If VAM Could Talk, What Would It Say?

A conversation with VAM

Teacher: Thank you VAM for finally showing up a year after my evaluation.  What took you so long?

VAM: No comment. Blame your union.

Teacher: VAM, could you please elaborate on what it means to be rated “effective” in student growth measures? Do you have any advice on how I can improve my teaching practices so my students show more growth on next year’s exam making me qualify for “highly effective”?

VAM: No comment.

Teacher: Would it be possible for you to provide your predictions for how much our students are expected to grow at the beginning of the year so we can better monitor their progress through the use of district interim assessments?

VAM: That’s Top Secret information. If I told you, I would have to kill you.

Teacher: For a man of so many variables, you are a man of few words.

VAM: Words are for touchy feely teacher types. I’m a numbers man. I believe in hard data, quantitative only.  Qualitative data is for sensitive ponytail men who listen to Yanni.

Teacher: Before you leave VAM, only to return again a year past any usefulness, can you offer a “needs improvement” or “unsatisfactory” teacher any constructive feedback on how they can better serve their students and enhance their craft?

VAM:  No comment for helping your students. You can better serve yourself by finding a new group of students to teach and by sabotaging your fellow teachers.  Steal their books, distract their class, invite all their students to a pizza party in your classroom during the other teacher’s class time.  Their students won’t show much growth over the year and you will look like the master of bioengineering a super crop of test takers.

***Before you think Kafkateach has lost her mind due to chronic sleep deprivation and call Child Protective Services on me, this imaginary conversation was meant to illustrate how completely useless VAM is in providing meaningful feedback to teachers and improving instruction.  At this point I think I am completely VAMmed out and I need to find something new to blog about.  Check back next week when Kafkateach does some undercover reporting and compares Zumba fitness instructor training to the teaching profession.

I Finally Got My VAM! Sort of.

Frequent readers of this blog know that Kafkateach has been rather obsessed by her VAM ranking for the past twelve months. Well dear readers, after 12 months of suspense, I finally got my VAM! Only not really.  A few blog posts ago I said I would be getting my VAM within a week. It took about two weeks longer than expected but I did get a VAM today. Only it wasn’t really my VAM.  My personal VAM ranking continues to elude me and it probably always will. So here’s how it all went down…

Miami Dade teacher VAMs and 2011-12 evaluations have slowly been trickling out district wide over the last two weeks. Being proactive and consumed by VAM for the past 12 months, I emailed the administrator who gave me the first portion of my 2011-12 evaluation about when I would be getting my VAM.  She passed me along to a different administrator who was in charge of my evaluation for the 2012-13 school year. In the meantime, a certain email list of rogue Dade County teachers debated whether to sign or not to sign our evaluations and which letters of protest with fancy legal verbage we should attach to our evaluations.  I was prepared for a fierce showdown over VAM and a glorified moment of educator bureaucratic civil disobedience in my refusal to sign such malarkey.  It turned out to be more like a 30 second schoolyard spat between four year olds than the battle royale I had envisioned.

The first point of annoyance was when I was emailed to come down to my school in order to sign a year old evaluation that I had no intention of signing in the first place. But damn, I wanted my VAM.  To make matters worse, I had to drive to work in a monsoon rainstorm with a sick two month old baby who had kept me up all night, and Memorial Day weekend traffic was already clogging up South Beach. For those of you unfamiliar with Memorial Day weekend in South Beach, let’s just say the locals make plans for five years in advance in order not to be in South Beach that weekend.  Needless to say I was already annoyed when I pulled up into the flooded parking lot. I showed up in my administrator’s office late, wet, wearing a baby carrier, yoga pants and $5 dollar Old Navy flip flops.  This was not the fierce rebel image I was hoping for. Would anyone have taken Malcom X seriously if he had given his speeches wearing a Baby Bjorn with a wide-eyed baby bopping its head back and forth? This was only the first thing to go wrong.  Upon entering, my administrator realized he had forgotten to fill the learning environment strand of my observation and it would take three hours for the district’s system to upload the information so he couldn’t print it out and have me sign the 2012-13 evaluation form. The good news is that my administrator was nice enough to give me a perfect 50 on the observational portion. I wouldn’t have even given me a perfect 50. I wear flip flops to work for Christ’s sake, he could have easily knocked me down for professionalism at the minimum.  In my defense, I have been pregnant for half of my teaching career so maybe he was willing to overlook the casual footwear.  Unable to sign a perfect 2012-13 observation, I was asked to sign my 2011-12 evaluation. Finally, the moment I had been waiting for! I would get to see my VAM! But they didn’t give the VAM I had been waiting for, instead they gave me the generic school wide reading VAM of 37.5 “effective. “ When I told my administrator that my VAM according to the district manual was supposed to come from my students’ reading scores and not the school wide average he repeatedly denied that my students’ scores were the source of my VAM.  He claimed only reading and math teachers of EOCs would get a personal VAM ranking. When I pressed him on what data was used for my VAM ranking, he immediately caved, raised the white flag of surrender and said “Fine, you don’t have to sign the form” and took the manila folder away. Before my 2011-12 evaluation was whisked away, I saw a dramatic difference in cut scores from what had previously been used on my IPEGS evaluation.  He said I had only missed being “highly effective” by .50.  My total was 84.50 and I needed a 85 to be “highly effective.”  Funny, last year I did the math and I distinctly remembered I needed an 89 to be highly effective. Had I known I only needed an 85 I would have pressed harder to get one extra point for my observational evaluation which I had clear documentation to prove. Then I glanced at “needs improvement” which according to my IPEGs documentation from last year the cut score ranged from 37-73. Somehow this range had shrunk to only 50-54 and the range for effective had grown to 55-84.  Had I known these would be the cut scores, Kafkateach wouldn’t have lost so much sleep over the last year. But how could they go back and change the cut scores after the fact? How could they go back and change which data would be used for my VAM? How could I teach all school year without ever being informed which test data would be used for this year’s VAM?  Was this all just a bad dream? The mad hallucinations of an insomniac teacher? The answer would come from my union steward who I ran into on my way out of my administrator’s office. A man who for so long avoided giving the faculty any answers finally gave me the answer I had been looking for, “Don’t worry” he said, “None of this really matters.”

