CTA prez foresees attacks on union
Dean Vogel ready to lead teachers union
Like floods and tornadoes, the attacks on collective bargaining and the imposition of test-score-based teacher evaluations that have swept through states in the Midwest and South this year have not been seen in California. But the incoming president of the 325,000-member California Teachers Association expects the state will not be immune for long.
“It’s only a matter of time before what I’ve been calling the ‘pseudo-reform movement’ that’s been sweeping the country is going to come right to us; because all the players are here, and the money’s here, and the argument has spread,” Dean Vogel said in a video interview (go here for transcript). “Both political parties are talking about the need for change.”
The CTA is ready for this, he said, and expects to be in the center of the debate over issues such as teacher evaluations. Of course, it doesn’t hurt that Gov. Jerry Brown relied on the CTA’s support to get elected and that Democrats, traditionally allied with the CTA, are firmly in control of the Legislature.
(Click here for part II of the interview.)
Vogel, 64, the current CTA vice president and a 37-year elementary school teacher and counselor from Vacaville Unified, is politically astute and media savvy. Some young teachers I have spoken with are optimistic that he might be a flexible, different union leader, one who will listen to them and be open to change.
But if that’s to happen, they’ll have to become a lot more active themselves. In an interview last week,, preceding assuming his two-year term later this month, Vogel offered no distinction between his views and the current positions of the CTA. If there are differences, he’s not saying so. That’s not surprising, since Vogel will take his marching orders from the board of directors and the 800-member State Council of Education, which meets quarterly and takes positions on legislation.
Evaluations are an example. Vogel co-chaired a committee for the National Education Association that has proposed a seven-page policy on teacher evaluation and accountability that will be voted on by the NEA delegates at their convention this summer. It’s become controversial because it includes “valid, reliable high-quality standardized tests” among several indicators that could be used to measure student growth and learning.
To teachers in states like Illinois, where the Legislature imposed a policy of using standardized test scores as the predominant factor in judging teachers, the adoption of a nuanced NEA policy would be a victory. But a large portion of California delegates will likely oppose any inclusion of the use of standardized test scores in an evaluation.
Vogel reflected that perspective. Test scores should not be a criterion; what’s important instead is to measure how teachers use the test data to improve instruction. I pushed on this point for clarification. His response: “Let me be really clear. I want to assess the teacher’s use of the data, okay? So if the data’s there, and the teacher uses it appropriately, what it’s going to do is inform better practice.”
On other issues, Vogel:
- Defended the traditional step and column method of paying teachers by years taught and graduate credits accumulated. The current system “encourages people to stay in. It’s really to our advantage to have veteran teachers who can be the collegial support to young folks.”
- Called for no change to California’s granting of tenure after only two years. Most states award permanent status after three or four years: “Some places are saying three. Some are saying four. Right now, our position is – the ed code (states) here in California, it’s two years.”
- Called for considering changing Proposition 98, the 20-year-old formula that sets the minimal levels of funding for K-12 schools and community colleges. However, he restated CTA’s opposition to AB 18, this session’s major finance reform. It that would permanently give districts more flexibility in spending while creating the framework for a weighted student formula providing more money for low-income students and English learners. CTA says more time is needed to consider possible unintended consequences of the bill. “We’re nervous about what can happen when you move so quickly,” he said.
It is a shame when our leaders see defending the status quo as their main role.
The rational for not changing Step in Column is it rewards experience, true and a good feature we have a huge issue with young teacher abandoning the profession, Mr. Vogel talks about what they want, maybe, just maybe we need to look at our HR policies and see if something could be done.
Mr. Vogel wants no change in tenure, “Right now, our position is – the ED code (states) here in California, it’s two years.” So the argument is because it exists in ED Code it must be a good idea? I am sure he supports Prop 13 as written because it is written into state law. Maybe things need to be reviewed and changed to reflect our current realities.
And the last point on changing the states financing systems, I love the statement “We’re nervous about what can happen when you move so quickly,” The ideas in AB18 have been around for years, most come from the Stanford adequacy studies 3 – 4 years ago. They have been analyzed, discussed, debated and it is time to move forward.
We have enough groups who see there role is just say NO to everything, we need leaders and organizations that want to move forward.
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Dean also was quite clear that, when Obama indicated in 2007 that he saw some merit in teacher’s merit pay, that it would never happen on his watch( The CTA seemed at the time foursquare for Hilary, and secondarily for that charmer Edwards, by dint of their union solidarity). That he is ascending after Sanchez is also no mystery, as the Politburo-like stacking of successors to the CTA Presidency means that you can see on the dias who the next 3 or 4 heirs of the crown will be. This arrangement, for all its anti-democratic tendencies, is typical of unions; it’s heavy handedness is right out the of the 19th century, an anachronism wonderful to behold in its maladaptivity. Even the Curia of the Catholic Church has more interesting electoral politics.
