From Harford Students Count on Us:
The Maryland State Senate will soon vote on the Protect Our Schools Act (HB978/SB871). Do you want your schools privatized? Do you want your school put in a state-run “recovery district”. Without passage of the Protect Our Schools Act, 80% of the formula evaluating school success will be based on standardized testing.
If we are going to successfully focus interventions for low-performing schools on research-based efforts that narrow opportunity gaps, rather than a privatization agenda, then we must pass this bill. If we are going to prevent for-profit charters from fleecing our already inadequate school funding, we must past this bill. If teachers and our community are going to have a voice in improving our schools, we must pass this bill.
Call you MD State Senator NOW!
1-888-520-6732
Tell them to support the Protect Our Schools Act(HB978/SB871).
Tell them to reject privatization through voucher schemes and charter schools.
Tell them you want our teachers and community to have a voice in improving our schools
Please also email your legislators.
Thank you for helping to protect our students and our public schools.
Teacher’s unions have done enough to hurt our schools. It’s time to let the citizens choose where to send our kids based on actual performance. Vouchers give the power back to the parents instead of the unions. Any teacher who is worried about keeping his/her job need only perform at a high level to retain employment.
So I guess you are the crusher of heads, holes and soles, huh.
Please illuminate me as to how teachers’ unions have “done enough to hurt our schools”. The last time I checked, we were some of the few actually fighting for better schools for all our kids.
Vouchers siphon public tax dollars away from public schools to fund private schools.
This legislation is not about protecting teachers’ jobs. This is about protecting the quality of education in Harford County and the state of Maryland. This is about not letting profiteers use our tax dollars to line their pockets while our public schools are under funded. This is about adopting research proven methods to close achievement gaps. This is about using measures other than flawed standardized tests like PAARC to measure our schools’ and students’ success.
The Protect Our Schools Act ensures that local boards of education, local school administration, teachers and community members decide how to improve their schools. It prevents corporate take-overs in the form of “recovery school districts”, voucher schemes and charter expansions. It helps ensure that public dollars go to public schools. Try reading it. It is a common sense solution which should receive bi-partisan support since inculcates local control for education.
Please call your state senator now, telling them to support this important legislation.
Cory Booker did great things with vouchers in Newark. Maybe HCPS don’t need this overhaul, but what about city schools with 30% graduation rates? THis once size fits all bill does not allow for the vast difference in education if you are poor and stuck in parts of the city versus being able to live where you want.
This bill actually allows for more local control and more individualization. It puts the key decision-making in the hands of community members and teachers. Why would we not want the folks closest to the classroom making key decisions? Do you believe the state should dictate how each of our local school systems operates?
Ryan,
I know of a certain former teacher who was hooked on prescription drugs to the point that the teacher was asking students if they had pills and falling asleep in class. This teacher was not fired, but instead got a disability retirement. Your Union is the reason that the teacher was able to make this happen, so instead of getting a drug addict off of the public payroll and getting a better teacher. We instead got to pay for the retirement of said teacher AND have to pay for a new teacher. Tenure is a joke. Until we can fire ineffective teachers and replace them the union doesn’t have a leg to stand on. We don’t want those closest to the classroom make the decisions because we cannot depend on teachers to self police themselves.
I cannot comment on any specific situation and am completely unaware of a situation which you describe occurring. Frankly, it sounds more like a rumor that reality.
However, there are very specific rules which apply to disability retirement. It is determined by a state review board. It requires substantial medical documentation. If the MD State Retirement Board decides that any individual qualifies for disability retirement under the rules, they should receive disability retirement. Likewise, all teachers pay 7% of their salary towards the pension fund. It is not easy to get disability retirement nor should it be easy to get disability retirement.
Truly ineffective teachers can and should be fired. However, the school system has a responsibility to make interventions, provide support, provide professional development and try to remediate the issues which they identify. Teachers are not guaranteed jobs by way of tenure. Neither HCEA nor any other union is in the business of defending “bad” or ineffective teachers. There is a disciplinary system in place for negligence. All teachers are entitled to due process. That is all.
HCEA ensures that our contract and the law are followed. Neither our contract nor the law prevent dismissal of negligent or ineffective teachers.
You did specifically when you promoted “work to rule.”
Yeah! So just think…the way it works in other states is that the family has to fall below a certain income level to get voucher, which is usually worth a couple grand (like in Indiana, where the lower income folks can get a $4800 voucher). So if parents with two kids eho make below 50-60k a year want to send their kids to Harford Day, they’d only have to come up with about 12k for each kid! Assuming of course, that they get accepted into the school, of course.
