Virginia Doublespeak: New Legislation for Public Schools

The day job has made it too hard to get to the keyboard lately, but I have been thinking about our Virginia Governor's new education initiatives and George Orwell's 1984.

Here is legislation signed into law recently in the Commonwealth:  (Bold face type is the Governor's language.  All else is mine.)

HB2098 (Tata) / SB1189 (Martin): Red Tape Reduction Act. This legislation strengthens the ability of school divisions to request waivers from the State Board of Education from certain state requirements. Local school divisions may be released from Board of Education-approved regulations and standards of quality requirements.

"Red Tape Reduction Act" is Orwellian in the extreme.  This is a run-around the Standards Of Quality (SOQs), an agreement that the state will maintain certain levels of quality -- like class size and functioning school buildings -- so that teachers can do their work.  It was a quid pro quo for the Standards of Learning (SOLs). Teachers and other professionals are held to the SOLs while the state agrees to hold to the SOQ's.  We have not seen any slackening of SOL standards -- in fact the bar has been raised -- since 1995.

HB2076 (Stolle) / SB1131 (McWaters): Local Approval of Public Charter Schools. 
This [is] legislation to eliminate the requirement that local school boards who originate a charter school application must apply for authorization from the state Board of Education. Currently, school boards who wish to start a public charter school in the Commonwealth must first submit their application to the state Board of Education. This legislation will eliminate the process of receiving state Board of Education approval in addition to the consent of the local school board. Several Virginia localities are interested in establishing public charter schools, however, the best providers in the country have policies that conflict with multiple approval requirements for expansion.

"This legislation will eliminate the process of receiving state Board of Education approval in addition to the consent of the local school board."  According to McDonnell the "best providers in the country" have policies that conflict with our state requirements.  Really?  So we have state requirements for certain levels of education that are in conflict with the "best providers in the country?"  Who, exactly, are these best providers and why do they get a pass on our standards?  Maybe Virginia can look forward to cushy charter deals like the ones forged in New Jersey with non-educators.

HB2084 (K. Cox) / SB1175 (Ruff): Teach for America Act. A significant achievement gap still exists between our students. While the task will not be easy, TFA has been successful in working with schools to close the achievement gap. Teach for America recruits and trains the best and brightest recent college graduates from across the country to accept full-time teaching assignments in hard-to-staff schools. This legislation will allow for TFA to operate in Virginia and begin placing teachers in hard-to-staff schools starting in the 2013-2014 academic year.

Oh boy.  Virginia now can enjoy these highly (un)qualified teachers working with the students who are hardest to teach.  If you've followed this blog, you are aware of the dangers of that.  We can also look forward to high teacher turnover in the most unstable teaching environments as well as the further de-professionalizing of our teaching force.

HB1999 (Greason) / SB1207 (Stanley): A-F School Report Cards. Creates a pathway for the DOE to report individual school performance using a grading system in addition to the standards of accreditation. Simplifies the current school accountability system to an easy to understand A-F grading system. This school grading system will help parents to fully understand the performance of their child's school. The A-F report cards will make school performance clear and easily communicated to the public. The new A-F grading system will update the current system that is often too convoluted to understand. The new report cards will recognize schools for challenging all students to reach high levels of achievement. They will also give schools a tool to encourage more parental and community involvement. When parents and community members have a clear understanding of school performance, all students benefit.

This program is endorsed by Jeb Bush and his Foundation for Excellence in Education which has recently been revealed to have ties to Corporate backers who stand to profit from the legislation written by the foundation.  Virginians can look forward to transferring more state tax dollars to the profit makers.  

Last year we had legislation that mandated at least one on-line course as a requirement for graduation.  We already know who's pockets that money will go into.

Look forward to Reform and Innovation, Virginia-style.  

Governor Robert McDonnell's (aka Governor Ultrasound) term ends this fall in compliance with Virginia's one-term limit. Let's hope the mood on education reform undergoes a major shift by then.

The soft bigotry....

The state of Virginia has received a waiver on the No Child Left Behind act.

There were concessions.

The state had to agree to implement a Teacher Evaluation process that relies heavily on student growth measures.  40% of teacher evaluations must be based on this measure.  Multiple measures, to be sure.  For now we are permitted to establish our own group of students, identify the goal, collect data, and prove that the teacher realized growth.

OK, I think I can live with that since I hope I have been trying to move students along a continuum ever since I started teaching.  The challenge, frankly, will be in working this collection and study into an already full workload.  But it is doable.  Wish it came with some time....

Apparently, another concession was to move from AYP (Annual Yearly Progress) to AMO's (Annual Measurable Objectives--semantics?).

OK.  So what does that mean?  According to the State Department of Education it means these are goals for reducing proficiency gaps between low-performing and high-performing schools.

The AMOs represent the percentage of students within each subgroup that must pass Standards of Learning (SOL) tests in reading and mathematics in order to make acceptable progress over six years.  While the AMOs represent yearly goals for low performing schools, all schools must meet these objectives.  (My emphasis, not theirs.)

They used the actual pass rates of student subgroups in low-performing schools to set the percentage of students who must pass in order for accreditation (I assume?).  They will determine the subgroup pass rates on Reading after the new SOL test, which is predicted to depress scores, is administered this year.  So here they are in Mathematics.

For 2012-2013, pass rates in Mathematics:

All students:                             61%
Proficiency Gap group 1:         47%
 (students with disabilities, limited-English proficient students and economically disadvantaged students  
  regardless of race and ethnicity)
Proficiency Gap group 2:         45%
  (African-American students, not of Hispanic origin, including those counted above)
Proficiency Gap Group 3:        52%
  (Hispanic Students)
Students with disabilities:         33%
LEP Students:                          39%
Economically Disadvantaged   47%
White students:                         68%
Asian Students:                         82%

Here is the Virginia Department's argument that this is not discriminatory or expecting less of our students.  Guess we're only going to leave some kids behind.  In the case of those who are African American, only 55% of kids in the next six years.

Is this not the same thing Florida is up in arms about?

Anybody want to agree that we should be done messing with numbers and figure out how to get all kids off to a good start so that learning for every group is possible?

Here is what we ALREADY KNOW works.  Read Nick Kristoff's recent editorial that discovers (huzzah!) that quality preschool instruction and nurturing of kids can overcome all the above "sub-groups."

But we wouldn't want to spend money there....