The rub for the CTA right now is the Quality Education Investment Act, where they garnered big piles of monies rightly due all CA teachers ( Arnold, ever the dolt, got his ass sued off trying to steal it) and applied them to schools of greatest need, where the CTA, using its own theories of education, should to effect turn arounds. If the CTA can bring this investment to bear, it wins, but if the QEIA stumbles, CTA is thereafter morally bankrupt. Lets hope for the sake of the struggling students that the CTA actually does what it said it could do.
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“what’s important instead is to measure how teachers use the test data to improve instruction.”
Oh, Really? Every point he made in this article was just “Kick the can down the road”, business as usual………
Oh, I get it now, lemme see: “Give us MORE money and give us MORE time and things will get better” That’s about it, isn’t it?
Unions have sucked the lifeblood out of education, creating a bloated wasteland for our kids………But Hey, It’s really about the ones at the top of the Ed Foodchain, isn’t it?
You people should be ashamed of yourselves, but then again, you don’t even know the meaning of the word……
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Reforms are needed but how do assess a teacher’s performance fairly when child academic success is AT LEAST as determined by genetics, family systems, social peer groups, and financial resources? Kids at schools predominently populated by gangs, drugs, abusive or neglective parents/families, & ravaged by poverty will always have low scores and do poorly and artificially make the teacher look bad. No teacher, other than for very selective antecdotal kids, will be able to make significant improvement in these populations. This is holding teachers responsible for undoing the whole menu of societies ills that undeniably affect these student populations. A teacher, even a GREAT teacher, can only do so much. This is an unfair and impratical way to judge teaching. No one wants to admit this and rather than looking at all of these factors, of which teachers ARE surely one, society wants to just make teachers the scapegoats for kids who would fail under any scenario. Until we accept that teachers can only present the material and the ability to absorb and utilize that teaching is determined by these other factors we will continue this sprial of failure and teacher scapegoating. Kids lose, teachers lose, society loses.
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It’s a terrible thing when the facts get in the way of such passionate opinions, but that’s the kind of world we live in.
The latest and best research, and from an organization that is pro-merit pay, is that merit pay doesn’t improve student achievement. (Google it.)
The National Research Council of the National Academies, the nation’s highest scientific body, have twice condemned the use of student test scores for teacher evaluation. We don’t, asserts the NRC, have a research base for using the data and if we did we still shouldn’t do it because of the narrowing effects on curriculum. Try Diane Ravitch’s book for an easy to read version of the arguments against that and pretty much all of what’s argued to be “reform.”
Those states (and this is the really embarrassing one) with the heaviest concentrations of unionized teachers are the highest achievers on the NAEP, the “nation’s report card.” Those states with the lowest concentrations of unionized teachers are the lowest performing on the NAEP. There is not a shred of evidence that teachers’ “tenure,” (aka. due process rights), bargaining rights, or uniform salary schedules have any kind of negative impact on student achievement.
Needless to say, the high union concentration/high achieving states are also the highest spending. Bargaining for teachers’ working conditions is simultaneously bargaining for student learning conditions.
In the mind of the self-appointed “reformers,” we are at the edge of the abyss and should take a bold step forward.
Right.
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From my perspective, the 2-year-to-tenure rule is very positive in terms of building a terrific, high quality teaching staff because it gives administrators a strong incentive to evaluate and mentor young teachers aggressively and quickly. 4 years, and you’ve got plenty of time to decide… and possibly forget … about whether a teacher is a good fit. 2 years is plenty long enough to know if this is a staff member who cares about the kids and who works well with the community of teachers, students, and parents.
Perhaps the larger problem is a strategy of seniority across a district that encourages longtime teachers to accumulate in some schools and leaving the most challenging schools with constant turnover, such that the principal does not have enough time or resources to evaluate and mentor an entire staff of brand new teachers every single year. The answer, it seems to me, is not to lengthen the probationary period, but to rework seniority so that there is more incentive to stay in a particular school rather than a particular school district.
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el:
Your concerns are understandable. That being said there has been considerable research done on why teachers leave schools (and the profession) as soon as they can. The issues, identified by the departing teachers, relate to poor school leadership and lack of resources. There is no indication the seniority rights, per se, are an issue. Large districts seem to have organizational problems getting resources to where they are needed when they are needed, if at all. Leaders who are collaborators, are identified by the U of Chicago in a fifteen year longitudinal study, are a must. Schools don’t need “instructional leaders,” in a large secondary school that’s almost an impossibility, they need leaders of instructors, aka, skilled facilitators. Leaders need to be skilled in outreach to parents and the community. In other words, diplomats, not tyrants of the Broad Academy/Rhee variety. The problems are more in the management arena than the teaching force.
