You probably won't read it, because let's face it, not all that many people read
Time magazine anymore—and especially not when it paywalls its cover stories—but you might see
Time's teacher-bashing cover on newstands. It shows a gavel about to smash an apple, with the headline "Rotten Apples: It Is Nearly Impossible to Fire a Bad Teacher." That cover does all the work the corporate education policy needs done, implanting false information in people's minds.
The article itself is slightly more nuanced, demonstrating that millionaires and billionaires without education experience are behind many attacks on teachers and eventually—in the second-to-last paragraph, as FAIR points out—getting around to acknowledging that a lot of research shows that test scores aren't a good measure of teacher quality. Labeling Time "an embarrassing internet troll," Jeff Bryant reviews some of that research:
Education technology whiz Scott McLeod corralled the pertinent research regarding this topic on his blog some time ago. He concluded, "While it seems to make intuitive sense to evaluate teachers based on students’ standardized test scores (aka using ‘value-added measures,’ or VAM), in practice it doesn’t seem to work very well. At this time, researchers do not support the incorporation of student test scores into teacher evaluations except in carefully-designed, low-stakes pilot experiments." [...]
As a recent commentary by law school professor Erwin Chemerinsky in the New York Daily News explained, "A study published in the Harvard Educational Review found a significant positive relationship between rates of unionization (and accompanying job security) and student scores on the SAT and ACT. Every year, the states with the highest student performance are those with robust protections for teachers – places like Maryland and Massachusetts."
In response to the article, a petition started by the American Federation of Teachers gathered
more than 100,000 signatures. The petition notes the disjuncture between
Time's cover and the reporting in the article and calls on the magazine to apologize.
As a reminder, without due process protections, teachers are vulnerable to being fired if they speak out against policies that harm their students.
Continue reading below the fold for more of the week's education and labor news.
A fair day's wage
- A fascinating moderately long read on where some top organizers think labor is headed.
- Dry cleaning—who knew? Note that Rent the Runway is investing in training the skilled workforce it needs, something too few companies are willing to do these days.
- From the Steelworkers, on Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder:
- The fight is on for stable hours:
The proposed Retail Workers Bill of Rights would relieve the main hardships of computer scheduling. Before hiring more people, chain retailers, restaurants, hotels, cell phone stores, and banks would be required to offer full-time jobs to their existing part-time workers.
These businesses wouldn’t be allowed to pay part-timers less for the same work. When companies changed hands, workers would be retained for 90 days.
But the most impact would come from this provision: Workers who weren’t told their schedules with proper notice would get premium pay. For example, said Mar, “If there’s less than 24 hours’ notice, which actually happens a lot, they’d have to pay for four hours if the shift is cancelled.” Suddenly-added shifts would carry a premium, like overtime pay.
- From the AFT, on Scott Brown:
- From the Steelworkers, on Mike Michaud:
- Here's just one of the reasons to be wary of the tech industry's call for more H-1B visas:
Through thousands of documents filed with government agencies and in courts across the US and interviews with dozens of workers, CIR found the tools of intimidation included restrictive employment contracts – signed by workers unaware of their rights – as well as legal loopholes.
Even immigration experts have trouble sorting out how the brokers manage to game the system.
From 2000 through 2013, at least $29.7m was illegally withheld from about 4,400 tech workers here on H-1B visas, US Department of Labor documents show. And this barely hints at the problem because, in the hidden world of body shops, bad actors rarely are caught.
- How my employer put the "FML" in FMLA:
Yes, my fine employer had put a draft form up on their HR website. They had never updated it to include a working link to the evasive and disingenuous FMLA leave policy. This lack of attention to something so basic accurately summarizes the level of care and interest [redacted]’s HR department demonstrates towards employees who are severely ill or going through extremely stressful life events. I considered quitting on the spot.
- United Steelworkers president Leo Gerard focuses on voting rights in his weekly post.
- Non-union apprenticeship program in Washington state shut down for gender discrimination.
Education