Contented Disheartened Idealists

American teachers can be divided into groups broadly defined as Disheartened, Contented and Idealists, according to a new survey conducted by Public Agenda and Learning Point Associates.

This EdWeek article by reporter Andrew L. Yarrow describes the study as "a comprehensive and nuanced look at how teachers differ in their perspectives on their profession, why they entered teaching, the atmosphere and leadership in their schools, the problems they face, their students and student outcomes, and ideas for reform."

The study, called "Teaching for a Living: How Teachers See the Profession Today," is based on interviews with nearly 900 teachers, who were asked about 100 questions.

The plurality of teachers described as disheartened characterize their jobs as “so demanding, it’s a wonder that more people don’t burn out.”

Those identified as contented say that “teaching is exactly what I wanted to do.” The study says they are most likely to be veterans who believe they have adequate time to prepare lesson plans, and teach in middle-income or affluent schools.

The study reports that idealists have "the strongest sense of mission about teaching." They believe that, given good teachers, all students can learn. A majority think that all their students "given the right support, can go to college."

Pastorek and Union Parish head to court October 29

A court date has been set to determine whether or not Superintendent of Education Paul Pastorek and his Department of Education can hand over some of Union Parish's education funds to a charter school.

The federal suit was born last summer, when Pastorek admitted that he goofed in not informing Union Parish officials that the D'Arbonne Woods Charter School would be on a meeting agenda, and that the result could be the taking of parish money to fund the school.

If Pastorek prevails on October 29 and the district must hand over some $500,00 to the charter school, the Union Parish School Board will have to consider shutting down some programs or closing schools, according to this article by Monroe News-Star reporter Barbara Leader.

Most school districts show improvements in state scores

The Department of Education today released state, district and school performance scores for 2009. Statewide school improvement scores are somewhat short of the goal set 10 years ago, but still show marked improvement over past years.

In 1999, the arbitrary goal set by education leaders for this year was 100; this year's composite score came in at 91. In the first year that scores were kept, the state goal reached just 69.4. Last year's score was 86.3, so there has been an upward trend since the beginning.

The top five districts were the Zachary Community School District (116.8), West Feliciana Parish (110.9), St. Tammany Parish (109.6), Ascension Parish (105.9) and Central Community Schools (105.8).

Coming in dead last was the State Recovery School District, with a District Performance Score of 54. At that, the RSD showed a 2.4 point growth over the previous year.

All but three districts showed improvement this year; in 2008, 13 districts did not improve over the year before.

For a complete rundown of district and school performance sores, please click here.

Some teachers in state not certified

Houma Courier reporter Daniel McBride schools readers on teacher certification in Terrebonne Parish for this article. Statewide, he writes, about seven percent of teachers are not properly certified; in Terrebonne, that figure rises to 10 percent.

EdWeek: Experts worry about Race to Top

The U.S. Department of Education should tread lightly in the way it connects test scores, teacher evaluations and compensation to the $4 billion Race to the Top initiative. That's the opinion of the Board on Teaching and Assessment, which is part of the National Research Council.

As Education Week reporter Lesli Maxwell puts it in this article, the testing experts believe the Department of Education should examine "multiple indicators of what students know and can do" instead of focusing narrowly on a single high-stakes test.

LFT has already sent its concerns to the Department of Education about the $4 billion Race to the Top program, and has notified members about the problems we see. We'd like to know what you think - click here to take a short survey about the Race to the Top program.

Pastorek: I know noth-eeeng...

State Superintendent of Education Paul Pastorek does his best Sgt. Schultz impression for this story, telling Shreveport Times reporter Icess Fernandez that he didn't know his office had cancelled a contract with a recruiter of Filipino teachers.

Also in The Times - which has covered the Filipino story better than any other news outlet in the state - is an editorial reminding us that the Filipino teachers are victims, and that their qualoifications and abilities should not be tainetd by the scandal.