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Gary, my apologies, but it seems like your comment was meant as a reply to me, but I could not really understand your point or how it related to what I said.
My point was that problems that people may associate with a “mere” 2 year probationary period may actually be related to situations in schools where those schools (whether due to layoffs or just the tough life of a new teacher) are seeing dramatic churn in personnel. If the true problem is this churn, it will not be solved by a move to a 4 year probationary period.
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el:
Pardon me if I misunderstood. To summarize: The “churn” is due to teachers leaving certain schools as soon as “seniority” allow it. This leave much of the staff as “junior” teachers who are more subject to layoffs. The “churn” then, is the symptom of the problem. The “problem” is those issues related to management (leadership and layoffs) that cause the more senior teachers to leave.
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Sometimes teachers may choose to leave for other schools due to poor management, but it seems to me that it’s very common for teachers to go to “better” schools with higher achieving kids and safer neighborhoods regardless of the principal. Of course, to know all the factors, you’d have to ask the teachers who are leaving which it is to know how to fix the problem in that particular school. Regardless, it seems to me there would be an advantage in structuring seniority rules in such a way that teachers are encouraged to have long tenures at each school they serve at, and I think that any district who routinely ends up with some schools that are mostly or all new teachers while others have mostly veterans should consider a strategy to even out senior teachers across all schools.
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We need incentives to find teachers who speak the languages that are spoken in the homes of their school’s students. Spanish, Vietnamese and Tagalog cover a high percentage of multilingual homes, and there are many other languages as well. Unfortunately, too few elementary school teachers are bilingual. Perhaps speaking two languages will be a minimum criterion for future hiring decisions. What would CTA Prez Vogel say about that type of threshold?
Also, we need incentives to encourage teachers to live in the neighborhoods of the schools they serve. One challenge is retaining qualified, experienced teachers at a school, but a similar challenge is recruiting teachers and administrators INTO local neighborhoods so their own families live the same daily experiences of the students/parents they serve: shopping at the same stores, eating at the same restaurants; playing at the same parks; dealing with the same potholes, traffic goofups and civic “stuff.” If we want local businesses involved financially and otherwise with neighborhood public schools, we need principals and teachers personally talking to local businesspeople. When the educators live ten, 15 or over 20 miles away, those educators are unlikely to be passionate about knocking on local doors near their assigned schools.
Over recent decades we accepted the commute model for local educators and now most tenured educators live significant distances from their assigned schoolsites. This separation creates an us/them structure between community members and public school educators. Teachers certainly deserve private time, but in California’s commute culture, driving many miles each day adds to educator exhaustion and adds one more challenge to community organizing. Charter school leaders seem to have a fundraising mentality – they roll up sleeves and spend time asking for significant business investments of money and volunteer time. That type of “ask” approach is less common in neighborhood public schools.
- Chris Stampolis
Trustee, West Valley-Mission Community College District
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We are are making a huge mistake by appeasing the wolves. Its the testing that needs to be re evaluated and reformed, not the teachers. Let me explain my friend. Mountains of evidence points out that the testing mania of NCLB has been a disaster all across the nation. Why continue? We must change the evaluation methodology we use to advance ourselves onto a more solid political grounds where we can make a more palatable argument to the American people. “Its not the stupid teachers, its the stupid tests and we have the numbers to prove it.”
We must re-frame the debate. We must come with an alternative methodology of evaluation.: peers reviewed portfolio assessment.
Once we accept that NCLB was a messianic, utopian law at best and that multiple choice test are damaging because they do not reflect what we want best for our kids: imaginative problem solving, ability to work in a group, and entrepreneurial approach, and individualistic non conforming thought patterns, once we did this shift we can move to a more solid footing.
Lets use what scientists use: PEER REVIEWED PORTFOLIO ASSESSMENT. Its relatively easy to create rubrics for each subjects based upon the existing standards. Teachers can keep portfolios and this allows for teachers administrators and community members to engage in a constructive exchange and the kids will enjoy the process. We can have a NATIONAL PORTFOLIO REVIEW WEEK instead of the national bubbling week we have now with multiple choice testing. These are more authentic and open ended and all children can be successful in their own way, the American way the un standardized way.
thank you for reading this and please leave a comment if you do.
Check out this blog:
http://specialedvice.blogspot.com/2011/06/charter-schools-and-credit-default.html
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