Beginning on Sept. 22, the NEA Foundation will match donations to NEA members received on DonorsChoose.org, the online charity where teachers post classroom project requests and citizen philanthropists browse and support projects that appeal to them. To date the site has raised over $88,016,035 helping over 5,251,074 students.

NEA members can post requests for up to $500 for classroom supplies on the DonorsChoose.org website, where supporters of public education can browse requests and make donations. When a donation is received, the NEA Foundation will match it, up to $250 per request.

For more details, visit www.neafoundation.org.

President Dennis Van Roekel and Secretary-Treasurer Becky Pringle crisscrossed the nation, meeting with teachers and support professionals committed to a great public school for every student.

The tour allowed the veteran educators to get a personal view of the work of members, who continue to collaborate with their colleagues, school districts, families and community leaders on student-centered reforms and student success. Some tour highlights:

Monday, September 12 (Dayton, OH) – Three years ago, Belmont High School was known as “Hellmont.” Fights and other crime was a near daily occurrence. The school was a revolving door for teachers.  A focus on creating a safe environment has led to an 87 percent decrease in behavioral incidents and record numbers of students taking the ACT.
Photos here.
Media highlights:
Dayton Daily News
WTUZ-FM

Monday, September 12 (Evansville, IN) – Collaboration was the focus of Pringle’s visit to the home of the groundbreaking Equity Schools, which aim to transform schools through professional development for teachers and extended learning time for students.  She visited Evans School and was on hand for  “Breakfast in the Classroom,” a partnership between local leaders, educators, parents and PSC that makes sure students get their school days started with a nutritious meal.  Photos here.
Media highlights:
American Urban Radio Networks

Tuesday, September 13 (Romulus, MI) – Romulus Community Schools faced a tough local election to renew funding, an endeavor that previously failed twice. School leaders and community members joined forces with NEA’s Priority Schools Campaign and on the third try, voters passed the millage. The win ensured continued collaborative reform at Romulus Middle School. Photos here.
Media highlights:
WWJ #1 News Radio

Tuesday, September 13 (Seattle) – West Seattle Elementary School used its first year of School Improvement Grant (SIG) funding to increase wraparound services, especially necessary for its high-needs student population. Health care, counselors—even embedding a local chapter of the YMCA inside the school—have helped educators attend to the needs of the whole child. Pringle also learned about the school’s High Point Scholars program where students can participate in project-based learning, service-learning projects, community development work, outdoor education, peer mentoring, small group instruction, and weekly field trips. Photos here.
Media highlights:
Education leaders video

Wednesday, September 14 (Orlando) – NEA members know that community collaboration works. They also know that effective partnerships and critical resources must be in place to support students. School leaders gathered to discuss best practices of collaborative efforts that give teachers the tools and resources to help every student succeed.
Media highlights:
Orlando Sentinel

Wednesday, September 14 (Clark County, NV) – Educating the whole child involves everyone in the school building, including bus drivers, nurses and cafeteria workers. When teachers work side-by-side with school support staff, students don’t fall through the cracks. This visit focused on the important role education support staff plays in helping to ensure the success of every student. Photos here.
Media highlights:
Becky Pringle on FOX5 TX in Vegas: “We are very excited about our Priority Schools Campaign”

Thursday, September 15 (Miami) – Students are being deprived of essential learning opportunities and families already experiencing financial stress are having to choose between spending on necessities or investing in their children’s future. NEA, in conjunction with the Florida Education Association and the Miami Education Association, continues to sound the alarm about the widespread effects of budget cuts. Photos here.
Media highlights:
Miami Herald

 Teachers unions are also working to help poorly-performing districts improve their programs. Last year, the National Education Association (NEA) started the Priority Schools Campaign. This campaign aims to bring all education stakeholders together to help failing schools.

