(Baton Rouge – January 28, 2013) Louisiana Federation of Teachers President Steve Monaghan today called a new State Department of Education report “sad rather than clever.”
He was referring to an apparent attempt by the State Department of Education to deflect attention from teacher dissatisfaction with a terminally flawed evaluation system and the continued attack on their profession and public education in general.
“According to the Teachers’ Retirement System, the number of teachers retiring has spiked by about 28%,” Monaghan said. “Reports from the field tell us that eligible veteran educators are leaving the profession at an accelerated rate. Many educators simply have had enough of indefensible policies and chaotic implementation processes.”
Today, however, the department of education released a report claiming that teacher attrition has remained constant for the past three years, and implies that the report contradicts the TRSL data.
“A stable attrition rate only means that enough teachers are entering our classrooms to replace those who leave,” Monaghan said. “Attrition does not address the absolute fact that we are losing experienced veteran teachers at a much faster rate than before. More importantly, it completely ignores that teacher morale in Louisiana and nationally is at an all-time low.”
Monaghan said the department’s attempt to imply from suspect numbers that more ineffective teachers than effective ones are leaving the profession is bogus and an egregious insult to all retired teachers.
Superintendent John White claims that over the past three years, teachers leaving the workforce “were more likely to be ‘ineffective’ than those who stayed…”
“In defense of what many think is an indefensible assessment instrument, the department has maligned every teacher who has retired over the last three years. Where do we even begin to address the obfuscations in this so called analysis?” Monaghan asked. “Retirements have been folded into the larger issue of generalized attrition in order to change the conversation, and retirees have been sorted into nameless stacks of the ineffective and effective.”
White claims to have data showing which percentage of teachers who left in the past three years could be rated Ineffective, Effective Emerging, Effective Proficient or Highly Effective.
“But that rating system didn’t even exist three years ago,” Monaghan said, “and has merely been poorly piloted up until now. The vast majority of teachers only have preliminary indications of how they will fare under the new system.”
Furthermore, Monaghan said, there is a huge controversy over the accuracy and fairness of the new system.
“A major newspaper had called this system immoral because of the way it evaluates teachers, and a conservative Republican lawmaker said it is “nothing short of ridiculous.”
“It is universally known there are huge problems with this system, and the system is currently being tweaked,” Monaghan said. “Nonetheless, there is still an unrelenting persistence to defend the system by any means necessary, including the use of suspect data to impugn the quality of teachers who are fed up and are voting with their feet.”
“Clear all the smoke coming from the state department,” Monaghan said, “the real story remains that teacher retirement has spiked not because teachers are ineffective but because the system is broken. It must be fixed.”
Click here to read the report from the State Department of Education.