So yeah! Awesome to get the control back into the parents hands!
Is this what we want for our children?
“Researchers examined an Indiana voucher program that had quickly grown to serve tens of thousands of students under Mike Pence, then the state’s governor. “In mathematics,” they found, “voucher students who transfer to private schools experienced significant losses in achievement.” They also saw no improvement in reading.””
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/23/upshot/dismal-results-from-vouchers-surprise-researchers-as-devos-era-begins.html?_r=0
Vouchers also cost the public more money with no garuntee of results!
So, what if a teacher has a principal who wants to get rid of the teacher for no good reason? Without a union, this would be commonplace. I’m a teacher. This seriously happens more than you think.
LOL. Seriously? That is your argument? How is this different than any other employee out in the real world?
Every employee should have a union.
“It happens”
You better think long and hard about your reply.
I’m not sure what your shtick is, but a subterfuge attempt at reasoning a “boss” wanting to get rid of an employee for “no good reason” leaves me to believe there is ulterior motives.
Please, if you know examples of teachers getting rid of “for no good reason.” Share their name, their principals name, the date and school.
I’ll be waiting but something tells me I shouldn’t hold my breathe.
Before teachers had unions, they could be dismissed and were dismissed for any or no reason. All employees should be protected by a system of due process. Just look up some of the Supreme Court cases like Pickering v. Board of Education. Teaching is a very subjective profession. Unfortunately, not everyone who evaluates teachers does so in a fair and reasonable manner. People sometimes have ulterior motives.
Besides issues of dismissal, without teachers’ unions, teachers would have no planning time or other benefits which have been hard fought over time. Teaching was once viewed as a part-time pseudo profession. Teachers’ unions have fought long and hard to get living wages and respect for education professionals.
Well I guess they go the living wage. The respect has yet to arrive thanks in part to their union protecting the poor performers. And the poor and disadvantaged student continues to suffer because of it.
Well, looks like Harford Students Count on Us wants us to vote for same old, same old.
I DO want underperforming schools privatized. I DO want individual teacher performance to be regularly evaluated. I DO want underperforming teachers let go. I DO want high performing teachers to be rewarded accordingly. I DO want less administration personnel and more front line in the class room education. I DO want education money to be spent on in classroom education of core subjects.
Harford Students, you CAN count on me for that.
Do you want this? https://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/29/us/for-detroits-children-more-school-choice-but-not-better-schools.html?_r=0
Or how about this?http://www.newsweek.com/cyber-charter-schools-fail-education-527311
Does anyone really care what you want? Answer: no – anybody who tells you yes is lying just to shut you up.
Judy,
I see that you are still practicing your “I DO’s” for that day that will never come. Your hope chest must be getting pretty stuffed by now.
Beast,
And that has what to DO with the bloated and ineffective education establishment delivering a crappy education to our students? Try to keep your focus on the subject.
I thought that was pretty creative. LOL
But then you have pretty low standards. Because you and Beast Slayer were educated in Harford County Public Schools. You probably have your GED framed and hanging on your wall. You could borrow one of my 2 Master’s degree diplomas if you want, just for when you mom comes to visit.
Judy –
A lot has changed since you went to the one room school house and wrote with a quill. Maybe you should get off the propaganda sites for a least a few hours a day and request to volunteer a few days a week in a public school. Before you pop off your post, I went to both public and private school. My best teacher that I ever had was in public school and my worst was in private school. I have multiple degrees and a good career. I thank my parents and my teachers everyday for the life I have. In my opinion, the difference between people like you and people like me – I don’t have to shove my politics down the throat of others to justify my sense of worth. I strive to build consensus and design sustainable solutions to problems not sow the seeds of division. I had to make an exception to reply to you. By placing the focus on division, partisan ideology and winning at all cost, our country and its people are losing.
Privatization actually leads to more bureaucracy, less classroom teachers, less high performing teachers and more waste.
Protect Our Schools Act? Protect them from what? Change for the better.
I guess protect the current bloated organization that consistently delivers poor to average outcomes while whining for more and more money. For years we have been told that more money is the answer to all of the problems. Sorry, that doesn’t fly any more. An organization run by scoundrels for the benefit of scoundrels while turning out poor quality. It has to go.
