Ridder on professional development: Let's ask the teachers what they need

The formula to create an excellent school system, contrary to the jargon-filled insomnia cures that some of former Joplin R-8 Superintendent C. J. Huff's remaining administrative team inflict upon the Board of Education, is a simple one.

Hire good teachers, give them the tools to succeed, then get out of their way.

That approach does not guarantee increased test scores every year, but it certainly would never allow the kind of multi-year decline the school district has seen during Huff's tenure.

The Huff leftovers provided some evidence Tuesday night of why district scores were low again this year. Executive Director of Secondary Education Jason Cravens talked about the lack of experienced teachers, an ironic comment since the Huff Administration demoralized and decimated the system to such a point that the faculty has had a more than 50 percent turnover in the past four years, leaving a faculty top heavy with teachers with less than five years of experience.

Executive Director of Elementary Education Jennifer Doshier, who needed a high-powered microscope to see some of the scores in the grades she is responsible for once again floundered through a presentation filled with educational buzzwords that at one time may have impressed the Board of Education, but not this Board of Education.

Both she and Cravens spoke of "learning intentions," "stakeholders," and the educational bureaucrats' sentimental favorite "rigor."

By the time Doshier was finished, the rigor seemed more like rigor mortis.

You couldn't have blamed any Joplin teachers who watched the board meeting if they thought that C. J. Huff may be gone, but his vengeful spirit lives on.

Then Doshier was asked about what professional development was being done. She stammered, she sputtered, then she started to male an excuse about the district changing course when the board booted the high-priced Core Collaborative consulting firm, saving more than $100,000.

Doshier indicated they had to change course, but they would come up with something.

Interim Superintendent Norm Ridder cut her off and then said the words R-8 teachers have been waiting to hear for the past seven years. "We need to talk to the teachers and see what they need."

It is that simple.

In the best school districts, the professional development is teacher-driven. Under C. J. Huff and his long-time assistant superintendent Angie Besendorfer and their administrative team, the professional development has never been about the teachers, but about the administrators. It has always been a new initiative, meetings that spend more time on meaningless data and the accompanying paperwork, and of course, infuriating team-building exercises in which teachers are treated like children instead of adults.

Adding to the resentment was the perception that many of those who were putting the teachers through the paces were people who had little success when they were in the classrooms or as principals.

Hopefully, this is a sign that a much needed change is here.
***
A couple of weeks ago, I corresponded with someone in the education field about professional development and what form it should take. The discussion was based on an article in the Denver Post that said most professional development for teachers was meaningless.

This is what I wrote to that person:



I have noticed quite a few articles on this topic lately and I am almost completely in agreement with the critics of the types of workshops and training that teachers receive. After No Child Left Behind was passed during the Bush Administration, hundreds of fly-by-night operators realized there was a killing to be made from this type of professional training. You have people like Bloomberg at Core Collaborative who take others' ideas, repackage them, and then present them as some sort of cure all for everything that ails education. For the most part, the ideas were not that good in the first place.

You also have the indoctrination meetings and that there are specifically to collect and work with data. There is nothing wrong with using data to improve education, but much of the data that is being reviewed at these meetings is meaningless.

As an example, I recall a few years ago that the teachers at North Middle School, threw themselves completely into the Acuity tests, to the point of designing all of their teaching around these tests. All remediation was based on Acuity. When the Acuity tests were given that year, North had the highest scores. That did not turn out to be an indicator of potential success on MAP. North was at the bottom that year. Meaningful data in this instance would have been the poverty levels in North. Poverty levels have always been more indicative of how students will fare on standardized tests.

Instead of spending hundreds of thousands on professional development that appears to be designed to make all teachers the same no matter what their strengths and weaknesses are, workshops and seminars should be devoted to things that would make it easier for teachers to succeed in the classrooms.

Rather than spending countless hours going over data, why not have workshops that help younger teachers deal with discipline in the classroom. Cutting down on the time spent trying to corral unruly students would do more to increase the level of learning at classrooms than any pre-packaged system.

Instead of talking about the need for classes to be relevant, why don't we have workshops designed to help teachers with ideas of bringing current issues into the classroom?

Why not have workshops to help teachers on methods to connect with parents.We spend so much of our professional development time working on pie-in-the-sky programs that we neglect areas that could do much more to improve students' learning and make classroom teachers more effective.

Why is it necessary to spend so much money on outsourced professional development. Even with the number of experienced teachers who have left the district over the past few years, there are still many veteran teachers in our district who could provide meaningful professional development without having to send people all over the United States and spend hundreds of thousands of dollars.Why not offer stipends to these veteran teachers and see how much more relevant the professional development time would be for the teachers.

Why not work out exchanges with area school districts where we save money by having their experienced educators who have knowledge in some specific area come to Joplin, while we send ours to talk to them? This type of exchange would benefit Joplin and area schools since it would provide the required professional development at a savings. Or how about the possibility of using today's technology to hold professional development via Skype. A few years ago, someone in the district had the bright idea of having the middle school teachers in each area have the 7:15 meetings together at one school. While it did offer the opportunity for the teachers to get together, it created havoc for those who had to get back to their schools by the time classes started. I suggested Skype at that time, but it was never seriously considered and we had problems with those meetings all year.

Another thing that localizing the professional development and making it more relevant to the teachers would do would be to increase teacher buy-in.

Useless professional development and requirements to supply more and more data of the useless variety are among the reasons that excellent teachers have been checking out of Joplin and checking into other school districts.

***

Copies of my book, Let Teachers Teach, will be available Saturday, 1 p.m. to 3 p.m. when I have a signing at Always Buying Books. Silver Lining in a Funnel Cloud and my other books will also be available. The book is also available in e-book and paperback formats from Amazon.com.

Some ideas on professional development for teachers

Nine days from now, the Joplin R-8 Board of Education will decide whether to spend $69,000 (plus $76,800 for substitute teachers), on the latest initiative that upper administrators claim teachers are begging for- Cognitive Coaching.

I have been critical of this initiative, as I was of its predecessor, Core Collaborative, because the best professional development, as Interim Superintendent Norm Ridder has said (even while pushing Cognitive Coaching) comes from the teachers.

That does not mean that outside consultants cannot be used occasionally, but in Joplin, as in many other area school districts, we have become used to administrators who hop on board for every educational fad that comes along.

And let's face it- it is much easier to pay $100,000 to a Core Collaborative or $69,000 to the L. B. Williams company for Cognitive Coaching, than it is to put in the time and create professional development that will truly benefit teachers and students.

Educational consulting firms have always been around, but the number exploded after the passage of No Child Left Behind and the requirements of Race to the Top that professional development be included in order for states and school districts to get federal dollars.

Those who created consulting firms came to a realization early in the game. With so many consulting firms competing with each other for a finite number of schools, the only way to consistently make money is to land long-term contracts.

In order to do that, they created programs that lasted multiple years. Instead of administrators and/or teachers attending a seminar and learning from the firms, they attended the seminars, had to bring the firms back to their school districts, and then signed up for frequent visits and training updates that would keep the cash flow going.

The training had to be different than what has gone before, so these companies latched on to  the latest fad or strung together ideas that had been used successfully in classrooms for decades, put a shiny new coat on them, came up with a catchy name and headed to the bank.

Sometimes, it goes as far as materials being copyrighted that cannot be used if the district decides to drop a consulting company. It is much easier to keep writing the checks than to change your professional development, which in most cases would be finding another consulting firm.

When I wrote about Cognitive Coaching earlier this week, a reader was critical to the point of being hateful:

Every school district, Joplin included, is given DESIGNATED federal dollars that can ONLY be used for professional development. If you don't spend it, you have to give it back. Not one penny comes out of general revenues or takes away from other programs, salaries, etc. this is motivated 100% by agenda, not at ALL about money. It's unbelievably stupid, as this is an INCREDIBLE TRAINING OPPORTUNITY for our teachers and staff to improve relationships and communications - the two issues that our researchers identified as the biggest problems impeding education in Joplin. So sit back and throw your ignorant stones, but it's truly ridiculous!

Contrary to what this reader believes, I have no problem with spending money on professional development. I have no problem with spending every penny that we receive for professional development, but once again, we are looking for simple solutions to a problem that is not so simple.

The best professional development is not what R-8 administrators have kept foisting upon a weary faculty- consulting firms that push the idea of cookie-cutter teachers, all using the same methods and teaching the same subjects in the same way.

That would certainly make it easier on administrators when they evaluate teachers. If the teachers don't toe the line and stray from the script, administrators can give them poor evaluations. It takes thinking out of the process.

When I think about the teachers who had the biggest impact on my life, I cannot think of any two in taught in the same style. They had two things in common- they cared about the students and they cared about the subjects they were teaching.

Some used more group projects; others had a strict, businesslike atmosphere in their classrooms. Contrary to the educational experts who are trying to push it out of the classroom, I had teachers who lectured and were spellbinding.

When you allow teachers to use their strengths, they flourish. When you crank them out an on assembly line, you hasten their departure from the profession and you do incalculable damage to the students.

A few months ago, just before a board meeting in which Ridder said, "Let's ask the teachers what they need," I corresponded with someone in the education field about a Denver Post article which had featured the sentiment that most professional development for educators was a waste of time.

I offered these thoughts in my response:

I have noticed quite a few articles on this topic lately and I am almost completely in agreement with the critics of the types of workshops and training that teachers receive. After No Child Left Behind was passed during the Bush Administration, hundreds of fly-by-night operators realized there was a killing to be made from this type of professional training. You have people like Bloomberg at Core Collaborative who take others' ideas, repackage them, and then present them as some sort of cure all for everything that ails education. For the most part, the ideas were not that good in the first place.

You also have the indoctrination meetings and that there are specifically to collect and work with data. There is nothing wrong with using data to improve education, but much of the data that is being reviewed at these meetings is meaningless.

As an example, I recall a few years ago that the teachers at North Middle School, threw themselves completely into the Acuity tests, to the point of designing all of their teaching around these tests. All remediation was based on Acuity. When the Acuity tests were given that year, North had the highest scores. That did not turn out to be an indicator of potential success on MAP. North was at the bottom that year. Meaningful data in this instance would have been the poverty levels in North. Poverty levels have always been more indicative of how students will fare on standardized tests.

