AFT - QuEST 2009 - Daily Update

Home > QuEST 2009 >

QuEST 2009 Daily Update - Tuesday, July 14

Duncan Fields Members' Questions at Town Hall Meeting

Call it "Arne Duncan Unplugged," an unscripted Monday afternoon exchange at QuEST between the U.S. education secretary and AFT members on the issues that matter most to education's frontline.

The July 13 session began with a drum roll: AFT members' handwritten questions for the education secretary were collected in advance and placed inside an onstage sweepstakes drum. After a few turns, AFT president Randi Weingarten reached in and selected a handful at random, and Duncan took the stage to provide some answers.The education secretary made clear from the outset that he was there to build bridges, not burn them. Wearing a "With Us, Not to Us" button-a symbol worn by thousands of QuEST participants signaling the union's determination to keep the frontline's voice involved in decisions surrounding education-Duncan told the crowd, "I think we have the chance to do something special together" on key education issues.

Weingarten also thanked Duncan for participating in an event that was short on prepared remarks and long on frank discussion, saying it reflects Duncan's emphasis on "trying to move beyond the camp mentality that has dominated public education discussions-and on that, we couldn't agree more."

Charter schools were much on the minds of members and easily provided the education secretary with his heaviest lift of the afternoon. A small grumble moved across the room when the topic was raised, and Duncan was asked by Sherry Pedone of Boston and Shawn McKay of Baltimore what the administration would do to ensure charter school growth would not siphon resources from traditional schools and would not deny educational opportunity to English language learners, special education students and other groups that are often underrepresented in charter schools.

"I'm not a fan of charters, I'm a fan of good charters," said Duncan. He laid out three conditions that need to be in place for a charter school to qualify as a good institution: They must have a strong, evidence-based action plan before they open; they must have real autonomy to innovate; and they must have clear accountability for the results they produce.

Watch highlights of Town Hall Q&A

He reminded the audience that, as head of Chicago Public Schools, he closed three charter schools for academic failure, and he promised, as education secretary, to closely monitor charter schools and hold them accountable for actions such as failing to serve English language learners or systematically counseling hard-to-educate students out of the building and back into traditional public schools. "I don't want charters to get a dime extra, and I don't want them to get a free pass," Duncan added. "These are public schools. These are our tax dollars. And these are our children."

The education secretary also was asked to detail his position on teacher evaluation and merit pay by Sue Kelley of Fairmont, W. Va. The faculty member at Fairmont State University recounted how her institution had implemented a merit pay plan without giving faculty a voice in the process-and now was struggling with a system that had become a byzantine, bureaucratic nightmare that is draining time and energy from the faculty.

It sounds like Fairmont's merit pay "system has a lot of work to do," Duncan responded. When it comes to incentive pay, "You cannot do this unilaterally; you have to bargain it through the union."

Morale and factors outside of student test scores also can't be overlooked when it comes to these new approaches, the education secretary stressed. "You can't pit professionals against each other," he explained, adding that strong approaches recognize the value of the entire school team, both inside the classroom and out. And when it comes to test scores and incentives, "you can't discount student achievement, but it can't be the only thing you look at."

The No Child Left Behind Act also came up when AFT member Cynthia Henning from St. Paul, Minn., (shown at left) asked the education secretary how the Obama administration plans to revise the keystone K-12 law. Duncan said he is currently touring the nation, soliciting views of teachers and other professionals about the strengths and failings of the current law.

It's clear, he said, that the current law is underfunded and is too "tight" and prescriptive when it comes to classroom practice. And because it rests on a hodgepodge of state standards that offer wildly different interpretations of student proficiency, the current law also is too "loose" on standards and the ultimate goals for student achievement. He also faulted the current law for "stigmatizing schools as failures" under the adequate yearly progress provision, which he called a "blunt instrument" that doesn't put the emphasis where it needs to be-on support and improvement for struggling schools.

After the session, Weingarten praised QuEST participants for driving a discussion that needs to be sustained if education is to genuinely improve. She said the session clearly illustrated that members "are willing to take a step out of their comfort zone and engage" policymakers on the key issues. At the same time, she added, there is no doubt that educators are determined to be "worked with, not worked over" when plans are developed and strategies are put in place.

