Golden Gate(s)keepers At CMS
Shocking. A survey conducted by a Gates Foundation-funded group reveals that Gates Foundation-backed and -endorsed initiatives weaving their way into Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools are … wait for it … wonderful steps in a positive direction, already being embraced by the public.
In other breaking news, a poll conducted by Big Tobacco found a majority of respondents reported improved health from smoking.
This from the uptown paper:
A new poll financed by the Gates Foundation shows broad support for key elements of Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools’ reform plan, including the controversial merit-pay concept that sparked emotional protests from teachers last school year.
The poll, commissioned by “Educating Change,” a $200,000 public relations campaign financed by the Gates Foundation and backed by the Charlotte Chamber, found 74 percent of those surveyed support the idea of paying teachers differently based on their effectiveness.
However, 86 percent said such a plan should factor in more than just student achievement. The poll found deep skepticism about testing: just 53 percent of residents agreed that standardized tests are a proven indicator of academic achievement. Forty-five percent disagreed.
You can bet dollars to doughnuts that the PR-driven push launched by the Gates-financed “Educating Change” group will conveniently cloud over any public skepticism of CMS’ new battery of tests, while shining a spotlight on the notion that a majority of residents surveyed supposedly support CMS reform efforts, fresh out of the, um, gates.
Interestingly, a deeper dig into the details of the survey reveals respondents decidedly split on how to best judge teacher effectiveness, or even why performance pay is a good idea. From the survey summary:
Among supporters, the primary reasons for support are the belief that good teachers should be compensated, it is a good incentive/motivator for teachers to do a good job, and students do better with good teachers.
Among those who oppose, the primary reasons for opposition are that there are too many factors not related to teachers that impact student performance, it is often the parents’ fault that a child does poorly, and there is no effective way to measure teacher performance.
And on the use of standardized tests, a whole new slew of which CMS has rolled out in tandem with it performance-pay plan, folks seem less than thrilled.
In response to the prompt, “Standardized tests are a proven indicator of academic improvement,” the survey summary shows, “Slightly more respondents agree than disagree, but about as many respondents disagree strongly as agree strongly.”
Then there’s this little nugget of push-polling, tossed in at the end of the survey, worded to strongly mirror the purported multi-dimensional approach of the performance-pay plan CMS is trying to sell the public, but which even a huge majority of the school board openly admits they do not understand:
At the beginning of the survey respondents were asked if they would support or oppose the concept of a compensation plan for teachers that would allow for different pay based on how effective teachers are in helping student improve academically. Toward the end of the survey respondents were read the following paragraph:
Suppose a teacher compensation system is implemented in Charlotte- Mecklenburg that assesses teaching effectiveness using a comprehensive set of measures. The measures would include but are not limited to: student testing, classroom observation, measures of how well teachers understand their subjects, measures of the quality of teacher homework assignments, and student perceptions of teachers.
They were then asked how much they would support or oppose the concept of a compensation plan for teachers based on assessment of teaching effectiveness, if multiple methods are used.
– Total agreement for the performance based compensation plan increased from 74% to 88%. Strong agreement increased from 42% to 55%.
The reality is that support for merit pay is strong with teachers and parents. A majority of teachers I speak to say they want to be paid based on what they are worth, based on how effectively they teach and how much their students learn. As a parent, I want my kids’ teachers to be compensated based on their performance, and my children’s; not on how long a teacher has managed to hang on to a job in a bureaucratic jungle.
The problem, and where most of the backlash has occurred, is that CMS is fast-tracking an unproven initiative that uses unreliable data from a huge escalation of unproven standardized tests, which front-line educators say disrupt and detract from valuable classroom time, as one of the main driving forces behind the district’s performance-pay plan.
A majority of the public, as evidenced by the tumult at recent school board meetings, and a huge segment of teachers, as evidenced by the aggressive pushback the initiative has received, does not support that approach.
No survey, no matter how egregiously you spin it, will change that; only the school board putting the brakes on this runaway train can accomplish that end. And sadly, the current board has made clear its intention to keep the pedal to floor.
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