Who Really Puts Students First?

An Unannounced Formals Post-Mortem

At the 9/24 School Board Meeting, commissioners voted 6–3 in favor of Board Policy GCO, which includes one unannounced formal observation, beginning in Spring 2021. The months long back and forth between educators and the district culminated in a fiery speech by Board Chair Linda Chinnia, painting herself as the tough decision maker willing to put students first, while the weak and selfish teachers were concerned with their own comforts and avoiding accountability.

This “students first” narrative did not originate on September 24th, 2019, and it’s worth taking a step back to consider the people who developed and spread this politically effective language. Prior to becoming Donald Trump’s Secretary of Education, Betsy DeVos bankrolled a voucher initiative in 2000 in Michigan titled “Kids First! Yes!” together with her husband Dick DeVos, who earned his billions running Amway, the corporation that wrote the book on how to be a pyramid scheme without the FTC classifying you as a pyramid scheme, and her war criminal brother Erik Prince, founder of Blackwater mercenaries. The DeVos family simultaneously funded a Virginia PAC titled “All Children Matter” during the 2004 election cycle that funded school privatization candidates across the country.

Thanks to the combined generosity of billionaires like oil tycoon Charles Koch who funded the rise of the radical right via dark money, and Jonathan Sackler, who helped create and then profit off of the opioid epidemic, Wall Street money from JP Morgan Chase and Barclays, and the Walton Family Foundation operated by the Walmart founder’s three children, “Students First” (now merged with 50Can) was born. Students First was led by firebrand Michelle Rhee, the Teach For America product who openly recounted what a poor instructional leader she was in Baltimore City, at one point even desperately taping her students mouths shut as they transitioned to lunch just to keep them quiet.

“Stand For Children”, began in Oregon in 1996 and has spread to nine states since. Posing as a grassroots organization, SFC uses its 20 million dollars from billionaire Bill Gates’ Gates Foundation and 4.1 million from Walmart’s Walton Foundation to fund pro-choice school board candidates in Louisiana despite no money actually coming from any donors in Louisiana. Its anti-union founder Jonah Edelman once boasted of passing legislation in Illinois to make it harder for Chicago teachers to strike.

It’s no coincidence that Kids First! Yes!, All Children Matter, Students First, Stand for Children and other similarly named education reform groups use a common playbook of student centered language while carrying out their anti-union, pro school privatization political agendas. Their noble sounding titles are belied by the origin of their resources, an incestuous group of billionaires, Wall Street hedge fund managers, and radical right wing funders that make their work possible.

Are we really to believe that the same people who brought us Donald Trump, the private military contractors who mowed down innocent civilians in Iraq, the corporate leaders who extract profits from workers by paying them an unlivable wage and ensuring their families don’t have high quality health care, the Wall Street executives who knowingly crippled the world’s economy in order to enrich themselves, the folks responsible for fueling the opioid epidemic, the classroom failures who joked about ripping the skin off of children’s lips, and the Silicon Valley tech giants who stacked school board seats and then were awarded massive technology contracts by those same school districts, and NOT the actual educators showing up every day in inhumane working conditions to teach Baltimore City’s children are the ones who truly put students first?

The fact that folks across the country side against educators on this question demonstrates the success of the multi-decade campaign of using focus-group tested language to obscure a simple truth. It is in this context that many of Baltimore’s Board of School Commissioners can confidently and publicly vilify the teachers of our city’s children.

Refuting the Specific Claims Made on 9/24

For all of the students first rhetoric that prefaced Commissioner Chinnia’s vote for unannounced formal observations, she chose to support the one option amongst a series of evaluation reform proposals that lacked any evidence proving it improves student achievement. Meanwhile, every single one of the BTU’s requests to alter evaluation policy had research showing they impacted teacher practice and student achievement, and this research was sent to the board long before September 24th. It’s tortured logic to argue that the people pushing for strategies that research demonstrates improves student achievement aren’t centering children but the people pushing for an experiment without a research backing are the ones really putting students first.

On a different topic, BTU presented research showing that Danielson-based observation tools like Baltimore’s Instructional Framework have been shown to measure the characteristics of students rather than the performance of teachers, such that teachers of low-performing students receive lower observation ratings. Additionally, teachers in classrooms with high concentrations of Black, Latinx, and male students receive lower observation ratings, and these differences are unlikely due to actual differences in teacher quality. Therefore the current evaluation system violates the district’s own equity policy which states that, “Our Board, school-based staff, and office-based staff will work together to aggressively and efficiently eliminate inequitable practices, systems, and structures that create advantages for some students and families while disadvantaging others.” By engaging in an evaluation process that potentially rewards teachers at schools with high performing students while unintentionally but heavily (through financial rewards) encouraging teachers to leave low performing schools, BCPSS may be further disadvantaging some students to the benefit of others.

