me is bothersome,” said Curran, referring to those who have never stepped foot inside a classroom; yet, introduce education policies that have little to no value in education.

Curran advises retirees to, “stay in touch with schools from your area and get to know the teachers,” as one way to stay active and committed to public education.

By Brenda Alvarez

For public schools in Romulus, Michigan, the third time was the charm recently as voters renewed an existing business tax to support education that was rejected twice before.

The Detroit Free Press said the school funding was “desperately needed” and the measure passed earlier this month had the support of both the Romulus Education Association and the school district. Officials said that without the critical funding, Romulus Middle School, an NEA Priority Schools site, would have been forced to close.

School Board member Robert McLaughlin told Detroit’s WXYZ-TV, “If we’re not able to get it renewed, basically, with the other cuts the state has imposed on us, within 18 months, we’d close.”

The odds were against passage. The community had twice rejected the assessment in 2010 and local leaders faced opposing messaging calling the measure “ a new tax” without having effective messaging of their own.

Working locally with the Priority Schools Campaign, supporters developed and distributed fact sheets and other materials, including video messaging, newspaper ads and a phone bank designed to change the focus of the community conversation to center on “community” and “students” and show that the revenue was not a new tax and cost homeowners nothing. See an excerpt of the flyer below. read more »

At the same time educators in several states face legislation to strip their right to bargain with school districts on most issues, teachers and support professionals in those states and across the country have entered a new era of collaborative reform with their school districts.

Despite the deep-pocketed promotion of an anti-union narrative in media and government, in state after state, unions are showing the way, not only in education reform, but specifically in strategies to close the achievement gaps and raise student achievement in struggling schools, what NEA calls Priority Schools.

• In Wisconsin, the Wisconsin Education Association Council developed a plan for pay differentials and evaluation aimed at ensuring effective teachers in every classroom. The state’s governor is now trying to break the union’s right to bargain despite WEAC’s open offer to do its fair share in compensation and benefits to meet the state’s budget shortfall.
• In Hamilton County, TN an initiative formed around five inner-city middle schools that tended to perform less well than the other middle schools. The district and union together formed networks to share and implement best practices throughout the district. Since the program was expanded to every one of Hamilton’s middle schools in 2005, the percentage of middle school students passing the state’s reading exam increased from 84% in 2005 to 90% in 2009.  The percentage of middle school students passing the state’s mathematics exam increased from 86% in 2005 to 89% in 2009.
• In Nevada, the Clark County Education Association initiated the Empowerment School Project. Under collaborative management teams, teachers were able to choose textbooks, they organized the day around a block of focused reading in ability-level groups, and initiated small-group tutoring after school. When Paul Culley Elementary joined the empowerment school project in 2005, fewer than a quarter of its students read on grade level. By 2008, 57 percent did.
• Just five years ago, John Muir Elementary in Merced, CA was the lowest-performing elementary school in California’s Merced City School District. Now, thanks to a new focus on professional development and collaboration – and a seven-year grant from a union-backed program – John Muir is now one of Merced’s top-performing elementary schools. The school uses California’s Quality Education Investment Act funds to focus on professional development, reducing class size, and a boot camp where kids who were falling behind could receive additional instruction.
• In Indiana, Evansville Vanderburgh School Corporation and the Evansville Teachers Association jointly developed a plan called Equity Schools, targeting two elementary schools and a middle school where scores on the state test were low and falling. The plan includes increased professional development designed jointly by teachers and the district, and compensated longer school days and a longer year. The district and union bargained the changes, including a requirement that, beginning in the 2010 school year, teachers wanting to work in the three schools were required to first pass through a rigorous Equity Academy program designed by the district and the union. More teachers applied than there were positions available.
• In Illinois, three unions representing more than 230,000 education employees, the Illinois Education Association, the Illinois Federation of Teachers and the Chicago Teachers Union jointly developed a proposal to streamline the process for removing underperforming teachers and resolve teacher dismissals in a much shorter time, helping to reduce costs associated with dismissals for both districts and employees. The unions also proposed that evaluations be clearly tied to a teacher obtaining due process rights, usually known as “teacher tenure.”