When I went home to check my IPEGS forms from last year, the previous year’s cut scores were as whacked out as I remembered them (I asked to see my  2011-12 IPEG forms at the school but it was  mysteriously missing from personel folder. I wouldn’t be surprised if the district had them all shredded).  A word to the wise teachers, save everything. Your classroom and your home will look like an episode of hoarders, but that district form you casually signed might one day save your job and keep you from thinking you’ve lost your mind.  After twelve months of VAM anxiety disorder the ending was anticlimactic to say the least. About as unsatisfying as a nighttime drama series that solves a murder mystery by telling you it was all a dream. Twelve months of sleepless nights and all I have to show for it is a dozen conspiracy laden VAM blog posts and at least one bogus evaluation.  If you had a more dramatic VAM reveal than Kafkateach, please share it in the commenting section below.  It’s time for me to get some sleep.

Total Compensation

Teachers beware, watch out for the latest buzz phrase to take a sting out of your paycheck “total compensation.”  A week after Governor Rick Scott’s Teacher Pay Raise victory tour around the state, which oddly enough started in Broward County where the superintendent referred to the funds as a “turkey” that was too small to feed uninvited guests, Dade County’s Chief of Staff sent out an email alerting us to how we can now view our total compensation statement through our employee portal and bemoaning the rising healthcare costs that plague South Florida and make it impossible for the district to offer competitive salaries.

“Healthcare costs represent the second highest expenditure of funds for M-DCPS after its cost for payroll.  Having all employees in South Florida where healthcare costs are the highest in the nation at 120% of average costs, rising healthcare costs directly impacts the District’s ability to remain competitive when looking at employees’ total compensation.  The rising cost of healthcare benefits impacts the compensation pool; therefore, it directly relates to salary levels for all employees.”

This is code for “prepare yourselves teachers, you ain’t getting no $2500 raise.” South Florida teachers not only have to deal with the highest cost of living, highest insurance costs, and highest needs students but we are also likely to receive the lowest salary increases in the state. Real estate and rental prices in Dade County are up 8% over last year but don’t ever expect to see a 3% cost of living increase let alone a 3% raise.

Sorry teachers, but “total compensation” will not only be used to justify not giving you a $2500 raise, but it will also be used by the IRS under the Affordable Care Act to take even more of your money.  Teachers and other unions have such luxurious health care plans that they will be deemed “Cadillac Insurance” and be taxed as income by 2018. http://www.weeklystandard.com/articles/unions-vs-obamacare_707688.html#  Here is the disturbing part. The district keeps citing rising health insurance costs so that part of your total compensation statement may be $7000 in 2013 but most likely will sky rocket to at least $10,000 by 2018. Not only will the district be able to use health insurance costs as an excuse to not give you a raise, but as the cost of the health insurance increases so does your bill to Uncle Sam.

Since the district has started playing the “total compensation” game, it’s time for the teachers to play their own round of “total compensation.”

1. If the district states our health insurance is worth $7000, then why are teachers who opt out of the district’s plan only reimbursed $1200? That’s not total compensation!
2. We just had a flier advertising training for the much anticipated/dreaded arrival of the Common Core/Bore standards. We are supposed to plan our summers around two days of professional development where we will receive a total compensation of $100 a day.  The trainings are from 8:30-4:30 so you are actually being compensated $12 an hour for your time. Not to mention that the Dade County school district is enormous and traffic is horrendous and they always pick a location on the border of the Everglades to hold these trainings, and you’re looking at an hour commute each way. If you have to pay for a babysitter (at least $12 an hour), you are paying to work.  How about the district paying teachers their daily rate in order to totally compensate them for their time?
3. Not only do I remember when teachers were paid their daily rate for professional development days, I also remember when they got their contractually negotiated annual step increases.  Now we are averaging one step increase every three years. For Kafkateach, who’s steps are only $300, this is not a huge sum of money. But for other teachers waiting on the doorstep of a $10,000 step increase that’s some big bucks. They end up getting hosed out of $30,000 and are never totally compensated for the money they lost waiting to have their steps honored.

Why Do Teacher Prizes Always Suck?

I’ve sat through staff meetings while administrators pick names out of a hat to give away pieces of chocolate. I’ve attended professional development workshops where a lucky lottery winner goes home with a burlap tote bag. But NBC (that’s right, the one with Brian Williams that sponsors Education Nation) wins the grand prize for lamest teacher incentive of all time. Just at the onset of Teacher Appreciation week, I happened to open my district email about a contest sponsored by NBC only to find out that the grand prize was a pack of pens!

“The purpose of this briefing is to inform M-DCPS schools and teachers of the NBC Learn Content Integration Contest.