Instead of spending hundreds of thousands on professional development that appears to be designed to make all teachers the same no matter what their strengths and weaknesses are, workshops and seminars should be devoted to things that would make it easier for teachers to succeed in the classrooms.

Rather than spending countless hours going over data, why not have workshops that help younger teachers deal with discipline in the classroom. Cutting down on the time spent trying to corral unruly students would do more to increase the level of learning at classrooms than any pre-packaged system.

Instead of talking about the need for classes to be relevant, why don't we have workshops designed to help teachers with ideas of bringing current issues into the classroom?

Why not have workshops to help teachers on methods to connect with parents. We spend so much of our professional development time working on pie-in-the-sky programs that we neglect areas that could do much more to improve students' learning and make classroom teachers more effective.

Why is it necessary to spend so much money on outsourced professional development. Even with the number of experienced teachers who have left the district over the past few years, there are still many veteran teachers in our district who could provide meaningful professional development without having to send people all over the United States and spend hundreds of thousands of dollars. Why not offer stipends to these veteran teachers and see how much more relevant the professional development time would be for the teachers?

Why not work out exchanges with area school districts where we save money by having their experienced educators who have knowledge in some specific area come to Joplin, while we send ours to talk to them? This type of exchange would benefit Joplin and area schools since it would provide the required professional development at a savings. Or how about the possibility of using today's technology to hold professional development via Skype. A few years ago, someone in the district had the bright idea of having the middle school teachers in each area have the 7:15 meetings together at one school. While it did offer the opportunity for the teachers to get together, it created havoc for those who had to get back to their schools by the time classes started. I suggested Skype at that time, but it was never seriously considered and we had problems with those meetings all year.

Another thing that localizing the professional development and making it more relevant to the teachers would do would be to increase teacher buy-in.

Useless professional development and requirements to supply more and more data of the useless variety are among the reasons that excellent teachers have been checking out of Joplin and checking into other school districts.

I would also suggest making much greater use of the Southwest Center in Webb City and Greenbush in southeast Kansas, centers that were established to enable school districts to combine their resources and bring in the type of professional development that individual school districts cannot afford on their own.

Doing all of these things would require far more work than hiring another consulting firm, but they would not only build morale among faculty, they would also improve the quality of education that is being offered to our students.

Spend every last dime of the professional development money, but do it such in a way that the teachers will be able to invest in their own futures and become the best teachers they can be.

A bad apple for the teacher

(The following is my column for this week's Newton County News.)

Teachers gone wild…we’ve all heard the stories.

If it’s not the seemingly interchangeable stories about female teachers and their teenage lovers (or male teachers and theirs), it’s teachers arrested for drug usage, or teachers accused of helping their students cheat on standardized tests.
The latest bad news about the teaching profession came last week in Newton County with the arrest of a Neosho kindergarten teacher on six counts of endangering the welfare of a minor.

The following passage was included in the Joplin Globe’s article about the incident:

“(Debra Scott) is accused of driving six female juveniles to a home in Diamond at 12:45 a.m. on July 16 so the group could dump a toilet, two dead armadillos and several bags of trash onto the front yard, according to the complaint filed in Associate Division of Newton County Circuit Court.

“ ‘Debra stated that they were not there for a long time due to being chased off by large dogs,’ a Newton County sheriff’s deputy wrote in the probable cause affidavit accompanying the complaint.”

If these allegations are true, then Ms. Scott has created a problem that is as big for the Neosho R-5 School District as the teacher who foolishly sent nude photos of herself over the Internet a few years back.

What in the world ever happened to common sense?

When you sign a teaching contract, you obligate yourself to act as a role model for young people. You don’t e-mail nude pictures of yourself, you don’t act inappropriately around students or adults, and you definitely don’t act as a chauffeur, apparently giving tacit approval to six teenage vandals.

Immediately after the news of Ms. Scott’s arrest became public, the comments began flowing on the Neosho Daily News and Joplin Globe websites. Most were directly critical of Ms. Scott’s alleged behavior, but some used the arrest as an indictment of all teachers.

Has anyone bothered to check how many teachers in the Neosho R-5 School District have been arrested in the past few years? Only one, if memory serves correctly. Ms. Scott.

Unfortunately, the talk about the Neosho school district now is all about Debra Scott. And that is a shame. The district’s classrooms are filled with teachers who do their jobs day after day, preparing the next generation for success, teachers who would never dream of bringing disgrace on their school or their profession as Ms. Scott is accused of doing.

The reason these horrific incidents with teachers stand out in our minds is because these things are extremely unusual. We all can think of a teacher or two who should never have entered a classroom. But for every one of those teachers, there are thousands who would never dream of crossing the line and doing something that would not only embarrass the profession, but even worse, damage the lives of the young people whose education is their responsibility.

I have been fortunate in my schooling at Triway and East Newton, and during the last 10 years teaching, first at Diamond Middle School, and then at South Middle School in Joplin to come across hundreds of teachers, nearly all of whom have taken seriously their status as role models to impressionable young people, many of whom do not have such role models outside of school.

Those are the teachers who should be receiving the publicity. It is a shame when the good work done on a daily basis by hundreds of thousands of teachers all across the United States can be undone in the public eye by a few bad apples.

Nixon signs bill outlawing teacher/student Facebook communication

Speaker of the House Steve Tilley, R-Perryville, didn't know he voted for it, but probably neither did many of Missouri's legislators, but with the stroke of a pen today, Gov. Jay Nixon outlawed communications between teachers and students via Facebook.

The Amy Hestir Student Protection Act, sponsored by Sen. Jane Cunningham, R-Chesterfield, which passed after both Missouri National Education Association and Missouri State Teachers Association rolled over and withdrew opposition, primarily addresses the process of "passing the trash" or allowing teachers to resign quietly from one school where they have been accused of sex or other improper activity with children and then sign on to teach in a different school district.

The bill was signed in spite of the positive effect that teachers and students being Facebook friends had on Joplin Schools' effort to locate students after the May 22 tornado.

It was also signed in spite of considerable evidence that social networking has been a positive force in education, and little or no evidence to the contrary.

The following news release has been posted on the governor's website:

Senate Bill 54, which protects children from sexual misconduct by a teacher. It requires any school employee who learns of reported sexual misconduct by a teacher or other school personnel to report that allegation to their superintendent and the Missouri Department of Social Services within 24 hours. School districts must immediately suspend any employee whom the Missouri Department of Social Services returns substantiated findings of allegations of sexual misconduct.

Additionally, this legislation requires all school districts to provide information about former employees to other public school districts, including findings of substantiated allegations of sexual misconduct. Districts may be held liable for failing to disclose information about an employee that was dismissed or resigned due to substantiated allegations.

This legislation also prohibits registered sex offenders from serving on local school boards; strengthens criminal background checks on school bus drivers; requires the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education to conduct annual background checks of certified teachers; and requires school districts to adopt written policies by July 1, 2012 regarding teacher-student communication addressing electronic media, social networking and various other forms of communication.

(Printed below is my Daily Kos column on this topic.)


Gov. Jay Nixon delivered a slap in the face to Missouri teachers last week.

With a stroke of the pen, the governor signed the Amy Hestir Student Protection Act, a bill that leaves the impression, an impression Sen. Cunningham has cultivated, that all teachers are perverts and that impressionable children must be protected from them.

Probably the only thing that kept the governor from signing the bill earlier was the May 22 Joplin Tornado. As the media pointed out, the Joplin School District was able to locate many of its students through the use of Facebook. This would not have been possible had Sen. Cunningham's bill already been law since it prohibits teachers and students from communicating through social networking sites.

The answer that Sen. Cunningham has for that is that another way can be found, and that there is nothing wrong with the law. Gov. Nixon, too, has indicated this is not an insurmountable problem.

The problem is the law itself. Sadly, the media, as might be expected, limited its examination of the issue to the tornado and did not even look into other aspects of teachers communicating with students through Facebook, or for that matter, other problems with the law itself.

There is no need for the Amy Hestir Student Protection Act. Mrs. Cunningham has exploited this poor woman, bringing her before House and Senate committees for the past few years, having her tell her story over and over. The sexual abuse that Amy Hestir went through was horrific. And the fact that the teacher who did this to her was able to move from one school district to another, what is referred to as "passing the trash" is inexcusable.

This act, however, is not the answer to the problem. The laws are already in place, something Sen. Cunningham never mentions. During the mid 1990s, the state enacted laws which toughened background checks on teachers, expedited the removal of criminal teachers from the classroom, and ensured that their teaching licenses would be revoked.

And those laws have worked. Ironically, the success of that legislation has been used as a weapon against teachers by Sen. Cunningham. Each year as she pushed this legislation, she cited an Associated Press survey which showed Missouri ranked high in the number of teachers whose licenses were revoked for sexual acts with students.

In other words, these people were already being removed from having contact with students and their licenses were being revoked. The law was working. The very success of the law served as ammunition for Sen. Cunningham, since the AP study was comparing Missouri to states that have taken no action to cut down on the minority of teachers who bring shame to the whole profession.

If the biggest problem is the "passing the trash" syndrome, and Sen. Cunningham indicated many times that it was, then all that was needed was specific sanctions against administrators and perhaps school boards that allow this to happen.

That was not enough for Sen. Cunningham, however. School districts will now have to spend a considerable amount of time reworking their policies to reflect her view that all teachers are hunters chasing underage prey around the school building.

And the hundreds of teachers across the state who have effectively used Facebook and other social networking sites to communicate with students, and I am one of those, will have to trash years worth of work, because all teachers are potential criminals in Sen. Cunningham's view.

The teachers I know who communicate with students through Facebook have a large number of parents as "friends" and most of the communication with students is done on the Facebook wall.

There are times, however, when students feel uncomfortable putting their thoughts in front of the whole world. As an example, I will mention a fourth quarter project I do with my eighth graders each year in which they learn how to properly fill out job applications, construct resumes, learn tips on job interviews, and go through mock interviews. Each year, I receive at least a dozen Facebook messages from high school students who are about to go through their first real job interview, looking for tips and wanting ways to make their resumes more effective. These are not things they are going to be willing to put on the wall for all to see. Under Sen. Cunningham's law, I will not be able to have these former students as Facebook friends until they have graduated from high school.

Can they contact me through other means? Sure. Will they? Experience indicates to me they will not. Facebook is their preferred means of communication at this point at least.