This week, NEA president Dennis Van Roekel [pictured with crutches]visited Michigan as part of NEA’s “2011 Back-to-School Tour.” During his five-day, seven-city tour, Van Roekel is visiting a number “priority schools” and stopped by Romulus Middle School which had received a $5.3 million grant as part of the federal School Improvement Grant program. One of the efforts by the NEA’s Priority School Campaign was to help get a millage passed to support the Romulus school system, a millage that had been twice defeated prior to the NEA’s involvement.

While in Michigan, Van Roekel took time to meet with local administrators, teachers, parents, and other union & community leaders to discuss the benefits of collaboration. I spoke with him and Steve Cook by phone.

“It’s great to get out into these schools and meet face-to-face with the people working hard to improve them,” Van Roekel told me. “The minute you walk into these priority schools, you can feel the energy and you can see that things are getting better. You see the effect of what money can do when combined with cooperation & collaboration between administrators, teachers, students and parents.”

Teachers working with school administrations, parents and the community to improve schools. It’s not sexy. It’s not confrontational. But it’s making a difference. In Romulus, the new funding has allowed them to improve their technology program & equipment and to revamp their curriculum. But, that doesn’t make the news.

Despite the NEA’s effort to draw attention to the “Priority Schools” initiative and the fact that Van Roekel met with the editorial boards of both the Detroit News and the Detroit Free Press, the only mention of it from either newspaper was a post on the News’ blog The Watercooler, where the focus is on the MEA’s Cook calling Right to Teach “revenge.” Sensationalism! Confrontation! [The picture above is from Van Roekel's meeting at the Free Press. Editorial Page Editor Brian Dickerson is the one reclining]

When I asked Cook about the effort to allow school districts to outsource/privatize teaching, he said we should “draw a distinction between Senator Pavlov’s bill and what actually works.”

Indeed, a study released this week by the Project on Government Oversight (POGO) shows that billions of dollars every year are wasted in the USA through the hiring of contractors.

POGO’s study analyzed the total compensation paid to federal and private sector employees, and annual billing rates for contractor employees across 35 occupational classifications covering over 550 service activities. Our findings were shocking—POGO estimates the government pays billions more annually in taxpayer dollars to hire contractors than it would to hire federal employees to perform comparable services. Specifically, POGO’s study shows that the federal government approves service contract billing rates—deemed fair and reasonable—that pay contractors 1.83 times more than the government pays federal employees in total compensation, and more than 2 times the total compensation paid in the private sector for comparable services.

While this study looked specifically at federal employees, the results are reflected in other studies as well.

What most of us know, and what the NEA’s “Priority School” initiative shows, is that teachers are not greedy, self-interested people on the whole. They care about kids and they care that kids get the best education possible. Every one of us can point to a teacher in their past that motivated them to achieve more than they would have otherwise. We all have a teacher who inspired us to be better and pointed us in the right direction. They are a value to society, not parasites on it.

I’ll finish with an excerpt of something I wrote recently about this. It sums up my feelings on the effort to demonize teachers and how that hurts our kids and our country as a whole.

In any rational society, teachers are not considered “costs.” They are considered assets….Republicans have done an amazingly effective job of turning the public’s perception from seeing teachers as valuable assets to seeing them as parasitic leeches on the jugular vein of society. Rather than valuing them for the important role they play in our society — that of educating our children — they are now coming to be viewed as a “cost,” something to be cut when times get hard.

We have cut their pay, increased their healthcare co-pay amounts, reduced their retirement benefits and made it nearly impossible to bargain on their own behalf. And yet we expect them to effectively educate our children. We do this to help pay for massive tax cuts for businesses. And then we expect them to come to work each day, stand in front of the next generation of leaders and scientists and parents and doctors and trash collectors and make them ready to take their place in society.

Meanwhile, we scream collectively that our schools are failing our children.

I’m not sure how doing all of the things we are doing to our teachers constitutes “making our schools better,” to quote Speaker Bolger. What I do know is that a society that devalues its educators is destined to slowly circle the drain until it glugs down into an empty, fetid tub of ignorance and stupidity….