NBC Learn is sponsoring a contest for all teachers to show how they integrate NBC Learn resources in their classroom instruction. Grand Prize:

Highlighted on NBC Learn K-12 Home Page, featured in the monthly newsletter, receive an NBC Learn branded 4GB Flash Drive, an NBC Learn mouse pad, and a set of NBC Learn pens.

1st Prize:

Each category winner will receive an NBC Learn 4GB Flash Drive, NBC Learn mouse pad, and a set of NBC Learn pens.

The complete contest rules are attached and can also be found at http://www.nbclearn.com/contest/miamidade/”

I don’t know about the rest of ya’ll, but when I see the words “grand prize” I better see a dollar sign followed by at least four digits, not a small stash of office supplies. OK, so maybe they were throwing in a flash drive (aren’t we all moving to cloud storage anyway?) and a mouse pad (who uses those things anymore?). But none of these items come close to being worthy of being called a prize, let alone a “grand prize.” Not to mention that all of these items are branded with NBC Learn’s logo. That’s more like an advertisement than a prize, an “adverPRIZEment” if you will. A pack of pens might prove useful since my students go through those pretty rapidly but even pens are on their way out as iPads and other digital learning devices are on their way in. With grand prizes like these, is it any wonder that teachers are skeptical of merit pay?

Teacher Appreciation Florida Style

 

Leave it to the Florida Legislature to celebrate Teacher Appreciation Day a week early by taking back Governor Rick Scott’s $2500 across the board raise for teachers.  OK, so maybe it was a token re-gift of a raise since the Governor was just giving back the 3% he stole from state workers’ salaries the year before. But I’ll take Rick Scott’s cheap gesture of a raise over the Legislature’s merit pay lump of coal any day.  You know when Republican lawmakers are celebrating a teacher raise plan while school teachers are sobbing into their sand paper grade classroom tissue supply, there’s a catch.

“After the Florida legislature reached its original budget plan earlier this week, Governor Scott wrote on his Facebook page that he was “proud to announce that every Florida teacher gets a pay raise.” However, under the revised agreement, that is not necessarily true. The Miami Herald reports that whether or not a teacher will get a pay raise will be determined by a merit-based system set up by individual school boards.

Lawmakers have suggested that teachers deemed “effective” by their school districts should receive a salary increase of at least $2,000. They recommend to school districts that teachers deemed “highly effective” receive raises of up to $3,500, according to the Orlando Sentinel. In addition to teachers, other school employees — such as principals and guidance counselors — are also eligible for the raises.” http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/02/florida-teacher-pay-raise-revised-buget_n_3

 

Just in case any South Florida teachers still had their hopes up of actually seeing a $2500 raise, the superintendents of Dade and Broward County decided to immediately hold a press conference to jointly piss in their teachers’ generic brand Cheerios http://www.wsvn.com/news/articles/local/21010505570649/school-superintendents-protest-fla-teacher-pay-raise-delay/ Miami Dade’s superintendent “did the math” and claims that the money allocated will be “woefully short” of giving every teacher a $2500 raise. Not to be outdone by Dade County’s dismal forecast, Broward’s superintendent added his own cloud of doom by comparing the funds to a turkey when too many people show up to eat:

“Broward Superintendent Robert Runcie said it’s a good thing the raises can be given sooner, but he warned teachers not to expect the $2,500 and $3,500 raises being mentioned in Tallahassee. “The dollars aren’t going to meet the expectations that have been set,” Runcie said. Besides the other instructional employees the Legislature added into the mix, Runcie said he still doesn’t know if raises for charter school teachers will also have to come out of the $47 million the district expects to receive. “The turkey at the table is only one size,” Runcie said. “The more people come, the less you’re going to get.” http://feaweb.org/todays-news-may-2-2013

Sounds like it’s going to be another $300 raise for Kafkateach.   Although Florida lawmakers seem hopelessly clueless in knowing how to make Florida teachers feel appreciated financially or otherwise, they have demonstrated a certain expertise in creating an epidemic of Florida teacher malaise. 

 

  Here are five Florida ways to make sure teachers feel unappreciated:

1. Tell them they will only receive a raise if they “merit” it.
2. By “merit”, tell them the raise will be based not on their job performance, but on their students’ performance on a single 90 minute assessment.
3. Be sure to emphasize that they are being measured by a “growth” model and if their students do not live up to the predicted performance of an esoteric algorithm with an abbreviation that only rhymes with: SCAM, SHAM, SPAM, and DAMN, they will be deemed “needs improvement” and they will not receive a raise. If they are deemed “needs improvement” two out of three years they will be terminated and their licenses revoked by the state.
4. If you want to make them feel so unappreciated that they contemplate jumping off the highest causeway in south Florida, tell them their VAM rating will be based on the test scores of students they have never taught or subjects they don’t teach.
5. Add a special 305 Dade County cherry on the top of this sh*t sundae by giving teachers their VAM score at the end of teacher appreciation week. (Rumor has it that Dade teachers will finally be receiving their evaluations and VAM data from the 2011-12 school year next Friday. Be sure to check back next week when Kafkateach finally gets VAMmed!).