The ready answer some provide is to establish a school-friendly network that students can use. You can set it up, and yes, a few students will use it, but most will not. We have all seen it tried before.

After I wrote a few weeks ago about the Joplin tornado situation, I was immediately contacted by several businesses wanting to sell me school-friendly social networking sites. You can sell the adults on these; students will avoid them like the plague.

As far as I know, not one teacher who used social networking constructively has ever been called before one of Sen. Cunningham's hearings to testify on that portion of the bill.

The worst part about all of this is this bill would not have passed had the Missouri NEA and the Missouri State Teachers Association opposed it, as both organizations have in the past.

Both organizations supported the bill with NEA noting that it provided more due process for educators charged with wrongdoing.

What about due process for educators interested in educating? Doesn't that matter to the groups that are supposed to be looking out for our interests in Jefferson City?

All teachers who use Facebook to communicate with students are being penalized though there has not been any evidence presented that any of them have abused the privilege.

What will be next?

Legislators such as Sen. Cunningham have found the past few years that they have a good chance of passing laws that target three types of individuals- drunk drivers, sex offenders, and classroom teachers. The Amy Hestir Student Protection Act also includes a provision that sex offenders cannot run for school board. As far as I know, that has never been a problem in Missouri or any other state.

The signing of Senate Bill 54 continues the degrading of our profession and the only effect it will have is on teachers who have always followed the law and who would never dream of violating the sacred trust we have to teach children. We will eliminate students and former students from our Facebook lists.

For some students, that move could very well prevent them from confiding in a trusted adult friend who might be able to help them get through serious problems in their lives. For Joplin students, that could be dealing with the aftermath of losing their homes and having their lives uprooted on May 22. For others, it may be confiding in just the kind of horrific crime that the Amy Hestir Student Protection Act is supposedly designed to eliminate.

Because of this short-sighted bill, the next time students find themselves with problems they need to talk over with a trusted adult, there may be no one legally able to listen.

***

Coming next month, our book about the Joplin tornado- 5:41- Stories from the Joplin Tornado. Find out more about the book, the stories and photos that are included, and see the photo that was selected for the cover at this link.

An open letter to Secretary of Education Arne Duncan

(The following is my latest Huffington Post blog.)

Dear Secretary Duncan:


When I first heard that you had written an open letter to the teachers of America, I was afraid to open the envelope.

Considering that it was just last year that you said Rhode Island school board members were "showing courage and doing the right thing for kids" when they fired the entire faculty at a high school, I thought your latest letter might contain a pink slip or at least some sort of reprimand to place in my permanent record.

Instead, I was told just how much you respect me and the hundreds of thousands of teachers in this great country.

Among the things you wrote:

"I know that most teachers did not enter the profession for the money. You became teachers to make a difference in the lives of children, and for the hard work you do each day, you deserve to be respected, valued, and supported."

I suppose that would be the same value and respect you showed the Rhode Island teachers, leaving all of them, including some who I am sure were exceptional teachers, with damaged reputations.

You also wrote, "I consider teaching an honorable and important profession, and it is my goal to see that you are treated with the dignity we award to other professionals in society. In too many communities, the profession has been devalued."

The profession, Mr. Duncan, has not only been devalued in many communities, as you say, but one of those communities is on the Potomac. If you want to take a look at the man who has placed a target on our backs, look in the mirror.

While I am quite sure you sincerely believe in everything you are saying, your own words belie your professed respect for public school teachers:

"We can build an accountability system based on data we trust and a standard that is honest--one that recognizes and rewards great teaching, gives new or struggling teachers the support they need to succeed, and deals fairly, efficiently, and compassionately with teachers who are simply not up to the job. With your input and leadership, we can restore the status of the teaching profession so more of America's top college students choose to teach because no other job is more important or more fulfilling."

No matter how you spell it, Mr. Secretary, you are talking about teaching to the test and devaluing the critical thinking skills that you supposedly prize. "Data" and "accountability" are code words for an educational system that embraces the same kind of failed business model that put this country in the economic crisis it is in today. The multitude of multiple choice masters our schools will develop using your Race to the Top plan will take us anywhere but there.

And you dare say, "with your input and leadership?" Input that does not include more charter schools, merit pay, an increased emphasis on standardized tests, and drives to rid public schools of veteran teachers to make room for "better" teachers who go through six weeks of Teach for America training, is ignored.

Mr. Duncan, you have been told by one teacher after another that the key to improving schools is by eliminating the societal problems that contribute so heavily to student failure. That input is ignored.

Poverty, crime, divorce, child abuse have nothing to do with student failure in the Walton/Gates/Broad MBA style education reform you represent. You have identified the problem with education, though you try to airbrush it with your flowery ode to the teaching profession, and it is public schools and the "bad" teachers who populate them.

Mr. Duncan, you speak warmly of the hundreds of teachers with whom you have spoken, and again, I am sure you are sincere, but there is a difference between speaking with teachers and knowing what actually goes on in a classroom.

The late, great Walter Alston managed the Brooklyn and Los Angeles Dodgers to three world championships. He was never a great baseball player, but as a manager he always got the best out of his players.

The difference between you and Walter Alston, Mr. Duncan, is that he did play one game in the major leagues and spent years in the minors. He knew what it was like in the trenches. He did not learn the game just by talking with the players, and then shuttering the Dodgers' minor league teams when their statistics dropped.

But perhaps it is unfair for me to compare you to Walter Alston. There is a more apt comparison.

Take away your smile and give you a sex change and you would be a dead ringer for Michelle Rhee.

It shouldn't take a tornado for teachers to be appreciated

(My latest Huffington Post blog)

It came as a shock to teachers in the Joplin School District Monday when we returned for the first official day of duty and were greeted by hundreds of well-wishers, applauding and letting us know how much we were appreciated.

This is my 13th year of teaching and I have never experienced anything like it. Our supporters carried signs and we even had a band playing in the background as we walked across the Missouri Southern State University campus to the building where our first day meeting was held.

For the first time, we received encouragement in person from Gov. Jay Nixon and via video from Barry Manilow, who donated a semi-truckload of band instruments to our high school, country singers Keith Urban and Lady Antebellum, NBA legend Charles Barkley and others.

It was an incredible way to start the school year, but in many ways, it was an illusion. We were being greeted as survivors, people who somehow were managing to have school less than three months after a tornado wiped out a substantial portion of our city and destroyed or heavily damaged 10 of our 19 schools.

Except for that tornado experience, which has changed us and our schools forever, we are the same teachers who have been here year after year, doing the same thing that brought us into education -- helping children.

And when the glow of that inspiring first day fades, we are still members of a profession that has been unfairly criticized and marginalized by people who are willing to sacrifice public education to improve their bottom line.

In one week, the state of Missouri will enact a law that demonizes teachers as perverts by banning social networking, texting, e-mailing, and phone calls between educators and students.

In five months, the same legislators who have been loudly trumpeting the way Joplin schools have bounced back after the May 22 tornado will revisit legislation that strips teachers of tenure and puts us on a merit pay system based on scores on horrendously flawed standardized tests.

We are still being hammered by the slate of stories that note that three-fourths of Missouri schools failed to meet No Child Left Behind standards, with few balancing the horror stories with accurate information about the impossibility of reaching those standards.

In states across the nation, we hear legislators talking out of both sides of their mouths, claiming that teacher unions are the cause of all problems in education, but claiming that they love teachers, the same people who make up those unions.

Make no mistake. When the euphoria of our opening day at Joplin subsides, we will still remain firmly entrenched in positions that have been targeted by people who will reap substantial profits if public education is destroyed.

When politicians are pushing the nonsense that teachers who receive six weeks of Teach for America training are better for children than those with years of classroom experience, public education is in trouble.

When our leaders claim that the results of standardized tests and teaching to those tests is the path public education needs to be taking, and then make sure their children are safely ensconced in private schools that place no such emphasis on testing, then it is obvious that public education and classroom teachers have been targeted.

When politicians slash funds for public schools while cutting taxes for job creators who never create jobs, they are sounding the death knell for public education.

Not for one instant did I question the sincerity of those who gathered on the Missouri Southern State University campus to greet Joplin teachers Monday. I truly believe that they appreciate teachers and know that it has been a trying three months for us.

I also have no doubt that despite the character assassination politicians have leveled at classroom teachers, a wide majority of the American public have faith in those same teachers. Sadly, in this day and age it is not the average American taxpayer who replenishes politicians' campaign accounts, but those who resent having to put some of their money into public education, and would very much like to end the system that has served America well.

When teachers enter the classroom, we work to educate every child. That is what sets American education apart from the rest of the world.

In many school systems, it is too late for this year, but it is time that teachers in every school district in this country are welcomed back with the same affection that the teachers in the Joplin School District received earlier this week.

Teachers have dedicated themselves to providing children with the tools to succeed. It shouldn't take a tornado to show them some appreciation.

Bill demonizing teachers awaits Governor Nixon's signature

Judging from what he said a few days ago, Gov. Jay Nixon will deliver a slap in the face to Missouri teachers some time this week.

The deadline for signing or vetoing bills is Wednesday and the governor indicated he will sign Senate Bill 54, the so-called Amy Hestir Student Protection Act, though it is obvious he is giving the signing careful consideration since the final decision has been delayed until the deadline.

This is the bill that leaves the impression, an impression Sen. Cunningham has cultivated, that all teachers are perverts and that impressionable children must be protected from them.

Probably the only thing that has kept the governor from signing the bill has been the May 22 Joplin Tornado. As the media pointed out, the Joplin School District was able to locate many of its students through the use of Facebook. This would not have been possible had Sen. Cunningham's bill already been law since it prohibits teachers and students from communicating through social networking sites.

The answer that Sen. Cunningham has for that is that another way can be found, and that there is nothing wrong with the law. Gov. Nixon, too, has indicated this is not an insurmountable problem.

The problem is the law itself. Sadly, the media, as might be expected, limited its examination of the issue to the tornado and did not even look into other aspects of teachers communicating with students through Facebook, or for that matter, other problems with the law itself.

There is no need for the Amy Hestir Student Protection Act. Mrs. Cunningham has exploited this poor woman, bringing her before House and Senate committees for the past few years, having her tell her story over and over. The sexual abuse that Amy Hestir went through was horrific. And the fact that the teacher who did this to her was able to move from one school district to another, what is referred to as "passing the trash" is inexcusable.