We are at a turning point in our society with regard to the education of our children. What is happening in Michigan and in Wisconsin to our teachers is going to be our nation’s future unless we act soon. We cannot continue to cast teachers as a “cost” to be cut whenever possible. We must turn around our country’s way of thinking about our educators and their value to society. Because, if we don’t, we will become a nation of uneducated fools. When that happens, our destiny will be controlled by the countries that do value education, not by us.

Read more of Chris Savage’s writing at Eclectablog.

Indiana State Teachers Association President Nate Schnellenberger and National Education Association Secretary-Treasurer Rebecca Pringle said Monday that initiatives crafted by the Evansville Vanderburgh School Corp. and its teachers association are making a positive difference in schools of high need.

At McGary Middle School, the guests were shown the school’s new community garden and future greenhouse site. They also met with teachers about school-wide efforts to push students to higher levels of achievement.

“We’re excited to have state and national support of what we’re doing,” Evansville Teachers Association President Keith Gambill said.

McGary and two elementary schools — Delaware and Evans — two years ago were given greater self-governing authority by the EVSC. The school district and teachers association worked on a plan to allow the three schools to lengthen their school days and years and implement more of their own programs.

Ongoing training for teachers has been emphasized at all three schools.

Read the full article at the Evansville Courier & Press

He visited the two Dayton schools to see how local educators are working with parents and community leaders to improve student success.  “In these changing times, providing every child with a world-class education requires more from all of us,” said Van Roekel, a high-school math teacher from Phoenix, Ariz. “Teaching and learning can’t just occur in the classroom. We must work together to help more students, in more ways and more effectively. We all—teachers, students, parents, elected officials and community leaders—are accountable for our children’s success.”

NEA’s Back-to-School Tour marks the official start of year two of  the Association’s Priority Schools Campaign(PSC), a  multi-year effort in 16 states to help transform 34 low-performing schools.  PSC works in Dayton at Belmont. 

Van Roekel was joined by Ohio Education Association President Patricia Frost-Brooks, Dayton Education Association President David Romick, and Dayton Public Schools Superintendent Lori L. Ward. “From larger classes to shrinking programs, public education is facing unprecedented challenges,” said Frost-Brooks. “Yet with a steadfast commitment to our students, we push on. It’s a pleasure to have President Van Roekel here in Dayton! We’re proud to show off the great collaboration among educators, administrators and the community which is transforming Dayton schools.”

The group began the day with a tour of Westwood, where an emphasis on positive school culture is giving students important life lessons on character and personal responsibility. The results have been overwhelmingly positive; the school’s environment is now more orderly and stable. Students are awarded “Eagle bucks,” good for special privileges and treats, for meeting the high expectations set by the Westwood staff.  

Following the visit to Westwood, Van Roekel and the group traveled  to Belmont High, where collaboration between staff, administration, the school district and law enforcement officials has led to an astounding drop in crime and encouraging improvement in academics.  After a tour of the school, the group was joined by Lieutenant Christopher Williams of the Dayton Police Department for a roundtable discussion during lunch. Van Roekel congratulated the local team on a partnership that has already shown positive results for students.  He led a discussion on the importance of effective partnerships that engage all education stakeholders—teachers, parents, community leaders and elected officials—in helping to ensure the success of every student.

A key component of PSC’s work at Belmont is professional development to help educators engage culturally diverse students and students from low-income families.  PSC will also provide on-site, on-line and on-paper technical assistance in the areas of community and familial engagement. Normally big-ticket line items in a district’s budget, PSC will deliver these much-needed services at no cost to Dayton. In a tough economy, such support allows federal, state and local dollars to go further.

The back-to-school tour coincides with the start of year two of NEA’s Priority Schools Campaign (PSC), the Association’s multi-year effort to help transform low-performing schools. The PSC campaign is in 36 schools across 16 states.

(Here is a report from this morning in Evansville.)

Pringle Visits Teachers Transforming their Schools in Evansville, Indiana

By Alain Jehlen

“This makes me proud to be a teacher,” said NEA Secretary-Treasurer Becky Pringle visiting Priority Schools in Evansville, Indiana today.