 

That’s enough with the negativity. Let’s now turn our focus on ways to actually make teachers feel valued. Teachers are generally an easy lot to please. Here are five ways to make a teacher feel appreciated next week:

1. Throw a teacher appreciation luncheon (most schools do this). There’s nothing a teacher loves more than a free lunch. Especially a lunch that lasts longer than 20 minutes and does not include chicken nuggets or tater tots.  Note to administrators: do not turn your teacher appreciation luncheon into a staff meeting or professional development workshop. Most teachers do not appreciate unnecessary meetings and redundant PD.
2. Have your PTA sponsor a spa day in the teachers’ lounge. Maybe the thought of getting a mani pedi with the sound of the Xerox and scantron machines running in the background doesn’t appeal to you (especially if you happen to be the head football coach). But who doesn’t appreciate a little neck rub to help with the chronic hypertension we’ve developed by having 30 kids at a time scream “Miss, Miss, Miss” seven hours a day?
3. Have the students write little notes of appreciation to their favorite teachers. Our school does this as a Thanksgiving tradition and I look forward to it every year. They usually make me cry and for a few short minutes I think I have the best job in the world.
4. If you happen to be a slacker student who gave your teacher a hard time, stop by their classroom and tell them how much you loved their class and how much your learned from them. Nothing gives a teacher more hope than finding out they have helped what they thought was a hopeless cause.  I have a former student who earned a D in my class who comes by my room every day at lunch to tell me he loves me and still misses my class. It helps me face my 8^th period class of 25 freshmen boys who enjoy slamming each other’s heads into the wall as a form of amusement (this is not an exaggeration).
5. Give a teacher a microphone. Teachers need and want to be heard now more than ever. From the nightly teacher bashing sessions on Fox News, to politicians blaming every problem known to mankind on teachers, to staff meetings where teachers are not even allowed to ask questions. Teachers want someone to listen to them, they want people to understand the very real struggles they face in the classroom, they want to be treated like the experts in education that they are instead of being treated like misbehaving students.

In honor of teacher appreciation week, the good people at Save Our Schools are giving several teachers the microphone and Kafkateach is one of them! You can participate in the Save Our Schools teacher appreciation webinar this Sunday at 8 pm by clicking here http://saveourschoolsmarch.org/event/teacher-appreciation-week-save-our-schools-webinar/ I have never participated in a webinar before (I’m not even sure what one is) but my husband tells me it involves a camera.  This means not only will Kafkateach have to stay up past 8 pm, but she will also have to take a shower, do her hair, put some make up on, wear something besides pajamas, and pump some breast milk in advance. If you’ve ever been home on maternity leave with an eight week old baby, you know what a commitment this is. So please join us this Sunday and have a happy teacher appreciation week!

BS Bingo

BS (insert expletive if you’re feeling naughty) Bingo

This idea came from a list of words that I used to not care about but now make me puke with the help of members of the Dump Duncan facebook page.  I especially want to thank Richard Skibins for the BS bingo board idea. Take it to faculty meetings, professional development workshops, speeches made by the Secretary of Education, Michelle Rhee or while watching Education Nation. Feel free to add your own words you used to not care about but now make you want to puke in the commenting section. 

 

 

B	I	N	G	O
Data driven	accountable	achievement	Value added	assessment
21st century skills	innovation	rigor	measure	Evidence -based
Effective	Merit pay	reform	benchmark	Best practices
Status quo	differentiate	Common Core	College and career ready	Highly qualified
failing	Education crisis	choice	stakeholders	Learning gains

 

Merit Pay, Lawsuits, and Videotapes

Just when Kafkateach was ready to hang up her keyboard, last week turned out to be an explosive week in news.  I am not referring to the explosions in Boston of which I will refrain from commenting on other than saying there were far too many of them. I am referring to news in the education world that mostly flew under the radar as the nation was much more preoccupied with other types of radar images being circulated in the press. Here’s a recap of top education news stories for Dade County teachers, Florida teachers, and teachers nation wide from last week that you may have missed as you were glued to the cable news networks’ coverage of two young men with names with too many consonants to pronounce and hearts with too much hatred to comprehend.

1. (Dade County) Race to the Top bonuses were finally distributed to Dade County teachers! Bonuses ranged from $300 (the majority) to $6300 (the minority). Out of 20,000 teachers, 58 teachers received the top bonuses of $2500-5,000 (that’s 0.02% of the teaching workforce).  Kafkateach received $676 but she might have been duped into believing her RTTT bonus was a much greater amount had she just looked at her bank account balance because the district decided to pay the school recognition bonus money from the state in the same paycheck (another random cosmic event I’m sure). Kafkateach was ineligible for the big bucks because she does not teach reading or math and her AP pass rate is not the highest in the district.  Let me state that judging AP teachers by pass rates is ridiculously unfair. I had my highest pass rate my first year teaching AP because I only taught the top 50 students. Now that they are dumping more and more students into AP classes in order to enhance the data for school grade purposes, my personal data doesn’t look as good. I know I am a far better teacher now than my first year teaching AP but my pass rate will never reflect that because we simply don’t have 180 freshmen capable of passing a college level exam. If you want to judge me by pass rates, let me pick who gets to take my class and who gets to take the exam. Currently, even students with D and F averages sit for the exam for free.

Despite clear evidence to the contrary, Dade County officials continue to maintain that the RTTT bonuses had nothing to do with our value added rankings (which we still have not received) despite the UTD memo which clearly states that the top bonuses earned in avenues C and D were based on VAM. I emailed the official who made the statement for clarification and pasted the very VAMmy looking memo in the email but never received a response.  I guess it gets a little embarrassing to keep insisting that black is white when black is staring you in the face. But I realize that Dade County officials must keep saying this in writing or a teacher might actually be able to sue for damages.