Many of the Filipino teachers are members of the Louisiana Federation of Teachers. We filed the complaints on their behalf because that is what we do. It is who we are. We exist to represent teachers and school employees, and we do it better than anyone else.

Louisiana is the least brain-healthy state

This could explain a lot. U.S. News and World Report writer Zach Miners has a report on a new study that ranks Louisiana dead last in an Index of Brain Health.

Caddo looks at foreign teacher policy - what about the others?

The Caddo Parish School Board is working on a policy to control the district's relations with third-party recruiters such as Universal Placement International, the source of an ongoing scandal involving Filipino teachers.

As Shreveport Times reporter Icess Fernandez writes here, the Caddo board already has a first draft of a policy that "would require that administrators submit documents to support their recommendation of a particular recruiter or recruiting company."

When will other school boards involved in the scandal - East Baton Rouge, Jefferson, the State Recovery School District and others - take action to avoid future problems?

Watch the LFT's Filipino teacher press conference

There is now a video online to view the LFT's press conference about Universal Placement International and the plight of Filipino teachers who were recruited by the company.

Please click here to watch the video.

Editorials condemn Filipino recruiter, demand action

Demand is mounting for full-scale investigations of the abuses perpetrated by Filipino teacher recruiter Lourdes Navarro and her company, Universal Placement International.

From the Shreveport Times:

Solving our teacher shortages is critical if we are to ensure the best education
for our children. But what was once viewed as a resourceful answer to filling
these gaps has now become a huge embarrassment. It deserves now a full
investigation. And wherever fault lies, let's hope hard lessons have been
learned.

From the New Orleans Times-Picayune:

The Filipino workers have helped fill a shortage of teachers after Hurricane
Katrina, and the exploitation they allege should be intolerable. If the
accusations are true, officials need to stop this abuse before more foreign
workers are victims of it.

This is a story that won't be disappearing from the news any time soon.

Vallas: Filipino recruiter should be prosecuted

The superintendent of the state Recovery School District says the RSD has severed its connection with the company that recruited Filipino teachers to work in Louisiana.

Paul Vallas told WWL-TV reporter Paul Murphy for this story that Universal Placement International and its owner, Lourdes Navarro, were awarded a $47,500 contract to recruit Filipino teachers for hard-to-staff positions in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina.

"We weren't comfortable using a for profit company to help us recruit teachers," Vallas told the reporter. "So, after that summer, we had no further use for them."

Vallas told Murphy that he believes the Filipino teachers should sue the recruiter to recover their losses, and that criminal charges should be filed against Navarro.

Board member's shocking, cruel reaction

"If they've got buyer's remorse and don't like what they have, then they can go back."
-Caddo Parish School Board member Barry Rachal

So here we have a what seems to be a clear-cut case of illegal activity: an unlicensed recruiter scams hundreds of Filipino teachers out of thousands of dollars, and keeps those teachers in what amounts to servitude.

And what does Caddo Parish School Board member Barry Rachal have to say about the victims?

"They signed an agreement, a contract," he told Shreveport Times reporter Icess Fernandez for this article, "and they were all thrilled to death to have a job in America and now they want to gripe about it. If they've got buyer's remorse and don't like what they have, then they can go back."

Except some of them can't go back, even for the Christmas holidays, because the recruiter is holding their work visas until the teachers cough up the vigorish they owe.

Rachal's comment might sound shocking and cruel, but it is also a symptom of what's wrong with American capitalism these days. If it's in the contract, it's OK. Whether or not the contract is with a corporation that operates legally, whether or not it violates principles of human dignity, whether or not any public agency has properly investigated the contract.

Get out of the way of business, and let business do what it wants. If people get hurt, so what. As Rachal puts it, "...sounds like they (the teachers) are not honoring their agreement."

That is the common thread running through the health care industry and the securities market that nearly brought us to financial collapse and the human trafficking at the core of our so-called immigration problem. Without regulation, oversight and prosecution of abuses, an unfettered "free market" can be very wicked indeed.

