Wake County school board candidate Heather Losurdo probably didn't make many friends among teachers today with her support for reassigning effective teachers to balance schools and releasing teacher performance data to the public.
During an appearance today on the Rick & Donna Martinez Show on WPTF, Losurdo was asked by a caller if she'd support moving effective teachers around to balance them among the schools. Rick Martinez followed it up by asking "how about assigning teachers where you need them and not where they want to go?"
"I love it," Losurdo said. "Let's be honest. Teachers are effective at different things. Let's find out what they're effective at, have a conversation and, I agree, let's assign them where we need them."
Wake's effective teachers, based on EVAAS, are more concentrated at schools around the western part of the district. But the low-performing students are concentrated in Southeast Raleigh and Eastern Wake.
School districts have been reluctant to assign effective teachers to higher-needs schools because of fears that the educators will bolt. Instead, incentives have generally been used to get teachers to work at those more challenging schools.
Donna Martinez asked Losurdo whether EVAAS data for teachers should be made public. The information for individual teachers is not public.
"There are circumstances where we will get into privacy issues but I also believe in complete transparency," Losurdo answered. "Everything I can do comes from me being a parent. That's who I am and that's what I'm made up of so as a parent absolutely I want to know who are the effective teachers in my child's upcoming grade and that's of course who I'm going to want assigned as their teacher for the next year. I think any parent would want that."
Teacher groups across the country have opposed releasing individual teacher performance data to the public, at times going to court to block the release. These groups have questioned the ability of the data to evaluate a teacher's effectiveness.
Citing her prior experience the business sector, Losurdo also said she supports performance pay for teachers.
During the appearance, several callers challenged Losurdo's opposition to the old diversity policy. Losurdo said she supports community-based schools with parental choice.
One caller asked Losurdo why she would want to "mess up potentially a good thing just to appease wealthy families in affluent neighborhoods that doesn't want their son and child to go to school with Tyquan and Tynesha?"
"There was an election in 2009 and the message in that election was community schools and community schools won hands down so now we have another election that you get a chance to hopefully have your voice in by voting." Losurdo responded.
Losurdo is running in District 3 against incumbent Kevin Hill and fellow challenger Jennifer Mansfield.
Comments
I think JenMan's stock
Tue, 06/21/2011 - 11:32 — FSandYOUwent up with this.
Teachers who would support being reassigned please step forward.
crickets ............
Why not?
Mon, 06/20/2011 - 18:46 — Bob_SconceIf the district were to stop paying attention to where indvidual teachers wanted to be, it would soon find that the teachers would still choose; they'd just be doing it at other districts.
Mistreating teachers is *not* a recipe for success.
Yep. And These Ideas Are REALLY Bad, Too
Mon, 06/20/2011 - 21:05 — chaboard"Everything I can do comes from me being a parent. That's who I am and that's what I'm made up of so as a parent absolutely I want to know who are the effective teachers in my child's upcoming grade and that's of course who I'm going to want assigned as their teacher for the next year. I think any parent would want that."
You only need to look at the difference between the response rates to the current assignment survey between Southeast Raleigh and Western Wake to see which kids are gona get screwed if we let the most involved parents work the system to monopolize the best teachers. Yeah, it happens now to some extent but to go out of her way to ecourage it and assist it is just plain nuts!
Donna Martinez asked Losurdo whether EVAAS data for teachers should be made public. The information for individual teachers is not public.
"There are circumstances where we will get into privacy issues but I also believe in complete transparency,"
Under no circumstances should teacher evaluations be made public. Just imagine how much authority a teacher will yield in a classroom when every kid in the room can look online and see a bad evaluation. Again, it's not only a really bad idea...it's downright nuts.
Yep....and the idea also
Mon, 06/20/2011 - 19:04 — danofncYep....and the idea also ignores the elephant in the room, which is that the effectiveness of those teachers (or lack thereof) is in many ways a function of the group of kids they are standing in front of and the guardians that those kids go home to in the afternoons.
actually it is a function of leadership
Mon, 06/20/2011 - 20:44 — snordoneSchools with high concentrations of effective teachers tend to have effective leaders. Schools with only a handful of effective teachers tend to have ineffective principals. Instead of releasing the teacher effectiveness data they need to release the EVAAS school performance diagnostic reports. It is just as telling but deidentifies teachers b/c it looks at data by grade/subject. Parents have nothing to do with this, 3-5 years with an effective teacher totally negates the "effect" of poverty on a child's academic achievement.
The EVAAS data also turn these "achievement" schools upside down. Based on academic growth many of the these achievement choice schools are not high achieving. I am sure Heather and Jenn could agree on advocating for the release of those data to parents, it would force immediate change in our schools and the rhetoric would stop completely.
Got A Reference For....
Tue, 06/21/2011 - 08:09 — chaboard3-5 years with an effective teacher totally negates the "effect" of poverty on a child's academic achievement.
I was going to ask the same
Tue, 06/21/2011 - 08:27 — danofncI was going to ask the same thing.
If the effective teachers are in Western Wake, and poor kids have been bused to Western Wake, then Western Wake poor kids should be the statistical equals of all other kids.
Do the numbers show that?
Crickets
Wed, 06/22/2011 - 20:19 — chaboard....
so what will it take to have
Mon, 06/20/2011 - 21:06 — AngelaWso what will it take to have the EVAAS data released to parents? I cannot believe we would have to wait for an election to get information that is ALREADY accessible (and has been)?