1. (Florida) Speaking of suing, a big shout out to the FEA for filing a lawsuit against the FLDOE and three school districts for labeling some clearly “highly effective” teachers to be in “need of improvement” based on the test scores of students they didn’t teach or subjects they didn’t teach.  I have a hunch this might be one of the reasons Dade County has withheld our evaluations as they didn’t want to be named in this lawsuit. http://www.meyerbrookslaw.com/documents/Cook%20vs%20Bennett/Complaint.pdf

I don’t see how the teachers can possibly lose given that their evaluations seem patently absurd to everyone other than the lawmakers who devised such a ridiculous system. You would think that lawmakers would be wary of passing further absurd legislation and take a step back from merit pay but that would mean they were logical humans with souls rather than vapid mouth pieces for the corporate agenda. Republican lawmakers are simultaneously passing laws to keep teacher evaluation data private while mandating that schools release ineffective teachers’ evaluations to parents. http://bobsidlethoughtsandmusings.wordpress.com/2013/04/09/legislators-are-against-making-teacher-evaluations-public-except-when-they-arent-in-parent-trigger/ Will parents have to take a vow of secrecy or will they be able to pronounce to the world that so and so is an ineffective teacher via Facebook or twitter (#hastag my child’s teacher sucks)? Meanwhile, despite Governor Rick Scott’s attempt to pimp himself out to teachers with an across the board $2500 pay raise, legislative leaders won’t let go of their merit pay dreams and are refusing to let unworthy teachers get their hands on any extra cash (despite giving a 3% pay raise to all other government workers). http://www.postonpolitics.com/2013/04/standoff-beween-budget-negotiators-and-scott-over-teacher-raises/ Districts will be given a lump sum of money to devise their own meritocratic distribution systems.  In Dade County this means that teachers will only be informed how they can merit merit pay after the funds have already been awarded, half of the money will go to the VAM superstars, and the other half with disappear into the black hole of health insurance.  Adios $2500 raise! I knew you were toast the minute you were announced.

1. (USA) Speaking of superstar teachers, Bill Gates and other DC consulting groups will soon be launching a “Top Teacher” competition where teachers film themselves in pedagogical primacy hoping to be named “Top Teacher” so they can be used as paragons of pedagogy for the otherwise hopeless masses of clueless in the classroom. http://edushyster.com/?p=2391

If Bill Gates has his way (and he usually does) cameras will be circulating overhead in hopes of capturing the next great American teacher in action and broadcasting the video on the web for the purposes of inspiring otherwise uninspiring educators.  He wants to spend $5 billion putting cameras in classrooms across the nation. Note to Bill, cameras are already in the classroom. They are in our students’ pockets.  Use your money instead stopping malaria in Malaysia and students can take out their iphones, film said excellent teacher, and post it on youtube all for free!  For teachers, this may sound like another billion dollar boondoggle from Bill Gates, but since the oracle of education has spoken, school districts are already racing to put this in action. Of course Dade County in its adoration of races and anything digital or innovative, has jumped on the idea and has already signed a DC consultanting firm for $2.3 million worth of educational excellence in film. Now administrators and teachers will be able to log on to the portal and watch effective teachers 24/7! Administrators will finally know what excellent teaching looks like, be able to walk into a classroom, identify it using a $500,000 five page rubric and walk out without any human bias at all! Teachers will no longer have the excuse that the district hasn’t provided any training or any models of educational excellence and administrators will be free to fail an educator objectively if they don’t learn how to mimic whoever the DC consulting group has deemed a highly effective teacher. Beware teachers, “Educators Worth Emulating” will be coming to a district near you!

Ain’t Nobody Got Time for That!

One of my favorite aspects of being a high school teacher is that I get to stay up to date with the latest in technology and pop culture. I would never know about “snap chatting” or what “ YOLO” stood for if it weren’t for my students. I acquired one of my favorite new expressions now popular among teens when I passed out a ten page packet for my students to read and one girl blurted out “Ain’t nobody got time for that!” She and other students would reliably make this grammatically incorrect declaration anytime I assigned any homework, especially if it involved reading.  Being a mom of three kids under 5, this statement struck a cord with me and is turning into my personal motto.  Allow me to show you how handy this phrase can turn out to be when dealing with the wonderful world of education these days.

1. Thanks to a Bill Gates reform initiative, teachers at my school are now teaching an extra period for free. This is known as the 8 period schedule. We are required to teach 6 classes instead of 5 in exchange for two planning periods. Classes are 90 minutes and four classes meet on alternate days. This plan was originally sold to us as way to reduce class sizes. We were promised that our student load would remain at 150 and this would be a way to achieve small classes. It was also sold to us as a way to increase graduation rates because “We all know that the real reason students come to school is for electives.” This may be true if students were actually placed in elective classes they elected to be in, but counselors usually just throw students into whatever elective class happens to be available. I always thought being an elective teacher would be fantastic. Imagine teaching a class that students wanted to be in! That was until I taught an ethnic dance class one year with 70 students in it, only 20 of whom had any interest in dance. To my surprise the majority of the class were boys and I had envisioned myself teaching belly dance and flamenco. It was a fiasco and was mostly an exercise in crowd control. It was the last period of the day and I was in a room located in closest proximity to the “skipping” exit of the school. The classroom had two doors (horrible idea!) and I spent most of my time teaching glancing at the two doors in the back of the room trying to prevent students from sneaking out. With 70 students, I never did learn all of their names and couldn’t even write them up if they did manage to escape. The 8 period schedule never did achieve smaller class sizes but I usually ended up with a supplement and I could still have a planning period so I didn’t mind it too much. That was until the Florida Legislature in its infinite wisdom decided to declare Advanced Placement classes “electives” and exempt them from the class size amendment. Having the experience of being an “elective” teacher I knew this would be a disaster and you can read more about it in my class size matters blog post http://kafkateach.wordpress.com/2012/05/27/class-size-matters.