Commissioner Chinnia responded that if the system was inequitable why hasn’t that shown up in the teacher evaluation scores in Baltimore? She continued to challenge the BTU speaker to present data proving otherwise. This response was misleading and wrong on multiple levels. First off, the district has NOT presented teacher evaluation data to the BTU or the general public that is disaggregated by student demographics, school achievement levels, and teacher race/gender. If you want to prove that the current system isn’t privileging some teachers over others based on their race, gender, where they teach and who they teach, you would need that data to compare across subgroups. So not only was her claim false, her challenge to the BTU to present refuting data that only the district has access to (if it even exists) and has not shared was either confused or disingenuous. Secondly, her claim was not responding to the full argument made, since the BTU posited that unannounced formal observations would exacerbate the issue moving forward, meaning past data would be irrelevant since unannounced formal observations have not been occurring.

Finally, it’s worth noting the absurd lack of self-awareness for someone to launch into a righteous speech about centering students by angrily cutting off the one student Commissioner Joshua Lynn who was asking a series of critical questions towards the district about their proposal. Student voice appears to be a valuable talking point in words but not actions. Interestingly, the three commissioners who voted against the GCO package were the three youngest board members, all young black men, including the only student on the board, and the only teacher on the board. Isn’t it weird that the three commissioners closest to the actual classroom and students, including the only actual student, also chose not to put “students first?”

What Did We Win by Fighting?

While it may feel as if we lost, we should compare the outcomes of our efforts to what would have happened had we not fought at all.

1. Before our fight there was going to be unannounced formal observations implemented this school year, now there will not be until the spring of SY 2020–2021.
2. Before our fight there were plans to transition to ALL formal observations being unannounced, now only 1 of the 2 formals will be unannounced.
3. New language was added into the policy mandating that a principal’s formal observation cannot be the first time they’ve been in your classroom all year leaving feedback.
4. We have inserted ourselves into collaborative workgroups to implement on/off years for teachers, so that like most other LEAs in MD, not every teacher has to be formally observed every year. The district has also committed to working on differentiated rubrics and indicators for evaluating teachers outside of traditional subjects and student populations, creating fairer and more appropriate tools to judge teacher practice and provide feedback with.
5. We have learned a tremendous amount about people in power that we did not know before the dialogue and attention we brought to essential subjects in education. This serves to inform our actions moving forward.
6. Throughout our work, we built stronger relationships and solidarity with other unions and groups including SEIU 1199 + 32BJ, Unite Here, National Nurses United (NNU), Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), Democratic Socialists of America, and the Parent and Community Advisory Board (PCAB). We’re thankful for their support and look forward to returning the favor as they engage in their own important campaigns.
7. Our membership is more educated and engaged on the matters that impact their daily working conditions.

NONE OF THESE POSITIVE OUTCOMES AND HARM REDUCTION MEASURES WOULD HAVE OCCURRED IF WE HADN’T FOUGHT!

What’s Next?

The end of a campaign is not the end of the story. Members’ efforts have secured new spaces to help shape future policy and implementation of new evaluation policies. We will continue communicating with membership as opportunities arise to make a difference including:

• Participation in a collaborative evaluation workgroup with representation across various stakeholders present. If you would like to be part of shaping the changes to the evaluation system and instructional framework, please email Cristina Duncan Evans at cduncanevans@baltu.org
• Contacting the board directly with your thoughts and requests. Email addresses for the school board can be found here
• Researching whether or not we wish to continue with the local evaluation model, as the union has the right to default to the state evaluation model if we cannot reach an agreement with the district.
• Working with the BTU Legislative Committee, who will be looking into bills that would change the structure of our school board. Did you know that Baltimore City is currently the only LEA in the state with a fully appointed School Board? Perhaps introducing an elected/appointed hybrid board like Prince George’s and Baltimore County use would introduce a level of accountability currently missing in the City. The committee will also be considering what it would take to alter state regulations that prohibits MD unions’ right to strike. You can email legislativecommittee@baltu.org to join in their work.
• Take care of yourselves. As teachers, paraprofessionals and service related providers working in Baltimore City Public Schools, we operate in spaces filled with trauma. It is impossible not to absorb some of that trauma ourselves, and in deteriorating working conditions and continual cuts to our professional autonomy, school board rulings like these raise feelings of anxiety, depression, and hopelessness that damage our physical health. The fight for justice isn’t going anywhere, and it’s important to refill your tank physically, emotionally and spiritually to avoid burnout before reengaging.

In solidarity from another selfish adult putting students last.