As any sports fan can tell you, all games need rules, referees and penalties. Otherwise chaos reigns. That's what happening in the case of these Filipino teachers. Politicians who can't see that are likely part of the problem.

Outrageous, offensive abuse of Filipino teachers

(From left, AFT Attorney Daniel McNeil, LFT President Steve Monaghan and East Baton Rouge Federation President Carnell Washington discuss allegations against foreign teacher recruiter Universal Placement International)

"Disgusting and an affront to basic American values." That's how LFT President Steve Monaghan characterizes the treatment of Filipino nationals teaching in Louisiana. The villain in this case is the recruiting agency that extracts huge fees from teachers in The Philippines, and continues to drain their paychecks after they are hired by Louisiana school systems.

(Jefferson Federation of Teachers President Meladie Munch, left, and United Teachers of New Orleans President Larry Carter explain how Filipino teachers recruited by Universal Placement International are faring in their local school systems.)

The charges involve multiple violations of state and federal laws. Attorneys for AFT and LFT said the union is asking that the teachers’ contracts with the California-based recruiter be voided, and that the recruiter be criminally prosecuted under state law.

Lourdes “Lulu” Navarro, the president of recruiting firm Universal Placement International, is a convicted felon who has served jail time in California and was also convicted of crimes in New Jersey. After treating some Louisiana school officials to Philippine Island junkets, she was allowed to recruit more than 200 teachers for Louisiana schools.

Each teacher recruited to work in Louisiana was charged about $15,000 by Navarro to obtain a job, and was then required to sign over 10 percent of the monthly salary to UPI for two years. The total amounted to some 37% of the teachers’ salary.

Teachers who could not afford to pay the fees up front were directed to loan companies by Navarro, and were charged exorbitant interest rates.

The story, revealed by LFT at press conferences in Baton Rouge and New Orleans, is available on the Federation Web site.

LFT's revelations were widely reported by the news media, including this story by Advocate reporter Will Sentell; this one by New Orleans Times-Picayune reporter Sarah Carr; and this story by Shreveport Times reporter Icess Fernandez.

Video reports are available here from WAFB in Baton Rouge; here on WBRZ-TV in Baton Rouge;
here on WDSU-TV in New Orleans.

New law targets "improper communication"

Does the threat of "improper communication" between teachers and their students justify the kind of state law discussed in this article by Houma Courier reporter Daniel McBride?

For the record, it is already illegal for teachers to have improper relations of the sort this new law implies. But it's always good politics for lawmakers to demand new laws whenever teachers make the news over abusing their authority over youngsters.

Given the spate of legislative proposals aimed at teachers over the past couple of years, it does seem teachers are being singled out as prospective abusers. We haven't seen similar legislative remedies aimed at other occupations that have contact with children.

Not quite right at The Advocate

The first paragraph in this story by Advocate reporter Will Sentell doesn't get it quite right, although the rest of the article accurately portrays LFT's response to the report that a consultant recently gave the Blue Ribbon Commission studying teacher pay.

That consultant suggested cutting the teacher salary schedule by 10 percent, and claimed that teachers' advanced degrees and years of classroom experience don't improve student achievement.

The reporter's error is in equating our opposition to pay cuts to opposing supplements for teachers who take on additional tasks or agree to work in especially challenged schools. That's a distinction LFT simply has not made. Additional pay for such work can be a good idea, provided teachers have a voice in creating the plan.

Our beef was with consultants who claim that a) teachers stagnate after five years and b) there is no value in advanced degrees.

Tulane institute is charter school hotbed

In yet another report about the charter school experiment in New Orleans, USA Today reporter Rick Jervis spotlights Tulane University President Scott Cowen as a "leader of the redesign of the city's public schools."

"We're going through a cultural transformation right now," Cowen is quoted as saying. "I think we're on the road to a much better system of schools than we ever had before the storm."