So now that I no longer had a 25 student cap and the 150 student load maximum also disappeared, the 8 period day made me and other elective teachers ripe for exploitation. Even if administrators showed some restraint and only assigned me 30 students per class, multiply that by 6 and you get 180 students with no right to a supplement.  In an Advanced Placement history course, the result is another 30 essays to grade per week. Grading 30 essays equates to approximately an extra 5 hours of work for free. AIN’T NOBODY GOT TIME FOR THAT!

2. While most of the time I enjoy advances in technology, somehow Dade County has screwed up the electronic gradebook so bad that it is almost inoperable. Until this past year, the electronic gradebook functioned reasonably well and I had no complaints. Then the district decided to centralize the system and slowly it began to unravel. Every time grades were due the system would slow to a crawl and then crash. I gamed the system by finishing my grades a week early. The district would blame this glitch or that and promised they were working to resolve the issue. Then this past quarter the tech experts appeared to just give up and their solution was to physically disable teachers from accessing their grade verification reports during the school day.  I have no idea what the point of a grade verification report is, but I know it is due at the end of every quarter and if you don’t turn them in by 10 am they will announce your name over the load speaker every 5 minutes and hunt you down like a truant student. So this last quarter, in order for teachers to print out their grade verification reports, the district tech wizards forced them to do so before school, after school or at home by shutting down the grade verification report option during the school day. Being a working mom who has to drop off her kids by 7:30 and pick them up by 3 pm, printing them outside of the school day was not an option. I don’t even have a printer at home. This one is for you incompetent Dade County tech experts who can’t do your job and think the solution is to force teachers to do theirs outside of normal working hours, AIN’T NOBODY GOT TIME FOR THAT!

3. Ahh…the wonders of computer based testing. With the Common Core computer based assessments coming down the road by 2015 and current FCAT and EOC testing already being computer based, low and behold the district is finding out its servers are crashing. The district sent out this email from ITS in response:

“Multiple schools recently alerted Information Technology Services (ITS) of schoolwide internet interruptions.  After investigating, ITS found the following was occurring at these sites:

• Students, unbeknownst to school administration or teachers, were found to be playing network based video games, such as Halo, on district computers.
• The students created what is known as a proxy server that allowed them to bypass the district’s current filtering technology.
• The students were able to perform these activities by bringing in their own software on removable devices (thumb drive or flash drive, etc).  By using one of these devices, the software runs without being installed on the district computers thus bypassing all filtering protocols.
• The result of their actions caused significant bandwidth consumption; in all cases the affected schools lost ALL internet capabilities.  Bandwidth is the allotted amount of space and size used for accessing the internet.  When the bandwidth reaches capacity EVERY internet request slows down or is stopped completely.
• ITS is researching if there is any filtering product available that can prevent or lessen this type of interruption.  However, any solution identified is not an immediate solution nor have funds been identified for purchase.

This issue is of significant concern as the district prepares for online testing (FCAT, etc).  ANY interruption of network services to or from the school could result in an invalidation of the online test being taken!

1. ITS is requesting that school administration and staff monitor ALL student activity when they are using district computers and, if possible, intervene when questionable activity is observed.

Hey ITS, once again you seem to be incapable of doing your job and are shifting  your responsibilities onto teachers. AIN’T NOBODY GOT TIME FOR THAT!

3. Kafkateach has a horrible confession to make. Despite her many rants about education reform, she was until recently considering sending her daughter to a charter school next year. This is not because I felt the charter school would offer her a better education. I would have much rather sent her to my neighborhood public school. But for some reason the school Kafkateach is zoned for is a k-8 center and does not offer morning care.  Kindergarten doesn’t start until 8:15 and I have to be at work by 7:15. My husband has a long commute and has to start work at 8:30. With no morning care, what’s a high school teacher mom to do? Why is there no morning care at my local elementary school? They have aftercare. There must be other parents that have to be at work by 8 a.m. and don’t have other options. Every elementary school in Dade County should be required to offer morning care. But they’re not and the only one I could find that did offer morning care was a charter school. So there, that’s my horrible confession. I justified it by viewing it as an opportunity to do some first hand investigative reporting about charter schools. What I found out so far is that charter schools require parents to volunteer at the school and if they happen to work during the day, they can buy supplies instead. Say what? They claim this is a way of building a school community but by forcing parents to either volunteer at the school or buy supplies they know damn well they will either be attracting the kind of families with enough wealth to have a stay at home parent or ones wealthy enough to buy their school’s supplies for them. And they know by attracting wealthier and more involved parents, they will be virtually guaranteeing themselves higher test scores. While I don’t mind the idea of volunteering at my child’s school or donating some supplies, I don’t appreciate being forced to volunteer 30 hours at my child’s school. AIN’T NOBODY GOT TIME FOR THAT!

4.Last, with a newborn baby that wants to eat every two hours, a toddler who refuses to potty train and a four year old bringing home worksheet packets and science projects, writing this blog will probably happen less frequently. Unfortunately, Kafkateach ain’t got much time for that.