Pringle was on the first leg of a back-to-school tour that will also take her to Seattle and Las Vegas.

In Evanston, she saw an extraordinary level of collaboration between the school administration and the Evanston Teachers Association. The contract they bargained put extra focused attention on three Priority Schools that have had trouble raising their test scores, and empowered educators to make the changes they as professionals believe will work.

In the morning, Pringle watched fifth graders do math on a smart board, talked football with first graders, and saw a team of third grade teachers fine tune their work to make sure each of their children has a learning experience that fits their individual academic skills and personalities.

In the afternoon, she was interviewed by a middle school video production class, turned the tables on them by asking them questions, and even squeezed in a science lesson on how airplanes fly. Pringle is a former eighth grade science teacher.

The third grade planning session came first in the day, before children arrived. It was part of the plan for transforming Evans Elementary School, a plan that the teachers themselves designed, as provided in their Evansville Teachers Association contract.

The three schools also got a federal School Improvement Grant which, among other things, funded extra technology for the children. Each of the three schools worked out their own strategy for helping children learn, within the constraints of state rules.

Speech teacher Claire Reinitz told Pringle the technology helps to level the playing field for Evans students, who come mostly from low-income families but will be mixed with more affluent students when they get to middle school.

The football talk was over cereal and milk at Evans’ Breakfast-In-The-Classroom program. Large, wheeled coolers, paid for by Jeep through a special arrangement facilitated by NEA, are used to bring fresh food into each class as students arrive in the morning. All students share in the free breakfast.

Pringle and a table of first graders talked about their favorite professional teams. One child plays football himself, and Pringle made sure to ask him whether he wears a helmet. He does.

At McGary Middle School, students from a video production class interviewed her on camera, asking about her responsibilities as an NEA officer, and what she liked best in her job.

“This!” answered Pringle. “I miss having students and watching you grow. But I love meeting teachers and students all across the country who are doing exciting things in their classrooms.”

One student asked for her thoughts on testing. Tests are important, Pringle said, but “students are more than a test score. We have to make sure you’re prepared for life, that you can solve problems, because we can’t predict what you’ll face as adults and what careers there will be. You need to be prepared for whatever awaits you.”

Then Pringle asked the students what their favorite subjects are. They all loved the video class, saying it puts them in charge of their own work, and lets them “do cool things with video backgrounds.” None picked science as a favorite subject.

“Don’t you like experiments?” asked Pringle. One boy said he prefers video because “cameras don’t blow up.”

So Pringle quickly gave each student a slip of paper and asked them to predict what would happen if they blew along the top. Every mind was engaged as she had them try it out, and explained that the same principle that lifts the paper when you blow over it also lifts fast-moving airplanes.

Those visiting Evansville schools with Pringle included Evansville Teachers Association President Keith Gambill and Indiana State Teachers Association President Nate Schnellenberger. She also talked with Superintendent David Smith. Smith is a former Evans Teachers Association member. He and ETA President Gambill are both former music teachers and worked together for 25 years.

“If we are not on the same team, we cannot accomplish this work,” Smith said.

“I talk about Evansville all the time when I speak about school transformation, but I don’t hold up Evansville as a cookie-cutter model everyone should follow,” said Pringle. “That doesn’t work. What you did was to empower these teachers to make the best decisions for their school.”

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

Click here to read the partnership proclamation.

Conventional wisdom says that unions and school administrations are like oil and water—they don’t mix. But, the Evansville Teachers Association likes to challenge the norm. And, because of our bold partnership with the Evansville Vanderburgh School Corporation, I’m thrilled to announce that released this month were the results from the EVSC’s ISTEP scores, highlighting escalating results in our Equity Schools.

The three Equity Schools in Evansville are Delaware and Howard Roosa Elementary Schools and McGary Middle School, which were the corporation’s lowest performing schools.