QuEST Attendees Rally for Healthcare Reform

Watch highlights of Healthcare Rally

As the July 14 morning plenary session at QuEST ended, AFT president Randi Weingarten took the opportunity to rally with members who were heading out to spend the day on Capitol Hill lobbying for healthcare reform.

Healthcare and healthcare reform are a top priority for the Obama administration, Weingarten said. "Groups that battled healthcare reform in the past are seemingly working together to find a cure for our healthcare system. Hopefully, a breakthrough is possible." Weingarten introduced a video featuring healthcare and public employee members who detailed the devastation they see daily in the healthcare system and its effect on patients.

As the video ended, Weingarten invited the member lobbyists to come up on stage before they left for their scheduled visits to the Capitol. "Our members are our best, and sometimes, secret weapon," Weingarten told them. "You provide a voice for members and for those who can't speak for themselves."

AFT members on healthcare lobby day The audience sent their colleagues off to the Hill with the chant of "Healthcare now!" More than 120 members from across the country visited their U.S. senators and representatives to share their stories and make the case for reform.

"We need to get healthcare reform done now," said Jeff Carr of the Taos (N.M.) Federation of United School Employees. Carr believes that the window to achieve reform is narrow. That's the main reason he came to Washington to lobby. "If we don't get this done soon, it will be harder in the next session."

In tandem with the in-person lobbying, the AFT held a "virtual" lobby day. AFT activists nationwide called and wrote to their U.S. senators urging them to support comprehensive healthcare reform. The effort generated more than 400 phone calls and more than 1,200 e-mails. A similar healthcare virtual lobby day in June produced 1,400 calls and 3,300 e-mails.

Darling-Hammond: Teachers Must Rethink Schools

Noted education reformer Linda Darling-Hammond called on teachers to be part of a movement to transform schools into 21st-century learning environments that provide students with 21st-century skills.

Linda Darling-Hammond At a July 14 plenary session of the AFT QuEST conference in Washington, D.C., Darling-Hammond predicted that most of the jobs our students will take will be knowledge-work jobs. "These are jobs where they will design and manage their own work," she explained. We can't prepare them with "mediocre multiple-choice education. It's not a multiple-choice world."

Darling-Hammond cited some of the statistics showing that the United States has fallen behind other countries in education indicators. U.S. fourth-graders are 35th out of 40 in math performance and 31st of 40 in science. Our high school graduation rate is 70 percent. In Korea, by comparison, 95 percent of students graduate from high school, and 85 percent go on to college. In California, where Darling-Hammond is an education professor at Stanford University, just 28 percent of high school graduates go on to college.

On the other hand, she noted, "the United States is first in the world in one thing: the number of inmates." Five states spend greater amounts on incarcerating their residents than they do on higher education.

Turning this around is "a life-or-death battle," she said. "We have to make the case to politicians that every child's education matters."

The solution-both to the problem of educational failure and to achieving international competitiveness, said Darling-Hammond, is innovation that leads to systemic reform. "We're great at creating innovation. We're worse at building systems that turn the exception into the rule. We need to take those reforms to scale so they become the norm."

Watch Linda Darling-Hammond
address QuEST attendees.

We need to ensure that we train, recruit and retain highly qualified teachers, Darling-Hammond said; and while some people talk about pay for performance, "teachers need to insist on career development programs that will improve teaching and learning."

The countries that are our international competitors do several things differently from the United States. They provide a safety net for kids featuring adequate healthcare, universal preschool and housing. They fund education "centrally and equally," and add more funds to schools that have the greatest need. These countries have a well-organized and "lean" curriculum. They teach one-third as many concepts in math and science, and they teach them well. They have performance assessments that are meaningful and not standardized.

Finally, they support a strong teaching system, with adequate compensation, mentoring and working conditions that foster collaboration, adequate planning time and opportunities for active research.

To get the 21st-century schools we need, Darling-Hammond said, we need to emulate those models. She applauded the AFT Innovation Fund, which will provide opportunities to transform schools in a way that leads to systemic reform.

Weingarten Toasts Unionization of Charter Schools

It was the discovery of "some pretty odious things" in the contract Brian Harris' principal handed him-including the addition of a sixth class, translating into a 20 percent pay cut-that prompted the teacher to start thinking about a union.