This act, however, is not the answer to the problem. The laws are already in place, something Sen. Cunningham never mentions. During the mid 1990s, the state enacted laws which toughened background checks on teachers, expedited the removal of criminal teachers from the classroom, and ensured that their teaching licenses would be revoked.

And those laws have worked. Ironically, the success of that legislation has been used as a weapon against teachers by Sen. Cunningham. Each year as she pushed this legislation, she cited an Associated Press survey which showed Missouri ranked high in the number of teachers whose licenses were revoked for sexual acts with students.

In other words, these people were already being removed from having contact with students and their licenses were being revoked. The law was working. The very success of the law served as ammunition for Sen. Cunningham, since the AP study was comparing Missouri to states that have taken no action to cut down on the minority of teachers who bring shame to the whole profession.

If the biggest problem is the "passing the trash" syndrome, and Sen. Cunningham indicated many times that it was, then all that was needed was specific sanctions against administrators and perhaps school boards that allow this to happen.

That was not enough for Sen. Cunningham, however. School districts will now have to spend a considerable amount of time reworking their policies to reflect her view that all teachers are hunters chasing underage prey around the school building.

And the hundreds of teachers across the state who have effectively used Facebook and other social networking sites to communicate with students, and I am one of those, will have to trash years worth of work, because all teachers are potential criminals in Sen. Cunningham's view.

The teachers I know who communicate with students through Facebook have a large number of parents as "friends" and most of the communication with students is done on the Facebook wall.

There are times, however, when students feel uncomfortable putting their thoughts in front of the whole world. As an example, I will mention a fourth quarter project I do with my eighth graders each year in which they learn how to properly fill out job applications, construct resumes, learn tips on job interviews, and go through mock interviews. Each year, I receive at least a dozen Facebook messages from high school students who are about to go through their first real job interview, looking for tips and wanting ways to make their resumes more effective. These are not things they are going to be willing to put on the wall for all to see. Under Sen. Cunningham's law, I will not be able to have these former students as Facebook friends until they have graduated from high school.

Can they contact me through other means? Sure. Will they? Experience indicates to me they will not. Facebook is their preferred means of communication at this point at least.

The ready answer some provide is to establish a school-friendly network that students can use. You can set it up, and yes, a few students will use it, but most will not. We have all seen it tried before.

After I wrote a few weeks ago about the Joplin tornado situation, I was immediately contacted by several businesses wanting to sell me school-friendly social networking sites. You can sell the adults on these; students will avoid them like the plague.

As far as I know, not one teacher who used social networking constructively has ever been called before one of Sen. Cunningham's hearings to testify on that portion of the bill.

The worst part about all of this is this bill would not have passed had the Missouri NEA and the Missouri State Teachers Association opposed it, as both organizations have in the past.

Both organizations supported the bill with NEA noting that it provided more due process for educators charged with wrongdoing.

What about due process for educators interested in educating? Doesn't that matter to the groups that are supposed to be looking out for our interests in Jefferson City?

All teachers who use Facebook to communicate with students are being penalized though there has not been any evidence presented that any of them have abused the privilege.

What will be next?

Legislators such as Sen. Cunningham have found the past few years that they have a good chance of passing laws that target three types of individuals- drunk drivers, sex offenders, and classroom teachers.

If. Gov. Nixon signs SB 54 this week, it will continue the degrading of our profession and the only effect it will have is on teachers who have always followed the law and who would never dream of violating the sacred trust we have to teach children. We will eliminate students and former students from our Facebook lists.

For some students, that move could very well prevent them from confiding in a trusted adult friend who might be able to help them get through serious problems in their lives. For Joplin students, that could be dealing with the aftermath of losing their homes and having their lives uprooted on May 22. For others, it may be confiding in just the kind of horrific crime that the Amy Hestir Student Protection Act is supposedly designed to eliminate.

Because of this short-sighted bill, the next time students find themselves with problems they need to talk over with a trusted adult, there may be no one legally able to listen.

Tenure does not protect bad teachers in Missouri

If some Missouri legislators have their way, teacher tenure will be a thing of the past.


Bills introduced in the House and Senate would eliminate tenure, strike down minimum salaries for teachers with master’s degrees or 10 years of experience and replace them with a new four-tiered pay system, based on student scores.

Speaker of the House Steve Tilley, R-Perryville, says this legislation is one of his priorities in this session.

After all, who can argue with the idea of replacing a system that allows bad teachers to remain in the classroom, year after year?

Who can object to rewarding the teachers with the strongest performance and not those who have earned advanced degrees or those who have spent more years in the classroom?

Who can argue with paying the teachers whose students achieve the highest scores on standardized tests?

This would appear to be a slam dunk for Steve Tilley and the sponsors of the bills, Republicans Scott Dieckhaus in the House and Jane Cunningham in the Senate.

But as we all know, things are not always as clear-cut as they appear to be.

The idea that teacher tenure is keeping hundreds, maybe thousands of poor teachers in the classroom is largely based on horror stories from New York and Washington. While some bad apples have undoubtedly slipped through the cracks and need to be encouraged to find a different line of work, tenure is not an obstacle.

In Missouri, a teacher has be unemployed five years to be eligible for tenure, which starts on the first day of the sixth year. If a teacher is bad, five years should be plenty of time for any capable administrator to make that determination.

And even if somehow, a teacher’s performance slumps after that fifth year, or the teacher managed to slip through the cracks, tenure does not keep a bad teacher in the classroom. All tenure does is require that the teacher receive due process before he or she is fired.

If that protection is removed, veteran teachers are left at the mercy of any administrator who decides to cut the teachers who have been around the longest, (which of course means they are the ones who are making more money).

It also would be an open invitation for removal of teachers who may have disagreements with new administrators, many of whom are simply passing through for a year or two on their way to the next step on the ladder.

Critics of the tenure system always like to point out how few teachers are removed from the classroom for poor performance. Those statistics are misleading. It is always pointed out how many beginning teachers do not remain in the classroom after the first five years. While some of that is undoubtedly due to dissatisfaction with working conditions and the lure of higher paying jobs, many of the people who leave the profession do so because they were not cut out to be teachers. The system does have a way of winnowing out the worst, some of them because administrators encourage them to explore other opportunities and some because they realize the responsibility of teaching the next generation is something that is beyond their abilities.

Proponents of the teacher tenure bills also point out that the best teachers should receive the most pay. It is hard to argue with that. If an ideal system were to be established that could make that possible, I would hope all teachers would jump on board.

The four-tier system proposed in the Dieckhaus and Cunningham bills would be a nightmare. Under this plan, every school district in Missouri would have to divide its teachers into four tiers. The teachers whose students score the lowest would receive the lowest pay, with the second tier receiving more, the third tier an even greater total, and then the fourth tier receiving 60 percent more than those in the third tier.

Even if all of the teachers are capable, the tiers would be required, and the bill even offers an elaborate tiebreaking system to determine who goes in what tier.

This system does not take into consideration many things.

First, the cost. Right now, our students are only being tested in a few areas, math, reading, and some science. We would have to come up with costly tests for the other disciplines.

Second, the students themselves. In my first year at South Middle School, I was lucky enough to get nearly every well behaved eighth grader in my English classes, while the other teacher received the nightmare. It wasn’t anything that happened on purpose, but under the kind of system that is being proposed, I would have been rewarded, unfairly, for dealing with ideal students, while my fellow English teacher would have been relegated to a lower tier.

Teachers should be responsible for students’ scores and a continuing pattern of poor scores obviously needs to be addressed, but the teachers are only one of the factors, albeit an important one, that goes into the success of students.

If the students do not receive proper reinforcement at home or do not have the proper attitude when they go into the schools, the teachers already have two strikes against them. As much as the current crop of so-called educational reformers like to blame everything on what goes on inside the classroom, the learning experience is not limited to the school.

Having teacher pay decisions based almost entirely on standardized test scores is also guaranteed to continue the transformation of our schools from places of learning, which they have continued to be despite the recent wave of negative publicity, to test preparation factories.

And finally, this insidious idea of eliminating minimum pay standards for teachers with master’s degrees or with 10 years of experience.

Those who favor this approach would like to have us think that veteran teachers are trotting out the same lesson plans, unchanged, year after year, steadfastly clinging to outdated methods and waiting for retirement.

For most teachers, nothing could be further from the truth. The state requires a certain number of professional development hours each year, and even without these, most teachers are keeping up with the latest developments in education and in their particular disciplines.

Proponents of organizations like Teach for America would like us to think that any student with good grades and a desire to serve can take an “intensive” six-week course and immediately be ready to teach.

They are also a lot cheaper and most of them do not remain in the classroom past the two years they are required to stay under that program.

Since when has experience been a crime?

I am in my 12th year as a classroom teacher and I know so much more now than I did when I stepped in front of my first creative writing class at Diamond Middle School in August 1999.

And I will know more in my 13th year than I do now because that is what teaching is about. The learning experience is not for students alone.

Sadly, our legislators can come up with a dangerous plan that can continue what seems to be their goal of remaking the public education system into the same business model that has put this country in its current economic crisis.

My response to readers who say I am attacking Joplin R-8 teachers

Sometimes I find it amusing when my critics think I have made a mistake and jump all over it.

Inevitably, they find out that most other people do not agree with their assessment and they drop the attack. I usually do not find it necessary to respond because other readers do it for me.

The same thing has taken place with the post I wrote Sunday about bills that the Joplin R-8 Board of Education will approve when it meets 7 p.m. Tuesday in the Memorial Education Building.

The critics, or perhaps just one critic as sometimes it is hard to tell, are jumping on the items I wrote about the amount of money spent to provide meals for the high school laptop checkouts. The totals were $95.40 to Domino's Pizza, $225 to Orient Express, $215.94 to Red Onion Cafe, and $206.25 to Sawmill Barbecue for a total of $742.59.

Since that money apparently went to meals for teachers who were helping with the laptop checkout, that gave the critics an opportunity to go after me because I don't want hard working, underappreciated teachers to receive meals.

As usual, there were a number of comments that took issue with the critics.

Here are a couple of the critics' comments:

Everyone involved in the laptop checkout at JHS arrived between 7AM and 8AM and were there until laptop checkout concluded at 4PM, because the flow of students was constant throughout the day this prevented anyone working the checkout from taking lunch so they could go eat, therefore lunch was provided. This included volunteers. This is not something that happens often, maybe a couple times a year.