The story tromps over some old ground, noting how troubled the city's school system was before Hurricane Katrina. It begins with a very positive portrayal of one charter school. But it then veers away from the standard meme and characterizes the city's public schools as "a perplexing network difficult for parents to decipher, particularly those still struggling to return to their homes post-Katrina..."

Jervis reports on one family's problems with the system - their children have attended five schools in the past two years. Says the parent, "They were straight-A students. Now they're struggling. It's a new set of friends, a new group of teachers, a new set of hallways. Children can't learn like that."

Cowen admits to the reporter that the system can be confusing, and says, "We ultimately have to figure out what's the right governance model for the entire system of schools."

Here's what's NOT in the USA Today story. Cowen isn't just the president of Tulane University, he also runs the Cowen Institute for Education Initiatives, which was established "to lead the systemic reformation and transformation of the public education system," according to its Web site.

The Cowen Institute is much more than a cheerleader for public education reform, it's home base for a number of proposed charter schools in the city. Sharing a street address (200 N. Broadway, Ste. 108) with the Cowen Institute are New Schools for New Orleans, Inc., Firstline School, Arise Academy, Benjamin E. Mays Preparatory School, Pride College Preparatory Academy, Success Preparatory Academy, Xanadu College Preparatory Academy, Miller-McCoy Academy for Mathematics and Business and Sojourner Truth Academy.

Two of those schools, New Schools of New Orleans, Inc. and Firstline School, are represented by Stephen Rosenthal, brother of former BESE member Leslie Jacobs, an early and ardent supporter of charter schools.

AFT not in lockstep with Obama on education

Citing serious concerns with the proposed federal Race to the Top program, American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten characterizes RTTT as "little more than a dressed-up version of the No Child Left Behind law enacted seven years ago " by President George Bush, according to this article by Washington Post reporter Nick Anderson.

Says Weingarten, "It looks like the only strategies they have are charter schools and measurement. That's Bush III."

The AFT endorsed President Obama in the 2008 campaign, and has praised the president for his support of public education. But support does not mean subservience, and the Federation will stick to core principles regardless of who is in the White House.

To the Post reporter, Weingarten says the union is in "a constructive but tart dialogue" with the Obama administration.

Teachers don't like linking pay to student test scores

ASCD, a professional education leadership organization, posted a back-to-school survey on teacher opinions about education issues.

The report that over half of teachers do not believe it is fair to link teacher pay to student test scores; better than 50% of teachers support the idea of national curriculum standards; and over 40% believe that "pressure on students and teachers to improve test results" is the biggest obstacle they face going into the new school year.

The survey results are posted here.

Boston study: charters push out low-performing students

Do some charter schools appear to outperform traditional public schools because they slough off lower performing students? A new study from Boston implies that is the case.

In this story, Boston Globe reporter James Vaznis writes that the study gives credence to the supposition that "...charter schools systematically push out academically weak students in an effort to boost their college acceptance rates and MCAS (standardized state test) scores."

Smell test: proposed contract not up to sniff

Superintendent of Education Paul Pastorek's former law firm will have to wait a bit longer to see if it will get some $650,000 in state contracts, according to this article by Advocate reporter Will Sentell.

A bevy of officials, including legislators and members of the state education board, complained that a no-bid contract about to be awarded to the Adams and Reese law firm did not pass what one member called the "smell test."

The contracts in question involve the state Recovery School District in New Orleans. One of them, for $500,000, is to help the RSD "obtain construction funds through state and federal tax credit programs."

Another contract, for $125,000, is for legal advice associated with construction.

As a rule, no-bid contracts can be awarded if only one vendor is capable of providing the requested services. Members of the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education say there are probably firms other than Adams and Reese capable of doing the work.

RSD Superintendent Paul Vallas told Sentell that bids will be sought for the work, and that the three best proposals will be submitted to the BESE.

Those bids could be considered in November. Adams and Reese will also probably be under scrutiny at the October BESE meeting - the firm represents Louisiana Connections Academy, a "virtual school" that is attempting to become the first statewide charter school to operate almost exclusively on the Internet.