The new school year commencing this week brings new evidence of a continuing turn in public opinion nationwide against the misuse and overuse of standardized testing. The newly reported results of the Phi Delta Kappan/Gallup poll from May of this year also tell us the public wants more public investment in our schools and opposes the use of public funds...
Read MoreThe U.S. Senate today began considering the Every Child Achieves Act, aiming to leave behind the multiple follies of the No Child Left Behind Act and of the Race to the Top program that furthered NCLB’s test-and-punish agenda. Many amendments are due to be debated over the next few days, but it’s worth noting how big a change this bill...
Read MoreThe U.S. Senate’s committee on education has done a good deed this week by passing the Every Child Achieves Act, a vast improvement over current law. This legislation will end the No Child Left Behind Act, Race to the Top, and federal waivers of NCLB with onerous strings attached. It will dismantle the policies that have left a destructive, divisive...
Read MoreFor decades Texas has maintained a minimum salary schedule for teachers, recognizing in state law that there’s something to be said for experience and it ought to be rewarded. For almost as long, an ideological campaign against that minimum salary schedule has been under way, with many unsuccessful attempts to kill it based on the claim that a salary step...
Read MoreWe put out a call to action yesterday: "STAAR is not the measure of good teaching, and teachers are worth more than $27,540 a year!" And thanks go to the thousands of school employees who responded with letters and phone calls to their legislators, along with thousands of social media shares for our campaign. Unfortunately, the Senate Education Committee passed...
Read MoreOn April 7 the Senate may vote on SB 893 by Sen. Kel Seliger (R-Amarillo), a bill that would encourage test-driven teacher evaluations and would repeal the state minimum salary schedule, driving the state minimum down to $27,540 a year for all teachers regardless of experience. At the same time, the House Public Education Committee is scheduled to hold a...
Read More(Related: STAAR is Not the Measure of Good Teaching, and You’re Worth More than $27,540!) Texas AFT opposed a bill by Sen. Kel Seliger, Republican of Amarillo, in the Senate Education Committee on March 19, because that bill would give the commissioner of education broad new authority to impose statewide appraisal requirements mandating heavy reliance on standardized test scores of a...
Read MoreLast year Linda Bridges, our late Texas AFT president, issued a prescient forecast of what we could face in the 2015 state legislative session. She wrote: Public education in Texas is at a crossroads. Our schools and institutions of higher education are under relentless attack from corporate interests that seek to profit from the hostile takeover of public education. Down...
Read MoreRep. Jimmie Don Aycock, the Republican from Killeen who chairs the full House Public Education Committee, today named a five-member subcommittee on teacher quality that is likely to consider the role of standardized state achievement tests in teacher evaluation. The subcommittee will be chaired by Rep. Dan Huberty, Republican of Humble, with Democrat Joe Deshotel of Beaumont as vice-chair. The...
Read MoreLast year Houston ISD teachers, backed by the Houston Federation of Teachers, Texas AFT, and the national AFT, filed suit over inequities and inaccuracies pervading the district’s evaluation system. (The suit is pending.) On February 13, something similar happened next door in New Mexico, as teachers, state legislators, AFT New Mexico, and the Albuquerque Teachers Federation joined in a lawsuit...
Read MoreTexas Commissioner of Education Michael Williams told the State Board of Education today that he does not have any authority to impose on school districts a state appraisal model that makes students’ scores on state tests a factor in teachers’ evaluations. Moreover, despite federal pressure to impose such a model statewide and mandate its use as a significant factor in evaluations...
Read MoreIndications are increasing that Congress may put a stop to the U.S. Department of Education’s push for test-driven teacher evaluation. The USDE has been pressuring the Texas Education Agency to impose a statewide mandate making state test scores a major factor in teacher evaluation, but state Commissioner of Education Michael Williams has acknowledged that his agency lacks the authority to...
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