What put him over the top was the choice his principal offered: Sign the contract or go work somewhere else. "I was pretty shocked," said Harris, on behalf of the AFT's three Civitas charter schools in Chicago. "But at the same time, I have to thank her for expressing so clearly what was going on."

It took 10 months, a disinformation campaign against the teachers and ultimately a resounding vote that brought them into the AFT, which now represents educators at 80 charter schools in 13 states.

Math teacher Lauren Inzelbuch of the Green Dot New York Charter School didn't have to endure the same struggle to join a union, but the former Wall Street accountant and chapter leader says her colleagues probably elected her because "they thought I would be outspoken."

Randi Weingarten and Green Dot founder Steve Barr, center,
with AFT members who work in charter schools.

At a July 13 QuEST reception for AFT members working in public charter schools, Green Dot founder Steve Barr praised teachers who work at Green Dot's first school located outside of California, calling them "the new face of unions. Teachers need protections for being outspoken," he said. "Rebels need protection."

AFT president Randi Weingarten toasted the charter school members, noting that "if you live in the charter movement, you feel really, really lonely." Choosing a union gives charter educators a larger community and a say in what works for children. "My bet is having a voice, and my bet is with a union," she told them. "I can't tell you just how proud I am."

Panel Discusses Promise, Pitfalls of Common Standards

The promise of a rich, logically sequenced path to knowledge, supported by a common core of ambitious standards, was the focus of a featured session on July 13 at QuEST-a meeting that also offered several important cautions on implementation of this goal.

From left, William H. Schmidt, Dane Linn and Antonia Cortese.

Dane Linn, executive director of the education division at the National Governors Association's Center for Best Practices, updated the audience on work to develop a common set of standards across the states in math and English language arts. The project was launched earlier this year by the center, in cooperation with the Council of Chief State School Officers and other groups. To date, governors and school officers in 46 states have joined the effort to develop a common core of K-12 standards in English language arts and math. The Obama administration also has thrown its support behind the project, dedicating federal stimulus dollars to developing assessments tied to new standards.

Draft standards for college-bound and career-ready high school seniors are expected later this month, followed by a validation review led by content-area specialists and incorporating feedback from classroom teachers, with final standards expected to be in place by January 2010. The project will then "back-map" these standards for the lower grades. The draft standards will be available online.

Linn told the audience the goal driving the effort is to ensure that every child is given the challenge of rigorous, evidence-based, internationally benchmarked standards. "More than anything else, it's about [ending] the inequality of opportunity that exists" in schools today.

William H. Schmidt, a researcher at Michigan State University, told QuEST participants that the work on common standards must support another key ingredient-a coherent curriculum, based on a sequence of topics that reflects the structure of the discipline. Schmidt, who has researched the subject extensively, said that type of coherence is missing today in U.S. education, and a big part of the problem is the fact that "we still have individual states trying to invent their way through the morass" of what students in each grade should know and be able to do.

Schmidt also stressed the equity issues underpinning his work. Poverty "is related to student learning-everywhere in the world we know that's true-but only in the United States is socioeconomic status related to [a gap in] standards and curriculum."

The work on standards must be done carefully, cautioned Lynne Munson, president and executive director of Common Core, a national group that advocates challenging, rigorous instruction in the full range of liberal arts and sciences. She cautioned that the common standards project, particularly its early emphasis on mathematics and English language arts, could exacerbate the problems that Common Core is fighting in schools today. Munson stressed that other nations scoring higher than the United States on international assessments offer wide, rich liberal arts instruction to students, and we should learn from their examples. "A willingness to provide students with a content-rich education may be their only commonality," Munson said of the top-performing nations studied by Common Core in its report, "Why We're Behind."

Our union has been a longtime advocate of rigorous, coherent standards, AFT secretary-treasurer Antonia Cortese told the group. Teachers also are among the staunchest defenders of well-designed curricula and assessments tied to strong standards, as well as students' right to a rich education in all disciplines, said Cortese, who also serves as co-director of the Common Core board of trustees. All of these components-standards, curriculum and a meaningful exposure to more than just math and language arts-are essential and should never be treated as mutually exclusive, she told the audience.

AFT Online coverage of the QuEST 2009 conference is prepared by the AFT communications department. Photographs are by Michael Campbell and Marvin Jones. Video by Matthew Jones and Brett Sherman.

American Federation of Teachers | 555 New Jersey Ave. N.W., Washington, DC 20001