Dade County Finally Finalizes Teacher VAMs

Kudos Dade County! A full year after the last administration of the FCAT reading exam on which Dade County teacher evaluations are based, our evaluations have been finalized! Although individual teachers have yet to be notified about their VAM and will have this year’s students sit for the FCAT next week without ever having learned how they were rated according to the previous year’s student performance. After multiple rounds of negotiations, the district and the union have revised whatever cut scores were previously used for the FLDOE report on teacher evaluations and determined that 99.20% of teachers are effective or highly effective http://www.utd.org/news/vam-cut-scores-reached.  An aberration certainly worthy of a NY Times story, oh wait, it was http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/31/education/curious-grade-for-teachers-nearly-all-pass.html

It only took twelve months, a four million dollar algorithm, expensive data crunching software systems, and countless overpaid bureaucrats to come to the same conclusion as the previous evaluation system conducted by a single school administrator.  I guess this means that the Race to the Top of teacher evaluations has resulted in a tie between the archaic administrator classroom observation derived ratings and the futuristic clairvoyant algorithm test based derived ratings known as VAM.  Only it seems fair that the VAM based evaluation system should receive a significant penalty for taking over a year, costing millions more than school centered evaluations, and causing Kafkateach to lose sleep for the past year waking up every night at 2 a.m. in a cold sweat in fear of being labeled “needs improvement.” Turns out only 0.80% of Dade County teachers are in need of improvement (sucks to be you. Misery loves company and you ain’t got much). Kafkateach still has no idea what her personal VAM score is, but given the odds, I’m willing to bet money that I’m either effective or highly effective.  And it looks like Kafkateach is going to have an extra $300 lining her pockets to gamble with now that the district is ready to distribute the second round of Race to the Top bonus money! http://www.utd.org/news/race-to-the-top-rttt-performace-pay-distribution.

Despite the incredibly suspicious timing of UTD posting VAM cut scores and the next day posting a Race to the Top  merit pay distribution notification, district officials would have us believe the two had nothing to do with each other and were the result of some bizarre cosmic event “The evaluations and performance bonuses are unrelated, and the timing of their release coincidence, according to the school district.” http://www.miamiherald.com/2013/04/09/3333095/miami-dade-teachers-to-receive.html Well….actually there is nothing coincidental about VAM cut scores being negotiated and the release of Race to the Top funds. You must have teacher evaluations based on test scores in order to receive Race to the Top funds. Furthermore, in the UTD memo it clearly states that one of the avenues teachers can receive funds is based on VAM:

“Qualifying teachers within a school will receive pay for performance awards if:

{Cl)- FCAT Reading &Math: Ranking based on state VAM scores by region designation. (Top 15%)
(C2)- End of Course results: Ranking based on state Algebra I VAM by region designation. (Top 15%)

(C3)- 3′d Grade: Local VAM based on 2″d grade SAT &3′d grade FCAT by region designation. (Top 15%)
(C4)- Grades 1 &2: Local VAM based on SAT by region designation. (Top 15%).”

The school district is probably just trying to head off lawsuits now that money has been distributed based on VAM by claiming Race to the Top merit pay has nothing to do with a teacher’s value added ranking.

In other attempts at district spin, despite the ridiculous delay in teacher evaluations and merit pay distribution,  the master of spin himself and ultimate Arne Duncan groupie is still trying to paint Race to the Top as a resounding victory for Dade County teachers, “We are very proud of the fact that not through imposition, but through negotiation, during very uncertain financial times, we were able to finalize a Race to the Top performance pay plan that continues to invest in human talent, with $14 million in teacher rewards based on student performance,” Superintendent Alberto Carvalho said in a prepared statement.  Keep in mind that many teachers received no merit pay money last year and this year the amount that most teachers receive will be $300. Apparently the superintendent is under the impression that $300 is a large amount of money as it was also the amount of the raise 8,000 Dade County teachers received this year.

Maybe numbers are not the superintendent’s forte as he painted himself as a martyr for only accepting a $45,000 raise (more than what half of Dade County teachers make in a year). Despite the superintendent’s rock star status, he was until last month only paid $275,000. Before your grossly underpaid teacher brain runs green with envy, let’s stop and consider the sacrifices our superintendent is making for the community. According to a recent Miami Herald article, “He said he would negotiate a salary of up to $320,000, based on the value of the superintendent’s position. But Carvalho said he would reimburse the district for any portion of that salary increase that rose beyond the percentage value of the median teachers’ raise. “ http://www.miamiherald.com/2013/03/13/3284278/miami-dade-schools-superintendent.html

According to my math, if the superintendent received the same percentage increase in salary as 8,000 Dade County teachers (0.75%), his raise should have been $2,025 instead of $45,000. But like I previously stated, the superintendent is obviously not a numbers man as he made the following statement to the school board reminding them of his martyrdom “Read my lips: I want to be the most underpaid public servant in this community.” At a current salary of over $300,000 a year, I believe there might be at least 8,000 teachers making $40,000 a year that could compete with him for the honor of being the most underpaid public servant in Dade County.

Unfortunately the Miami Herald article regarding TEACHER evaluations and Race to the Top TEACHER bonuses failed to include any actual TEACHER voices. This is not surprising considering the last time Kafkateach was quoted in a Herald article, her comments curiously ended up on the editing room floor when it came to the print copy of the newspaper. Since the Herald seems hesitant to publish any opinions critical of the school district, let me take this opportunity to add my teacher voice about the wonders of merit pay; if $300 is what merit pay looks like, and it is contingent upon giving up job security, no thanks.

