Still disrespectful of our contract and our union.

I’ve been a part of the team at Stand looking at this issue since February (as a citizen and Stand member, not staff) – so I wanted to clear up a couple of misconceptions.

- PPS has not given any money to Stand for this project. PPS paid The New Teacher Project $20,000 to do the data analysis – Stand came into the picture after this analysis was already complete

- I think it’s worth noting that the data that TNTP came up with almost exactly mirrored what was reported on originally in 2003 by a community group led by then Mayor Katz; then was confirmed again in 2005 by the PPS Independent Auditor. As you all know, this is not new information.

- All of the conversations with teachers are completely in the open and none occur during school time or during staff meetings.

I would urge you all to read more about the issues and keep having these conversations. To me, as a parent, the data clearly shows that our current system is not good for our teachers or our kids. I don’t think many would argue that this system is broken and needs to be fixed. What is heartening to me are the many, many conversations that are taking place about this – with teachers, parents, principals, and community members. What is important is that we keep talking – this is an issue that affects all of us. The decisions will be made by PPS and PAT at the bargaining table, and not unlike advocating for issues that the School Board decides, we all should educate ourselves on the facts and advocate for what we think is best for our schools and kids.

Stand has information on their website at: http://www.stand.org/NETCOMMUN.....amp;chid=5 I would encourage you to start there for information. As someone who has talked with many, many teachers and parents about this subject, I will tell you that these changes are supported by teachers once they understand how the current policies and procedures are bad for them and bad for our kids. They, as am I, are especially excited at the recommendation that we formalize school-based hiring teams that are majority teachers. Another point for me personally is that the current practices are especially harmful to kids in schools that have a lower socioeconomic population, and kids of color. These changes would truly help ALL of our kids.

Thanks for keeping the conversation going.

more complicated. One kid or parent or staff member thinks a teacher is great, another kid or parent or staff member thinks the same teacher is horrible. I estimate about 1% or 2% of teachers transcend this — most everybody thinks they are great or horrible (I make this estimate with 40+ years of teaching experience). Portland has a teacher transfer policy which encourages the movement of “sought after” teachers from their lower economic schools to their upper economic schools. Incidentally, Stand for Children is busy developing a policy which makes this worse yet.
I have long advocated a plan which negates this teacher transfer shift somewhat by hiring differently. But no one seems interested.

There are many things we need to do to address the inspiration issue: racheting back testing, classroom disruptions and school discipline which go meaningfully unaddressed, restrictions on teachers, failure to address the real educational problems, administrators who are worried more about test scores and themselves than kids and what goes on in the classroom (PPS rewards these attitudes, instead of discouraging them by the way), not having a meaningful way in many schools for teachers to be a part of decision making which is based around kids not what is good for the teacher only, a huge increase in showing genuine respect for a teacher’s knowledge and skills, and clearing up administrators to support the teacher and his or her classroom.

It is not so easy. All we can do is really work toward these things. Now, we aren’t working toward any of them as a district. It is no wonder then many teachers neither feel inspired nor inspire.

Step one is to get a definition of education. Without it, as we are presently in PPS, we have no idea of what equity means, let alone are able to analyze how we are doing.

Step two is to make the curriculum offerings and the activities which engage kids in school much more equitable according to the definition. The reason this is important, Inside the Game, is because education is about opportunity. And my kid should have the same opportunities as your kid.
We can measure this and fairly easily address it.

Step three is to begin to refine these opportunites so they are directed at individual kids’ needs as best we can. A kid who can barely read in the 7th grade doesn’t need the same historical enrichment as a kid who is reading at high school or college level.

Getting more inspired and inspiring teaching is much