Delivers poor outcomes… You explain to me how a school system that educates EVERYONE can be successful? In any given class you have kids with disabilities like autism mixed in with truly gifted kids. How can ONE teacher achieve success in that environment? How can they maximize any one student’s ability in that situation? We also educate the bratty, spoiled, entitled and disrespectful kids who mommy and daddy refuse to discipline because they want to be a friend and not a parent. What do you think happens to kids like that in all of these other countries that are “surpassing” America? You think little Johnny that throws things, calls out, bullies peers, and disrupts everyone’s learning environment gets a second or third chance in those places? What you people want is simply not possible until society changes. Teachers for the most part are highly skilled at educating those who can and want to be educated. They are not babysitters equipped with tools to fix misbehaving spoiled kids. This poor quality you speak of lies at the feet of those who say you can’t suspend kids, you can’t discipline kids, you must continue to give them chance after chance. At some point the accountability falls on the legislators and the parents. Teachers and schools can only do so much when everyone around them pisses and moans until they get their way. Spend one week in any classroom and see what is truly holding education back… You’ll see class sizes approaching 40, disrespectful kids with iphones, and a culture that shies away from discipline. Good grief.
First off GFY for the play on my moniker. Second, you are absolutely right about the disrespectfulness on kids nowadays. However, you talk of disciplining children at school when the right to discipline children in the home has been replaced by jail time for the discipliners. Teachers urge their students to report on their parents like they are in charge of the Hitler Youth or something. Teachers tell their students your mommy and daddy can’t spank you or smack you when you’re bad. Get real. If a parent can not discipline their children in the home, Why the hell do you think you can do it in schools? Everything I elude to is an over reach into our homes that the government has perpetrated to undermine the whole idea of what authority is regarding parents and their children. I’m not talking about abuse, I’m talking about physical punishments that anyone over the age of 35 remembers when they were young. Now, if you’re a teacher, shut your mouth and know your role, because it seems to me you want to beat on some little kids because you can’t handle the products of your own construction……
I agreed with almost everything you said except teachers telling kids to report their mommies and daddies. That is absolutely false.
As far as the government in our homes I couldn’t agree more. The problem with education is very similar to our homes too much government not enough freedom. Government needs to piss off with education, healthcare, and the “war” on drugs. All are means to control the populace not help anyone. Anyone who can’t see this is a sheep.
Bah Bah Bah Bah Most be a lot of sheep
Now we are talking the SAME language! Agreed, 100%.
Honestly, I do not know enough about this issue to make a judgement call. I will say that the desperation and fear mongering tone of this article hurts their case, in my opinion.
“The bill would set limits for the state school board as it writes a plan due in September to comply with the federal Every Student Succeeds Act, which governs school improvement. The legislation defines how the state would identify the lowest-performing schools in need of improvement, as well as which tools the state can use to help those schools.”
Under the federal education law, the state must identify the schools that struggle most, including the bottom 5 percent of schools with high poverty rates known as Title I schools and high schools that don’t graduate at least two-thirds of their students.
The federal law says those schools should be identified using a formula that weighs test scores as at least half of the measurement. The state school board has proposed weighing testing at 70 or 80 percent of the formula, while the bill being considered by lawmakers puts testing at 55 percent.
The other factors can include measurements such as absenteeism, class sizes and access to classes that prepare students for college or careers.
“We’ve lived in a test-and-punish culture and it hasn’t closed the gaps” in achievement, said Betty Weller, president of the Maryland State Education Association, which represents the state’s public school teachers. “We know kids are not going to test their way out of poverty.”
The bill also would prohibit the state from putting the low-performing schools into a new, statewide “recovery” school district. Proponents of the idea point to such a district in Louisiana as an example to follow, while critics say that district has not worked. The Louisiana Recovery School District oversees 59 charter schools, primarily in New Orleans.”
http://www.carrollcountytimes.com/bs-md-struggling-schools-20170322-story.html
Burbey,
Teachers’ Unions DO NOT operate with the best interest of student’s at heart. They are there to protect the teachers. Teachers’ Unions are there to protect their members (i.e., teachers). The interest of teachers and the best interests of students are not necessarily the same thing. To argue otherwise is disingenuous at best.
Please enlighten us to your reason why school choice is bad? It is going to “take money away” from the public schools? Are you going to argue we need to spend more money on schools? Is that the issue? Not enough funding? Only a moron will still argue with a straight face that throwing money at the schools fixes anything.
You are a creature of the lowest form, sir. You and those of your ilk that seek to protect poor-performing teachers and under performing schools are responsible for damning areas to generations of poor education. Subsequently, this leads to poor economic mobility opportunities because you could care less about churning out a poorly educated work force. Then you have the audacity to come and argue that you are looking out for the children, when, in reality, you are simply using them to further your agenda and provide cover.