Though, I am confused why you think a company buying lunch for their employee’s is out of the norm, that is simply not true. I’ve worked for many different companies where if a number of employees had to skip lunch because of work load, the company provided lunch for them. Even in school districts, all the day long meetings and conferences teachers attend, lunch is provided to them. It’s no different. :

And this one, which particularly irritated me:

As Randy points out these occurrences, I wonder...

Did Randy have the same moral ground as a teacher? Oh, I will not eat because this is not appropriate spending. I will go to my room and eat my bologna sandwich.

I worked at Wal-Mart and they fed us time to time. It is a part of the budget. I sometimes wonder why Randy cherry picks the expenses that he does. What qualifies a former journalist and ex-teacher to determine what exactly is appropriate spending? Is this the whole expenditure list?

During meeting days or really hectic days, schools will buy lunch for their teachers. It does not occur on a regular basis, 3-4 times a year. It helps with morale and it is budgeted into the whole plan.

If this bothers you, remember with whom you trust your child.
The reader accuses me of cherry picking the bills that I write about.

Of course, I do. It doesn't make sense to write about hundreds of bills, most of which are for routine items, including things like bread, milk, and utilities.

I cherry pick information for what I write on the Turner Report and I plead guilty to cherry picking on every article I have written since I began my journalism career in 1977.

I will let you in on a secret. Every reporter is guilty of cherry picking and there is nothing wrong with it. We have to make editorial decisions on what we consider to be important to the story because there is simply not room or time to write about every bit of minutiae that might come up while covering a beat.

Each month, I choose items from the bills that I consider to be noteworthy and I write about them. Another reporter or someone who is not reporting on the bills might consider other items to be more worthy subjects, but I make my choices because these are items that interest me and which interest my readers.

The reader's assertion that I am a hypocrite because I would never have turned down a free meal like that when I was a teacher and the talk about "moral ground" and the idea that I am against the teachers probably does not deserve a response, but I am going to provide one.

First, I have never printed any information about most of the meals that have been provided for teachers and staff. There are many occasions where such expenditures are justified. For example, for years, the district paid for meals or snacks for teachers who stay three or four hours after school for parent-teacher conferences twice a year. It probably still does, but I have not had one of those since March 2013.

What needs to be reported more often is that many of these meals are provided as a result of a culture that still follows the Huff-Besendorfer example of one meeting after another and the idea that each of those meetings has to be accompanied by a taxpayer-financed meal.

What is also lost in the billing for such items is that often not only is money being spent for teachers' meals, but a considerably larger amount is being spent on the substitute teachers who man the classrooms while these interminable meetings are being held.

As for the "moral ground," I would have eaten the free meals, but do not make it look like I am criticizing each of these and that I am an enemy of the teachers.

That is laughable and it reminds me of the "Whirlwind Tour" C. J. Huff took of R-8 schools in the week before school opened for the 2014-2015 school year. At that time, Huff told teachers they needed to do something about me because I was attacking them. He could handle the criticism, but he did not want them to have to endure it. (Obviously, he couldn't handle the criticism. For someone who built a reputation based on the way he handled the aftermath of the tornado, he certainly fell apart when he was challenged by me and by board members who were critical of the way he operated.)

At the same meetings, and it is another reason why the mention of my moral character offends me, Huff continued to spread the lie that I provided pornographic material to 150 eighth grade students, when in fact- 1. No Child Left Alive, despite what C. J. Huff, Anson Burlingame, and Jeff Caldwell said was not pornogrpahic, and 2. to this day no one has ever found an eighth grader from that class who read the book (though some of them may have done so later after Huff gave it all that free publicity).

Huff attempted unsuccessfully to turn Joplin R-8 teachers against me and this appears to be yet another attempt to make it appear that I am hurting the teachers and the children by continuing to write about how taxpayer money is being spent or misspent.

Even though many of the teachers who now work in Joplin were not in the district while I was teaching there, the new teachers are intelligent enough to know when someone is looking out for them, the students, and for the taxpayers. They are not going to believe that I am being critical of teachers.

As Dan Rather used to say, "That dog won't hunt."

Dieckhaus bill to eliminate teacher tenure expected to come up for committee vote Wednesday

A bill sponsored by Rep. Scott Dieckhaus, R-Washington, that would eliminate tenure for Missouri teachers, is expected to come up for a committee vote Wednesday.

NEA has issued an action alert to members to contact their representatives about the bill which, ironically, is sponsored by a man who spent four years as a classroom teacher.

The following is taken from an NEA legislative update mailed Monday night:

The House Elementary and Secondary Education Committee is expected to vote on the latest proposed HCS for HB 628 (Scott Dieckhaus) on March 16. The draft HCS would still eliminate teacher tenure and place all currently tenured teachers on three year contracts and all other teachers on one to three year contracts at the district's discretion. Teachers would have still have a right to a hearing before the board if the district seeks to terminate the contract early, but teachers would have no expectation or right to renewal once the one to three year contract has expired.

The Association strongly opposes the latest HCS version of the bill. Teacher tenure is not a guarantee of a job, just a process to address issues of concern and ensure teachers are not fired arbitrarily. Where districts face challenges with under-performing teachers, the real issue to address is establishing a quality evaluation system that provides teachers with feedback and support in improving performance and addressing concerns.

Proponents of the bill have made it sound as if there have been hundreds or thousands of cases in which poor teachers have remained employed, year after year, because anguished officials cannot remove them due to tenure.

And while it is always easy to come up with an isolated incident in which a poor teacher has remained in the classroom, almost always due to lack of action by an administrator rather than the tenure system, no one has been able to point out any systemic failure.

Tenure in Missouri is also much different than it is in other states. In this state, it is not a matter of teach two years and you receive tenure. In Missouri, teachers have to be in the classroom for five years and then are awarded tenure on the first day of their sixth year. Certainly five years is long enough for any competent administrator to determine if a teacher belongs in the classroom.

And those five years have to be with one school district. After I began my teaching career with four years at Diamond Middle School, I went to work at Joplin South Middle School and had to begin the countdown for tenure all over again. I received tenure on the first day of my 10th year as a teacher.

Even that does not guarantee lifetime employment. If a school district wants or needs to remove a teacher, it can be done. All tenure guarantees is due process and unlike the horror stories that those attacking public schools have continued to cite over and over, this is not a process that takes years and is not worth the hassle. It generally takes one hearing and if the administrator is able to document the problems with the teacher, that teacher is gone.

Critics of tenure and pay scales that favor experience and advanced degrees, which would be allowed under Dieckhaus' bill, cite sob stories of gifted young teachers who are shown the door because school districts cannot get rid of older teachers. When cutbacks are made, the last teachers hired are generally the first to be let go, and it is true that some good teachers lose their jobs. That point cannot be argued. The idea that these teachers are losing their jobs so incompetent teachers can remain in the classroom is a myth.

Since when has experience been a liability? Only, it appears in the minds of Missouri legislators. What we will see if Dieckhaus' stab in the back for his former teaching fraternity becomes law is a Wild West attitude where cash-strapped school boards will avoid making the hard decisions that need to be made by taking the easy way out and removing the teachers who have given the most years of their lives to educating children.

Dieckhaus' pay scale, which seems to come from a cross of Dickensian and American Legislative Exchange Council beliefs, would divide teaching staffs and create the kind of school atmosphere that would be least conducive to learning. As I wrote in the March 8 Turner Report:

The four-tier system proposed in the Dieckhaus and Cunningham bills would be a nightmare. Under this plan, every school district in Missouri would have to divide its teachers into four tiers. The teachers whose students score the lowest would receive the lowest pay, with the second tier receiving more, the third tier an even greater total, and then the fourth tier receiving 60 percent more than those in the third tier.

Even if all of the teachers are capable, the tiers would be required, and the bill even offers an elaborate tiebreaking system to determine who goes in what tier.

This system does not take into consideration many things.

First, the cost. Right now, our students are only being tested in a few areas, math, reading, and some science. We would have to come up with costly tests for the other disciplines.

Second, the students themselves. In my first year at South Middle School, I was lucky enough to get nearly every well behaved eighth grader in my English classes, while the other teacher received the nightmare. It wasn’t anything that happened on purpose, but under the kind of system that is being proposed, I would have been rewarded, unfairly, for dealing with ideal students, while my fellow English teacher would have been relegated to a lower tier.

Teachers should be responsible for students’ scores and a continuing pattern of poor scores obviously needs to be addressed, but the teachers are only one of the factors, albeit an important one, that goes into the success of students.

If the students do not receive proper reinforcement at home or do not have the proper attitude when they go into the schools, the teachers already have two strikes against them. As much as the current crop of so-called educational reformers like to blame everything on what goes on inside the classroom, the learning experience is not limited to the school.

Having teacher pay decisions based almost entirely on standardized test scores is also guaranteed to continue the transformation of our schools from places of learning, which they have continued to be despite the recent wave of negative publicity, to test preparation factories.

Dieckhaus' bill is one more step in the drive to destroy public education and to punish teachers in successful school systems across the state for the years of administrative incompetence in the Kansas City and St. Louis school districts. The cost of this bill, a carbon copy of which is sponsored by public education enemy Jane Cunningham, R-Chesterfield, in the Senate, is far more than any perceived value presented by Dieckhaus or the bill's other proponents, including Speaker of the House Steve Tilley.

The steps taken by legislators to portray Missouri teachers as incompetent, overpaid failures has been a disgrace. To see a former schoolteacher leading the charge to cripple those in public education is particularly hurtful.

Scott Dieckhaus should be ashamed of himself.

Joplin Globe: C. J. Huff not overpaid, fighting for higher teacher salaries

 With the top of page one story in today's Joplin Globe, the area's newspaper of record took a major step from irrelevance into parody.

The Globe made an argument that school superintendents should be overpaid and that C. J. Huff is a bright, shining knight fighting to improve the salaries of his faculty.

 The newspaper also allowed Huff to tell how much more difficult his job is since he has to spend so much time dealing with poverty. Globe reporter Emily Younker writes, "He has long championed meeting children's basic needs in an effort to allow them to focus on school; the Bright Futures organization was created in 2010 based on this premise."