Steve Snider

Communities and families play a critical role in raising student achievement — that’s something research shows and the NEA Priority School Campaign strongly supports. But it’s not easy. Building meaningful relationships between families and their schools is more than a full time job.  Check out what a school day is like for Gladys Méndez, the parent coordinator at Thirteenth and Green Elementary School in Reading, Pennsylvania.

Narrated by Mary Ellen Flannery

By Sara Jones

First, I’d like to set the stage for you a bit. Utah is not a collective bargaining state. We are also a local option state. I’m going to give a little bit of background and then talk about where I think we’re going, because I think for us the Priority Schools Campaign is a real opportunity. It’s an opportunity for us to build relationships in our locals, it’s an opportunity for our locals to build better relationships in some school districts that have had poor relationships, and it’s an opportunity to change schools that we’re hearing from our local leaders need to improve. The Utah Education Association (UEA) wants to help in that process of improvement. So, all of this coming together is a great thing for us. read more »

By Ann Randall

Washington went through the first round of School Improvement Grant funding last spring and we’re preparing for the second round.  Last spring, at the same time the process for local applications for School Improvement Grants was being considered by locals in our state, we were also going through the Race to the Top application process.  It was very important for us to do two things with our local association leaders and staff:  we wanted to give them a sense of control over two concurrent major federal initiatives with broad bargaining implications and we wanted to give them enough information that they could make an informed decision about agreeing to either initiative. So we did a series of meetings around the state for governance leaders and staff, showing them the differences between Race to the Top and the School Improvement Grants and helping them understand the application process and implications of both. read more »

Dr. Tyna Davis

One and a half years ago, Alabama Education Association (AEA) formulated a cadre of approximately 30 educators to review the four recommended models for the School Improvement Grants (SIG). After study, the cadre recommended the transformation model.  This came after an intensive process of discussing and focusing on the pros and cons of each model.  The group unanimously agreed that the transformation model was the model that we wanted to use in our state.  Through conferences, AEA’s Alabama School Journal, editorials and news articles, we recommended to the locals the Transformation Model.  This was important because it helped shape the approaches used by our school systems.  Of 14 Alabama awardees, 13 are transformation and one is closure.  The one local that is recommending closure has had this issue on the local board agenda for several years. read more »

By Len Paolillo, NEA Executive Committee

After several informative visits to priority schools in Dayton and Lima, Ohio, I was really looking forward to learning about the transformation process at Mount Pleasant High School in Wilmington, Delaware.  With the help of my knowledgeable guide, Marlene Lacy, a visual arts teacher and building rep for Mount Pleasant, I got to interact with many of the school’s educators.

My day began with a great conversation with Mount Pleasant Principal James Simmons III and Dr. Mark Holodick, the Superintendent of Brandywine School District. Through RTTT and SIG, Dr. Holodick says professional learning communities will have the greatest impact. The professional learning communities are currently working on common planning, common assessments and tracking student data to create quality and collaborative learning that is focused.

Len Paolillo, NEA Executive Committee member, enjoys lunch with Principal Simmons and staff in Mount Pleasant High School's student-run cafe.

Principal Simmons told me about how SIG enabled him to hire an additional guidance counselor to focus specifically on struggling students and a family engagement coordinator. The new family engagement coordinator has a large office with meeting space and they plan to add several computers to the office for family to visit and access the Internet. He also shared some of the business partnerships he’s formed to benefit students. AstraZeneca, a global biopharmaceutical company, is going to provide bicycles and clothing for the school to start a cycling club, in addition to providing mentoring. read more »

By Christy Levings, NEA Executive Committee

If you are a fan of science and space films, the phrase Houston, we have a problem is a clear warning of danger ahead.  After spending two days in San Francisco visiting two schools identified as NEA Priority Schools that will receive School Improvement Grants, I feel that phrase sums up the message I would like to share with Education Secretary Arne Duncan:

Mr. Secretary, you are creating a launch problem for schools that are already filled with hard-working professionals who work with kids that bring tough problems to school with them every day. The schools I visited have not been given time to implement the models for major change that the U. S. Department of Education told school districts they must adopt.  Mr. Secretary, you must carve out time for schools to determine what programs are needed in their schools. They must have time to plan and collaborate together. read more »