Teachers unions actually were founded to protect children and have been committed to improving education for all children. http://www.nea.org/home/11608.htm
Yes, we seek to improve working conditions for teachers but teachers’ unions have be fighting for students’ rights and to improve public education for over 100 years. Long before we had collective bargaining, we fought for educational equity for our country’s children. Yes, we are there to protect our members’ rights under the contract and under the law. However, we are also here to protect students’ rights and the quality of public education.
As president of HCEA, I am charged with supporting our mission.
Harford County Education Association commits itself to advocate for educational professionals and to promote a high quality public education that prepares students to succeed in a diverse and global society.
Our mission:
To work for the welfare of school children, the advancement of education, and the improvement of instructional opportunities for all;
To develop and promote the adoption of such ethical practices, personnel policies, and standards of preparation and participation as mark a profession;
To unify and strengthen the teaching profession and to secure and maintain the salaries, retirement, tenure, professional and sick leave, and other working conditions necessary to support teaching as a profession;
To enable members to speak with a common voice on matters pertaining to the teaching profession and to present their individual and common interests before the Board of Education and other legal authorities
http://harfordcea.org/who-we-are/
For my entire term as HCEA President, I have advocated for both students and teachers.
School choice is not bad. Every parent has the right to choose to send their child to public school or private school. If they choose private school, they should choose to pay for it, not try to filch money from our public schools to fund their personal choice.
Your personal assaults are in the plainest terms ignorant. Neither I nor HCEA nor any other teachers’ union seeks to protect poor performing teachers or under-performing schools. We seek to preserve due process for all educators and to improve our schools by empowering the teachers to play a role in decision-making and advocacy.
You should remember that every teachers’ union member and every teachers’ union leader is first and foremost a teacher. Before I was ever a union leader, I was an advocate for my students. In fact, I have spent my entire career teaching in at-risk schools, seeking to improve public education within my school and classroom. I live in the neighborhood where I teach. I am committed to improving our schools for both teachers and students. I believe that all students deserve equal access to a quality public education.
I noticed they still got a vacancy open for cyber security teacher at Harford Tech.
They may as well scrap that program. Really shitting on the students.
Here is my concern:
“80% of the formula evaluating school success will be based on standardized testing. ”
Standardized testing, i.e. PARCC.
How many tests? Which ones? English and math only? What happens if a bunch of students decide that they wish to ‘opt out’ or deliberately fail, then what? That school potentially could be labeled as ‘failing,’ and everyone employed at that school, from teachers, to secretaries, to aides, to janitors potentially lose their jobs.
‘School choice’ is a fallacy. Just because you take a child from a ‘failing school’ and suddenly put them into a ‘better’ school does not automatically mean that they will become a ‘better’ student, which is what it seems people want to believe.
Yes, but putting them in a better school certainly improves their chances, no? The students that want to suceed will be the ones leaving for better schools. Students who don’t care–and have parents that don’t care–will be content to stay put. Our system is broke. It does not work. Why not try a fresh idea.
What happens when say all of Edgewood wants to go to bel air or fallston? How do we make that work? Or do you envision an equal number wanting to go to Aberdeen and Edgewood to off set it?
Our system is not broken. It is a false narrative, driven by those who would like to profit off our children’s education. Vouchers have been riven to limit opportunity and hinder progress. https://www.brookings.edu/research/on-negative-effects-of-vouchers/
Now, Ryan, please get your head out. The people who want charter schools are just plain tired of having their kids spend their first semester in college taking remedial classes because the school system, including your union members, provided them with a crappy education in a lousy environment. It’s on you and your members and the rest of the school system. The sad thing is that the financially challenged can’t afford to pay for the crumby public schools plus send their kids to a good non-public school.
That’s the worst form of discrimination. And all of you are guilty of it.
One thing I don’t see addressed with parental choice through vouchers…how is the student going to get there? HCPS has been moving towards depot stops for all it’s schools in order to trim transportation costs. Are we now expected to believe they’re going to take on the cost of transporting Johnny from Edgewood to North Harford? Probably not. And how many working parents can afford or manage transportation out of their district? So the wealthy who can afford it will insure their kids are at the school of their choice while Johnny continues to attend his local (and probably now underfunded) public school.
Parents have to provide transportation if they choose to send their kids to a school other than what would be their home school. There is no legal mandate that the district provide or pay for transportation.
Whatever you do, don’t use Louisiana as a model.
Anyway, if you’re not happy with your schools, take tax money and give it to a private entity, such as a charter school. Then if you’re not happy with your police dept., have someone start a new one the same way. Maybe if you’re not happy with your fire dept., start another!!
LOL….keep blaming teachers and their unions for all of society’s ills. While you’re at it, see what it’s like earning teaching certification, and let us know how that was.