The article also uses statistics provided by Huff to show that the average teacher salary in the Joplin R-8 School District is $40,884. The only way that can be true is if Huff is categorizing his teaching/learning coaches, who serve as low-level administrators and do not have any classroom teaching duties, as teachers.

That has to be the case since over the past three years, the Huff Administration has driven scores of veteran teachers out of the system and replaced them with first and second year teachers, who receive minimum salaries.

One Huff quote in particular stands out. "Personally, I think our educators across the board are underpaid and underappreciated, and we have to find creative ways to offer opportunities to earn more money."

That sounds like the comment of someone who wants to make it appear that Joplin NEA's request for a ballot for collective bargaining is about teacher pay and not about the conditions that teachers have been forced to work under during the seven years Huff has been in charge.

The irony of this, and of course, it is not mentioned in the Globe, is that R-8 teachers would have received a pay increase of about three dollars a week and no salary steps under the budget C. J. Huff submitted to the board in June. (See accompanying photo of budget letter signed by Huff and CFO Paul Barr.)

Teachers would have gone into the hole under that budget since insurance costs were increased, but board member Debbie Fort fought to have that changed and the board's Finance Committee worked out a way to give the teachers a pay increase and their steps on the salary schedule.


If this had been a one year occurrence, it might be easier to overlook Huff's statement, but this year's budget was not the first in which teachers received no pay increases and did not receive their salary schedule steps.

 The Globe "analysis" also explains why Huff is paid $177,275 a year and why superintendents in neighboring school districts have received pay increases by percentages far in excess of what teachers have received.

Basically, it amounts to the old axiom that if you want to have good administrators you have to pay higher salaries. If you want to have good teachers, well, what board would want to have good teachers if it can have superintendent who can run off those good teachers?

According to Joplin R-8 Board of Education President Annie Sharp, who was also the president when C. J. Huff was hired, the board's search firm and the Missouri School Boards Association said the salary should be increased to make Joplin's salary about the same as other districts of similar-size.

So, in order to hire a superintendent who could spend the district into near bankruptcy, run off hundreds of excellent teachers, and have the lowest test scores in the area we have to pay $177,275? (And that's not counting the three weeks of workdays Huff spent hopscotching the U. S. and Canada on his "We Will Have School" tour.)

Shouldn't we have been more reasonable and hired a superintendent who would only put us a few million in the hole, only run off a hundred or so teachers, and have slightly higher scores at a cost of maybe $120,000?

If Anne Sharp was willing to pay $177,275 a year for what we have received the past seven years and can justify it by saying you have to pay for quality, maybe, just maybe, she has been on the board too long.

With that kind of logic, it should be the R-8 taxpayers and not the superintendent who are shedding the tears.

Hunter: Teachers deserve pay increase

In his latest Capital Report, Rep. Steve Hunter, R-Joplin, states his case that Missouri teachers deserve more pay. Hunter's column backs legislation that would increase the minimum salary for teachers from $23,000 per year to $31,000:

While every job has value and serves a purpose, we can all agree some occupations carry with them a duty and responsibility that raises their level of importance. Typically we see people who work in these vital jobs paid well for the services they render. Whether they are surgeons or scientists, they make a healthy wage that befits the high level of skill and dedication required to perform their duties. This is true in almost every case except for a very few. One of the most glaring examples is seen in the wages earned by individuals charged with the important responsibility of molding the minds of young people – our teachers.

Here in Missouri we have placed an emphasis on improving our system of education to give our students the tools they need to succeed in the future. We have gone from a state that saw education funding withheld to balance the budget to one that currently has the largest education budget in state history. The hundreds of millions of additional dollars we have poured into the system have resulted in better facilities and more materials such as books and computers for our students. However, shiny new buildings and the latest technology can only get you so far when it comes to educating young minds. All the bells and whistles mean nothing if we don’t have quality teachers to utilize those tools to teach our students.

The teachers we have in our state are doing an amazing job of providing a quality education but they are doing it while being paid far less than they are worth. Right now Missouri is ranked 44^th in the nation when it comes to average teacher pay. There are only six states that pay their teachers less on average than we do. Meanwhile our neighboring states rank ahead of us with Illinois sitting near the top of the charts. Experienced and qualified teachers can choose to stay here working for low pay or they can move across the state line to get the kind of salaries they deserve. We can’t allow this to happen and it is time to bring our pay for teachers up to par with what other states are doing.

Legislation we are working on this year would give our teachers this much-needed increase. House Bill 2040 would increase our minimum teacher salary from $23,000 annually to $31,000. It also would establish a salary floor that would rise as teachers gain experience. With this we would make Missouri teacher salaries more competitive with other those of other states. More importantly, we would give our teachers the pay they deserve for the monumental task they undertake in providing our children with a quality education.

Being a teacher is a difficult job and I have the greatest admiration for the men and women who choose to go into this profession. They are doing more for less but I believe it is time we change that. Teachers shouldn’t need to work part-time jobs to make ends meet. They should be paid a salary commensurate with their skill level and job responsibilities. The teaching profession should be one that offers a salary that can entice the brightest minds. It also should be one that rewards the dedicated individuals who have worked long and hard under a system that paid them far too little.

This year we hope to right this wrong and finally offer teachers the salaries they deserve. We have done a great deal to enhance our education funding and improve the quality of education we provide to our young people. However, the best way to ensure we are providing a quality education for our young people is by also ensuring they have the best teachers possible. By providing a much-needed pay increase we can do exactly that.

Public school teachers: Are we an endangered species?

 (The following is my latest Huffington Post blog, originally published on Friday. You can see the original post and at last count 55 comments on it at this link.)

The scariest moment in my daily routine comes each day shortly after 5 a.m., when I stride, razor in hand, toward the bathroom mirror and take a close look at the rapidly aging face before me.

After my daily scream and a therapeutic chug-a-lugging of Pepto-Bismol, I take another look at that face. And though it's not much to look at, I see the face of a classroom teacher ready to spend another day teaching writing skills to eighth-graders in the Joplin, Mo. public school district.


I see the face of someone who has spent the last dozen years making sure the children and the taxpayers always get their money's worth.

I hope I am looking at the face of someone who can serve as a positive role model for children who sometimes have no one to look up to once they leave school for the day.

One thing I do not see is a lazy, incompetent pervert, stealing taxpayer dollars and operating a private playground to prey on children. That is the brand Missouri's Republican-controlled legislature continues to put on us in its unprecedented attack on public education in general and public school teachers in particular.

In a recent Huffington Post blog, I wrote about a bill, sponsored by Sen. Jane Cunningham, R-Chesterfield, and Rep. Scott Dieckhaus, R-Washington (a former public school teacher) that would eliminate teacher tenure, prevent school boards from using years of experience or advanced degrees when considering a teacher's salary and divide each school into four tiers when it comes to a pay schedule -- with the ones in the top 25 percent receiving 60 percent more than those in the second tier, and so on down the line. The pay, of course, would be primarily based on standardized test scores.
Thankfully, it appears this bill will not be passed, but there is still one day left for the 2011 Missouri State Legislature and this bill; and another that would eliminate tenure, but not implement the pay plan, may still pass. (Note: The 2011 legislature has ended and the tenure bills did not pass.)

Another bill, also sponsored by Sen. Cunningham, passed the House today (Thursday) and is on its way to Gov. Jay Nixon for his signature. In this bill, the senator, who is expected to announce a bid for Congress next week, made it appear as if Missouri public schools are a cesspool of pervert teachers being passed around from one district to another, molesting hundreds of children.

The bill adds stringent requirements for school districts looking to hire teachers (unnecessary requirements since Missouri has had a strong protection system in place for nearly two decades) and requires more training so teachers can spot those who are preying on students. Most irritating of all to me and other teachers who have worked to teach students the responsible use of social networking, teachers will no longer be allowed to communicate with students or former students through Facebook or other social networking sites.

This bill, I might add, was passed with the backing of the Missouri National Education Association, which was only concerned that teachers charged with crimes involving students be afforded due process.


It is time to deliver a message to the Jane Cunninghams, Michelle Rhees, Chris Christies and Scott Walkers who have made a parlor game of smearing hard-working classroom teachers.

We have spent far too much time allowing these opportunistic vultures to trash our reputations. It is time that those who support public education stop rolling over and allowing these bullies to kick sand in our faces.

When the biggest problems facing education today are elements outside of the classroom, why are our elected officials spending so much time slapping around the people who often provide the only hope of educational salvation to the children whom we supposedly do not want to see left behind?

Why are people who claim they are representing the best interests of our children doing so much to damage those who provide the foundation for this country (and who often are paying out of their own pockets for the supplies of these children who are supposedly the only concern of our legislators)?
Where is the champion who is going to stand up for teachers before American public schools go the way of the Edsel?

Until elected officials begin showing courage and resisting the siren song of the billionaires who want to privatize education and rip the heart and soul out of this one constant in the American fabric, the people who have worked long hours for low pay in this most noble profession are going to continue to pay the price.

Until then, I will continue my morning ritual, and after I greet that image in the mirror with a primal scream, I will take a second look.

Mine may not be the face of a movie star, but when I look in the mirror I still see someone who takes pride in being a classroom teacher, and takes solace in the realization that my fellow teachers and I, unlike those who have sold their souls to the twin demons of reform and accountability, are making a positive difference in the lives of children.

Text of Obama speech on education provided

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Following is the text of a speech on the issue of education presented by President Barack Obama to the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce Tuesday.


THE PRESIDENT: Thank you. (Applause.) Si se puede.

AUDIENCE: Si se puede! Si se puede! Si se puede!

THE PRESIDENT: Thank you. Thank you so much. Please, everybody have a seat. Thank you for the wonderful introduction, David. And thank you for the great work that you are doing each and every day. And I appreciate such a warm welcome. Some of you I've gotten a chance to know; many of you I'm meeting for the first time. But the spirit of the U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, the desire to create jobs and provide opportunity to people who sometimes have been left out -- that's exactly what this administration is about. That's the essence of the American Dream. And so I'm very proud to have a chance to speak with all of you.

You know, every so often, throughout our history, a generation of Americans bears the responsibility of seeing this country through difficult times and protecting the dream of its founding for posterity. This is a responsibility that's fallen to our generation. Meeting it will require steering our nation's economy through a crisis unlike anything that we have seen in our time.

In the short term, that means jump-starting job creation and restarting lending, and restoring confidence in our markets and our financial system. But it also means taking steps that not only advance our recovery, but lay the foundation for lasting, shared prosperity.