Some teachers may end up winning the Race to the Top jackpot with bonuses of up to $5,000 (down from $25,000 the previous year) but most teachers have better odds of winning the Powerball lotto. Only teachers of FCAT reading and math are even in the running for winning a bonus large enough to rival that of a used car salesman. Sorry Mr. Duncan, despite what a few of your superintendent cheerleaders may claim, a $300 bonus is not going to be enough to attract the best and brightest to the teaching profession.

Same Old, Same Old

And so it goes, another South Florida election filled with technical errors, fraud, and delayed results. This time it was not for the President of the United States, but for the President of the United Teachers of Dade. If you have been following this blog, or are at all familiar with UTD politics, you know by now that this is not the first incident of disputed UTD election results.  Somehow every UTD election turns out exactly how UTD leadership wants it to. Current UTD leadership has already been found guilty of election fraud, further litigation is still pending and a lawsuit has already been filed for this week’s election. I’m sensing a trend.

This time it took the union over two days to count the votes of maybe 7,000 teachers. Apparently there was a technical glitch in the scantron machines used by Votenet, a company hired by UTD to ensure “a fair and accurate” election. Glitch or no glitch, in previous elections where all 22,000 teachers were allowed to cast votes which were calculated by paper ballot, results were known the following morning. Is it that difficult to have each school site union steward tally the votes (with outside observers) and then add all of the school site votes together?  This time union stewards were not even encouraged to keep a tally of their school site results. One of the points of contention in past elections was UTD leadership’s refusal to release school site votes as mandated by law. Way too much transparency in that process for current UTD leadership.  It’s much easier to take the ballots behind closed doors and suddenly emerge triumphant with a two-thirds victory every single time. Well, this time it was only 51% percent of the vote (the minimum required). Two-thirds would have been totally unbelievable considering there were 5 other candidates running. Might I say 5 other candidates that all would have been much better options. Somehow magically, the one candidate endorsed by the current much- maligned UTD President, is declared the winner.  Not only has he served as part of the corrupt and inept current UTD administration and received what should have been a kiss of death endorsement by the current UTD President, but his platform made zero sense. Of all the issues facing TEACHERS in Dade County, our newly selected UTD President, ran on a platform which headlined the plight of the teen mom as its first priority. He wants to “restructure the class day to accommodate students who have infants or must work to provide income for their families” http://miamitimesonline.com/blacks-vie-for-utd-presidency.

As much as I believe that for the most part, the interests of teachers and students are intertwined, this is taking it a bit far. You are running for President of the United TEACHERS of Dade. You are collecting your six figure salary from the United TEACHERS of Dade. Nowhere in your platform did you even mention the word TEACHER. First of all, there are already plenty of opportunities for teen moms to continue their education in Dade County. We have special schools for pregnant teen moms and this is one incident where Florida Virtual School would be an excellent option for a teenage mother that needs to work but would also like to continue her education. Second of all, this is relatively minor issue facing students in Dade County. I maybe see two pregnant students in a school of 3,000 every year. Lastly, you could have addressed the issue of teen moms as well as addressing the issue of working TEACHER moms. What about the many working mothers in Dade County schools who can barely afford childcare and cannot even find childcare centers that open early enough to accommodate the ridiculous 7:20 start time of high schools (this is something kafkateach personally struggles with)? Some schools and some districts have provided onsite childcare for both students and staff. Now that would be a proposal I could stand behind. But to focus only on the plight of the teen mom and ignore the plight of the TEACHER mom as President for the United TEACHERS of Dade County is a glaring omission.

I guess the one upside of these depressing but not at all surprising election results, is that kafkateach will continue to save $800 in union dues. Had a different candidate won, especially the one I endorsed, I would have felt obligated to join UTD. Now that it has become apparent that there will be a continuation of past UTD leadership ineptitude, there is no reason to join. Why any teacher pays $800 to support a corrupt association meant to represent TEACHERS, which does nothing to support TEACHERS, and often fails to provide the basic function of mediation in teacher/administrator disputes, is beyond me. Is the UTD desk calendar really that great? I think Office Depot sells them for $19.99.

Out of the two union members I talked with at my school, neither one voted in this past election. One of the teachers was a veteran teacher set to retire in two years. He said he didn’t vote because he didn’t care and knew it was rigged anyway. He doesn’t even know why he  continues to pay his dues. I guess some teachers continue to pay to be part of a union they don’t believe in because it feels like the right thing to do. Maybe like an atheist going to church and throwing a couple of bucks in the hat at the end of the service just for societal pressures?  The other union member at my school that did not vote in this election was the teacher who will be replacing me when I go on maternity leave. He’s a new teacher. I asked if he was a member of the union. He said “Yes.” I asked if he voted in the election. He said “What election?” When union members don’t even have a clue that an election is being held for UTD President, there is a problem. Which leads me to my last point, exactly who did vote in this election? Out of the 22,000 teachers in Dade County only 12,000 belong to the union and were eligible to vote. Out of those 12,000 apparently only 7,000 bothered to vote. Out of those 7,000 who did vote, 15 school sites had their votes invalidated. So in the end, maybe 51% of the 5,000 votes counted (2,500) determined the fate of 22,000 teachers in Dade County. So much for the UNITED Teachers of Dade County.

In other “same old, same old” news, the union and the district failed to come to an agreement over cut scores for our evaluations when they met on February 14th. They are set to resume negotiations next month where they are sure to fail to come to an agreement once again. Looks like Dade County teachers will not see evaluations for 2011-12 school year in the foreseeable future and Race to the Top merit pay funds seem to be equally caught up in the purgatory of Dade County union/district negotiations. So much for winning the race, we’ve come to a grinding halt.