But in just under a year, substantial gains were seen in the passing rate. When it comes to English /Language Arts, Delaware’s fourth graders saw a whopping 22 percent gain. Fourth and fifth graders knocked the ball out of the park in the category of math—each grade saw an increase of 29 percent increase. Howard Roosa’s fourth graders increased its English/Language Arts score by 10 percent. And, McGary Middle School eighth graders increased its reading and math scores by 7 percent. No small feat for schools considered low-performing a year ago!

Equity Schools started through a collaborative arrangement between the corporation and ETA. We spent several days of professional development learning about communication styles, making building decisions, developing action research projects and designing new, engaging classroom activities. Then, teachers were given the autonomy to decide the length of the school day; the number of days students and teachers would attend; how the school day would be structured; and strategies to be used.

These gains are proof that students can succeed when teachers and administrators come together to decide what’s best for kids.

Read more about Evansville at neapriorityschools.org.

By Brenda Álvarez

It started in the usual high-energy fashion. The NEA Representative Assembly, dubbed “Standing strong for our students, our schools, and America,” kicked-off with music from the Black Eyed Peas and Lady Gaga, as well as an NEA RA classic: Van Halen’s “Jump.” There was even a special song written for the meeting called Standing Strong.

But nothing energized the 7,000-plus delegates more than Illinois Governor Pat Quinn’s reform-themed greeting.

Pat Quinn, Governor of Illinois speaks during 2011 NEA Representative Assembly in Chicago, Il. Rick Runion/RA Today

Quinn, working with the Illinois Education Association, recently made history when he signed into law Senate Bill 7, education reform legislation developed during four months of negotiations involving education employee unions, school administrators, legislators, reform advocacy groups and other education stakeholders.

The bill countered a school reform proposal from so-called education reformers that was developed with no input from Illinois teachers. Member-led reform in collaboration with elected officials and other stakeholders is a centerpiece of NEA’s education policy agenda. The work includes the NEA Priority Schools Campaign, a movement to significantly raise student achievement in low-performing schools, what NEA terms priority schools. The collaborative work in Illinois isn’t unique, but a strong contrast to the political attacks in some states in the guise of education reform.

“I signed a law a couple of weeks ago for education reform and it had our teachers at the table every step of the way,” said Quinn. “I will say here in the Midwest, we have some governors who don’t believe in that model. We have to teach them.”

Quinn added: “We look forward to the day when the governor of Wisconsin, the governor of New Jersey and some of these other governors learn the Illinois way. Everybody in, nobody left out.”

Senate Bill 7 brings bold education reform to schools in Illinois and gives more power to school administrators on local levels. And contrary to popular belief of unions standing in the way of education reform, this bill proves unions are leading the way.

Key provisions of the law include streamlining the dismissal for underperforming teachers while protecting teachers’ due process through the addition of a highly qualified evaluator; ensuring experience and performance is respected, as well as accountability for everyone involved in the education of Illinois’ students.

“We won [this law] by making sure that we emphasize the most important issue in government, that’s teaching our children,” said Quinn. “It’s important that we understand there are two forces in life. On one side there are the movers and the shakers. On the other side, there are those who are moved and shaken. And the difference between them is a good education and strong teachers.”

Previously, education reform in Illinois was more of a top-down mandate that imposed changes without the voice of teachers and education support professionals.

“Education was restricted,” said Quinn. Now with the passage of Senate Bill 7, the bill can serve as “a model for the nation. We want a system that rewards and recognizes good performances and provides resources,” that are needed for student success. “I’m committed to that,” concluded Quinn.

According to Ken Swanson, president of IEA, Quinn’s stance was, “no one has better ideas—a better sense of what will improve teaching and learning for their students—than Illinois teachers.”

“So when the teacher unions came up with their own proposal, based on what teachers know will work in Illinois schools, Gov. Quinn encouraged the process that brings us [together],” said Swanson.

For background on the Illinois law and the path to passage, check out previous coverage by the Priority Schools Campaign. On the PSC website, check out these excerpts from an interview with IEA’s President Swanson and Executive Director Audrey Soglin. On the TalkPrioritySchools blog, read the full text (with links to video) of Swanson’s remarks on passage of the legislation.