I know there's some who believe we can only handle one challenge at a time. And they forget that Lincoln helped lay down the transcontinental railroad and passed the Homestead Act and created the National Academy of Sciences in the midst of civil war. Likewise, President Roosevelt didn't have the luxury of choosing between ending a depression and fighting a war; he had to do both. President Kennedy didn't have the luxury of choosing between civil rights and sending us to the moon. And we don't have the luxury of choosing between getting our economy moving now and rebuilding it over the long term.

America will not remain true to its highest ideals -- and America's place as a global economic leader will be put at risk -- unless we not only bring down the crushing cost of health care and transform the way we use energy, but also if we do -- if we don't do a far better job than we've been doing of educating our sons and daughters; unless we give them the knowledge and skills they need in this new and changing world.

For we know that economic progress and educational achievement have always gone hand in hand in America. The land-grant colleges and public high schools transformed the economy of an industrializing nation. The GI Bill generated a middle class that made America's economy unrivaled in the 20th century. Investments in math and science under President Eisenhower gave new opportunities to young scientists and engineers all across the country. It made possible somebody like a Sergei Brin to attend graduate school and found an upstart company called Google that would forever change our world.

The source of America's prosperity has never been merely how ably we accumulate wealth, but how well we educate our people. This has never been more true than it is today. In a 21st-century world where jobs can be shipped wherever there's an Internet connection, where a child born in Dallas is now competing with a child in New Delhi, where your best job qualification is not what you do, but what you know -- education is no longer just a pathway to opportunity and success, it's a prerequisite for success.

That's why workers without a four-year degree have borne the brunt of recent layoffs, Latinos most of all. That's why, of the 30 fastest growing occupations in America, half require a Bachelor's degree or more. By 2016, four out of every 10 new jobs will require at least some advanced education or training.

So let there be no doubt: The future belongs to the nation that best educates its citizens -- and my fellow Americans, we have everything we need to be that nation. We have the best universities, the most renowned scholars. We have innovative principals and passionate teachers and gifted students, and we have parents whose only priority is their child's education. We have a legacy of excellence, and an unwavering belief that our children should climb higher than we did.

And yet, despite resources that are unmatched anywhere in the world, we've let our grades slip, our schools crumble, our teacher quality fall short, and other nations outpace us. Let me give you a few statistics. In 8th grade math, we've fallen to 9th place. Singapore's middle-schoolers outperform ours three to one. Just a third of our 13- and 14-year-olds can read as well as they should. And year after year, a stubborn gap persists between how well white students are doing compared to their African American and Latino classmates. The relative decline of American education is untenable for our economy, it's unsustainable for our democracy, it's unacceptable for our children -- and we can't afford to let it continue.

What's at stake is nothing less than the American Dream. It's what drew my father and so many of your fathers and mothers to our shores in pursuit of an education. It's what led Linda Brown and Gonzalo and Felicitas Mendez to bear the standard of all who were attending separate and unequal schools. It's what has led generations of Americans to take on that extra job, to sacrifice the small pleasures, to scrimp and save wherever they can, in hopes of putting away enough, just enough, to give their child the education that they never had. It's that most American of ideas, that with the right education, a child of any race, any faith, any station, can overcome whatever barriers stand in their way and fulfill their God-given potential. (Applause.)

Of course, we've heard all this year after year after year after year -- and far too little has changed. Certainly it hasn't changed in too many overcrowded Latino schools; it hasn't changed in too many inner-city schools that are seeing dropout rates of over 50 percent. It's not changing not because we're lacking sound ideas or sensible plans -- in pockets of excellence across this country, we're seeing what children from all walks of life can and will achieve when we set high standards, have high expectations, when we do a good job of preparing them. Instead, it's because politics and ideology have too often trumped our progress that we're in the situation that we're in.

For decades, Washington has been trapped in the same stale debates that have paralyzed progress and perpetuated our educational decline. Too many supporters of my party have resisted the idea of rewarding excellence in teaching with extra pay, even though we know it can make a difference in the classroom. Too many in the Republican Party have opposed new investments in early education, despite compelling evidence of its importance. So what we get here in Washington is the same old debate about it's more money versus more reform, vouchers versus the status quo. There's been partisanship and petty bickering, but little recognition that we need to move beyond the worn fights of the 20th century if we're going to succeed in the 21st century. (Applause.)

I think you'd all agree that the time for finger-pointing is over. The time for holding us -- holding ourselves accountable is here. What's required is not simply new investments, but new reforms. It's time to expect more from our students. It's time to start rewarding good teachers, stop making excuses for bad ones. It's time to demand results from government at every level. It's time to prepare every child, everywhere in America, to out-compete any worker, anywhere in the world. (Applause.) It's time to give all Americans a complete and competitive education from the cradle up through a career. We've accepted failure for far too long. Enough is enough. America's entire education system must once more be the envy of the world -- and that's exactly what we intend to do.

That's exactly what the budget I'm submitting to Congress has begun to achieve. Now, at a time when we've inherited a trillion-dollar deficit, we will start by doing a little housekeeping, going through our books, cutting wasteful education programs. My outstanding Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan, who's here today -- stand up, Arne, so everybody can see you. (Applause.) I'm assuming you also saw my Secretary of Labor, Hilda Solis. (Applause.) But Secretary Duncan will use only one test when deciding what ideas to support with your precious tax dollars: It's not whether an idea is liberal or conservative, but whether it works. And this will help free up resources for the first pillar of reforming our schools -- investing in early childhood initiatives.

This isn't just about keeping an eye on our children, it's about educating them. Studies show that children in early childhood education programs are more likely to score higher in reading and math, more likely to graduate from high school and attend college, more likely to hold a job, and more likely to earn more in that job. For every dollar we invest in these programs, we get nearly $10 back in reduced welfare rolls, fewer health care costs, and less crime. That's why the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act that I signed into law invests $5 billion in growing Early Head Start and Head Start, expanding access to quality child care for 150,000 more children from working families, and doing more for children with special needs. And that's why we are going to offer 55,000 first-time parents regular visits from trained nurses to help make sure their children are healthy and prepare them for school and for life. (Applause.)

Even as we invest in early childhood education, let's raise the bar for early learning programs that are falling short. Now, today, some children are enrolled in excellent programs. Some children are enrolled in mediocre programs. And some are wasting away their most formative years in bad programs. That includes the one-fourth of all children who are Hispanic, and who will drive America's workforce of tomorrow, but who are less likely to have been enrolled in an early childhood education program than anyone else.

That's why I'm issuing a challenge to our states: Develop a cutting-edge plan to raise the quality of your early learning programs; show us how you'll work to ensure that children are better prepared for success by the time they enter kindergarten. If you do, we will support you with an Early Learning Challenge Grant that I call on Congress to enact. That's how we will reward quality and incentivize excellence, and make a down payment on the success of the next generation.

So that's the first pillar of our education reform agenda. The second, we will end what has become a race to the bottom in our schools and instead spur a race to the top by encouraging better standards and assessments. Now, this is an area where we are being outpaced by other nations. It's not that their kids are any smarter than ours -- it's that they are being smarter about how to educate their children. They're spending less time teaching things that don't matter, and more time teaching things that do. They're preparing their students not only for high school or college, but for a career. We are not. Our curriculum for 8th graders is two full years behind top performing countries. That's a prescription for economic decline. And I refuse to accept that America's children cannot rise to this challenge. They can, and they must, and they will meet higher standards in our time. (Applause.)

So let's challenge our states -- let's challenge our states to adopt world-class standards that will bring our curriculums to the 21st century. Today's system of 50 different sets of benchmarks for academic success means 4th grade readers in Mississippi are scoring nearly 70 points lower than students in Wyoming -- and they're getting the same grade. Eight of our states are setting their standards so low that their students may end up on par with roughly the bottom 40 percent of the world.

That's inexcusable. That's why I'm calling on states that are setting their standards far below where they ought to be to stop low-balling expectations for our kids. The solution to low test scores is not lowering standards -- it's tougher, clearer standards. (Applause.) Standards like those in Massachusetts, where 8th graders are -- (applause) -- we have a Massachusetts contingent here. (Laughter.) In Massachusetts, 8th graders are now tying for first -- first in the whole world in science. Other forward-thinking states are moving in the same direction by coming together as part of a consortium. And more states need to do the same. And I'm calling on our nation's governors and state education chiefs to develop standards and assessments that don't simply measure whether students can fill in a bubble on a test, but whether they possess 21st century skills like problem-solving and critical thinking and entrepreneurship and creativity.

That is what we'll help them do later this year -- that what we're going to help them do later this year when we finally make No Child Left Behind live up to its name by ensuring not only that teachers and principals get the funding that they need, but that the money is tied to results. (Applause.) And Arne Duncan will also back up this commitment to higher standards with a fund to invest in innovation in our school districts.

Of course, raising standards alone will not make much of a difference unless we provide teachers and principals with the information they need to make sure students are prepared to meet those standards. And far too few states have data systems like the one in Florida that keep track of a student's education from childhood through college. And far too few districts are emulating the example of Houston and Long Beach, and using data to track how much progress a student is making and where that student is struggling. That's a resource that can help us improve student achievement, and tell us which students had which teachers so we can assess what's working and what's not. That's why we're making a major investment in this area that we will cultivate a new culture of accountability in America's schools.

Now, to complete our race to the top requires the third pillar of reform -- recruiting, preparing, and rewarding outstanding teachers. From the moment students enter a school, the most important factor in their success is not the color of their skin or the income of their parents, it's the person standing at the front of the classroom. That's why our Recovery Act will ensure that hundreds of thousands of teachers and school personnel are not laid off -- because those Americans are not only doing jobs they can't afford to lose, they're rendering a service our nation cannot afford to lose, either. (Applause.)

America's future depends on its teachers. And so today, I'm calling on a new generation of Americans to step forward and serve our country in our classrooms. If you want to make a difference in the life of our nation, if you want to make the most of your talents and dedication, if you want to make your mark with a legacy that will endure -- then join the teaching profession. America needs you. We need you in our suburbs. We need you in our small towns. We especially need you in our inner cities. We need you in classrooms all across our country.

And if you do your part, then we'll do ours. That's why we're taking steps to prepare teachers for their difficult responsibilities, and encourage them to stay in the profession. That's why we're creating new pathways to teaching and new incentives to bring teachers to schools where they're needed most. That's why we support offering extra pay to Americans who teach math and science to end a teacher shortage in those subjects. It's why we're building on the promising work being done in places like South Carolina's Teachers Advancement Program, and making an unprecedented commitment to ensure that anyone entrusted with educating our children is doing the job as well as it can be done.

Now, here's what that commitment means: It means treating teachers like the professionals they are while also holding them more accountable -– in up to 150 more school districts. New teachers will be mentored by experienced ones. Good teachers will be rewarded with more money for improved student achievement, and asked to accept more responsibilities for lifting up their schools. Teachers throughout a school will benefit from guidance and support to help them improve.

And just as we've given our teachers all the support they need to be successful, we need to make sure our students have the teacher they need to be successful. And that means states and school districts taking steps to move bad teachers out of the classroom. But let me be clear -- (applause.) Let me be clear -- the overwhelming number of teachers are doing an outstanding job under difficult circumstances. My sister is a teacher, so I know how tough teaching can be. But let me be clear: If a teacher is given a chance or two chances or three chances but still does not improve, there's no excuse for that person to continue teaching. I reject a system that rewards failure and protects a person from its consequences. The stakes are too high. We can afford nothing but the best when it comes to our children's teachers and the schools where they teach. (Applause.)

Now, that leads me to the fourth part of America's education strategy –- promoting innovation and excellence in America's schools. One of the places where much of that innovation occurs is in our most effective charter schools. And these are public schools founded by parents, teachers, and civic or community organizations with broad leeway to innovate -– schools I supported as a state legislator and a United States senator.

But right now, there are many caps on how many charter schools are allowed in some states, no matter how well they're preparing our students. That isn't good for our children, our economy, or our country. Of course, any expansion of charter schools must not result in the spread of mediocrity, but in the advancement of excellence. And that will require states adopting both a rigorous selection and review process to ensure that a charter school's autonomy is coupled with greater accountability –- as well as a strategy, like the one in Chicago, to close charter schools that are not working. Provided this greater accountability, I call on states to reform their charter rules, and lift caps on the number of allowable charter schools, wherever such caps are in place.

Now, even as we foster innovation in where our children are learning, let's also foster innovation in when our children are learning. We can no longer afford an academic calendar designed for when America was a nation of farmers who needed their children at home plowing the land at the end of each day. That calendar may have once made sense, but today it puts us at a competitive disadvantage. Our children -- listen to this -- our children spend over a month less in school than children in South Korea -- every year. That's no way to prepare them for a 21st century economy. That's why I'm calling for us not only to expand effective after-school programs, but to rethink the school day to incorporate more time -– whether during the summer or through expanded-day programs for children who need it. (Applause.)

Now, I know longer school days and school years are not wildly popular ideas. (Laughter.) Not with Malia and Sasha -- (laughter) -- not in my family, and probably not in yours. But the challenges of a new century demand more time in the classroom. If they can do that in South Korea, we can do it right here in the United States of America.

Of course, no matter how innovative our schools or how effective our teachers, America cannot succeed unless our students take responsibility for their own education. That means showing up for school on time, paying attention in class, seeking out extra tutoring if it's needed, staying out of trouble. To any student who's watching, I say this: Don't even think about dropping out of school. Don't even think about it. (Applause.)

As I said a couple of weeks ago, dropping out is quitting on yourself, it's quitting on your country, and it's not an option -- not anymore. Not when our high school dropout rate has tripled in the past 30 years. Not when high school dropouts earn about half as much as college graduates. Not when Latino students are dropping out faster than just about anyone else. It's time for all of us, no matter what our backgrounds, to come together and solve this epidemic.

Stemming the tide of dropouts will require turning around our low-performing schools. Just 2,000 high schools in cities like Detroit and Los Angeles and Philadelphia produce over 50 percent of America's dropouts. And yet there are too few proven strategies to transform these schools. And there are too few partners to get the job done.

So today, I'm issuing a challenge to educators and lawmakers, parents and teachers alike: Let us all make turning around our schools our collective responsibility as Americans. And that will require new investments in innovative ideas -- that's why my budget invests in developing new strategies to make sure at-risk students don't give up on their education; new efforts to give dropouts who want to return to school the help they need to graduate; and new ways to put those young men and women who have left school back on a pathway to graduation.

Now, the fifth part of America's education strategy is providing every American with a quality higher education -– whether it's college or technical training. Never has a college degree been more important. Never has it been more expensive. And at a time when so many of our families are bearing enormous economic burdens, the rising cost of tuition threatens to shatter dreams. And that's why we will simplify federal college assistance forms so it doesn't take a Ph.D to apply for financial aid. (Applause.)

That's why we're already taking steps to make college or technical training affordable. For the first time ever, Pell Grants will not be subject to the politics of the moment or the whim of the market –- they will be a commitment that Congress is required to uphold each and every year. (Applause.) Not only that; because rising costs mean Pell Grants cover less than half as much tuition as they did 30 years ago, we're raising the maximum Pell Grant to $5,550 a year and indexing it above inflation. We're also providing a $2,500-a-year tuition tax credit for students from working families. And we're modernizing and expanding the Perkins Loan Program to make sure schools like UNLV don't get a tenth as many Perkins loans as schools like Harvard.

To help pay for all of this, we're putting students ahead of lenders by eliminating wasteful student loan subsidies that cost taxpayers billions each year. All in all, we are making college affordable for 7 million more students with a sweeping investment in our children's futures and America's success. And I call on Congress to join me and the American people by making these investments possible. (Applause.)

This is how we will help meet our responsibility as a nation to open the doors of college to every American. But it will also be the responsibility of colleges and universities to control spiraling costs. We can't just keep on putting more money in and universities and colleges not doing their part to hold down tuitions. And it's the responsibility of our students to walk through the doors of opportunity.

In just a single generation, America has fallen from 2nd place to 11th place in the portion of students completing college. That is unfortunate, but it's by no means irreversible. With resolve and the right investments, we can retake the lead once more. And that's why, in my address to the nation the other week, I called on Americans to commit to at least one year or more of higher education or career training, with the goal of having the highest proportion of college graduates in the world by the year 2020. And to meet that goal, we are investing $2.5 billion to identify and support innovative initiatives across the country that achieve results in helping students persist and graduate.

So let's not stop at education with college. Let's recognize a 21st century reality: Learning doesn't end in our early 20s. Adults of all ages need opportunities to earn new degrees and new skills -- especially in the current economic environment. That means working with all our universities and schools, including community colleges -- a great and undervalued asset -- to prepare workers for good jobs in high-growth industries; and to improve access to job training not only for young people who are just starting their careers, but for older workers who need new skills to change careers. And that's going to be one of the key tasks that Secretary Solis is involved with, is making sure that lifelong learning is a reality and a possibility for more Americans.

It's through initiatives like these that we'll see more Americans earn a college degree, or receive advanced training, and pursue a successful career. And that's why I'm calling on Congress to work with me to enact these essential reforms, and to reauthorize the Workforce Reinvestment Act. That's how we will round out a complete and competitive education in the United States of America.

So here's the bottom line: Yes, we need more money; yes, we need more reform; yes, we need to hold ourselves more accountable for every dollar we spend. But there's one more ingredient I want to talk about. No government policy will make any difference unless we also hold ourselves more accountable as parents -- because government, no matter how wise or efficient, cannot turn off the TV or put away the video games. Teachers, no matter how dedicated or effective, cannot make sure your child leaves for school on time and does their homework when they get back at night. These are things only a parent can do. These are things that our parents must do.

I say this not only as a father, but also as a son. When I was a child my mother and I lived overseas, and she didn't have the money to send me to the fancy international school where all the American kids went to school. So what she did was she supplemented my schooling with lessons from a correspondence course. And I can still picture her waking me up at 4:30 a.m., five days a week, to go over some lessons before I went to school. And whenever I'd complain and grumble and find some excuse and say, "Awww, I'm sleepy," she'd patiently repeat to me her most powerful defense. She'd say, "This is no picnic for me either, buster." (Laughter and applause.)

And when you're a kid you don't think about the sacrifices they're making. She had to work; I just had to go to school. But she'd still wake up every day to make sure I was getting what I needed for my education. And it's because she did this day after day, week after week, because of all the other opportunities and breaks that I got along the way, all the sacrifices that my grandmother and my grandfather made along the way, that I can stand here today as President of the United States. It's because of the sacrifices -- (applause.) See, I want every child in this country to have the same chance that my mother gave me, that my teachers gave me, that my college professors gave me, that America gave me.

You know these stories; you've lived them, as well. All of you have a similar story to tell. You know, it's -- I want children like Yvonne Bojorquez to have that chance. Yvonne is a student at Village Academy High School in California. Now, Village Academy is a 21st century school where cutting edge technologies are used in the classroom, where college prep and career training are offered to all who seek it, and where the motto is "respect, responsibility, and results."

Now, a couple of months ago, Yvonne and her class made a video talking about the impact that our struggling economy was having on their lives. And some of them spoke about their parents being laid off, or their homes facing foreclosure, or their inability to focus on school with everything that was happening at home. And when it was her turn to speak, Yvonne said: "We've all been affected by this economic crisis. [We] are all college bound students; we're all businessmen, and doctors and lawyers and all this great stuff. And we have all this potential -- but the way things are going, we're not going to be able to [fulfill it]."

It was heartbreaking that a girl so full of promise was so full of worry that she and her class titled their video, "Is anybody listening?" So, today, there's something I want to say to Yvonne and her class at Village Academy: I am listening. We are listening. America is listening. (Applause.) And we will not rest until your parents can keep your jobs -- we will not rest until your parents can keep their jobs and your families can keep their homes, and you can focus on what you should be focusing on -- your own education; until you can become the businessmen, doctors, and lawyers of tomorrow, until you can reach out and grasp your dreams for the future.

For in the end, Yvonne's dream is a dream shared by all Americans. It's the founding promise of our nation: That we can make of our lives what we will; that all things are possible for all people; and that here in America, our best days lie ahead. I believe that. I truly believe if I do my part, and you, the American people, do yours, then we will emerge from this crisis a stronger nation, and pass the dream of our founding on to posterity, ever safer than before. (Applause.)

Thank you very much. God bless you. God bless the United States of America. Thank you.