Sisters Diane and Gerry Prince joined ConnCANners backing SB 24.
Angry teachers drowned out both the governor and charter proponents Tuesday night at Wilbur Cross High School, where they gathered to blast proposed state education reform plans.
Melissa Bailey Photo
Hillhouse Teacher Vin Sullo called Malloy’s remarks on tenure “disgusting.”
Vin Sullo (pictured), who teaches at Hillhouse High, joined a standing-room-only crowd at Cross’s auditorium Tuesday evening for a visit from Gov. Dannel P. Malloy. The visit marked the fourth stop on a tour focused on Senate Bill 24, the main vehicle for Malloy’s sweeping education reform plans. Click here to read more about the bill.
Malloy gave a 10-minute overview of his plan, then took questions from four teachers and one teacher-in-training, who criticized his bill for making teachers scapegoats, overlooking root causes of the achievement gap, and over-emphasizing test scores at the cost of innovation and critical thinking.
Matt Presser, a young teacher at Celentano Museum Academy, told the governor he was considering leaving town if the reforms take hold.
Instead of finding room to innovate, Presser said, “what I find here is a crushing focus on preparing students for standardized tests. … This bill will just intensify those efforts to use narrow measures to test our students.”
Teachers interrupted Malloy with boos, thundering applause for teachers’ remarks, and taunts like, “Take the CMT!”
“Do your teachers behave like that in school? I hope not,” an Achievement First charter network official asked a young student after the meeting.
Teachers’ remarks drowned out a smaller contingent of charter school proponents rallied by Achievement First (AF) and the New Haven-based education watchdog group ConnCAN.
“We had a bunch of parents prepared to speak, but unfortunately it got cut off,” said AF CEO Dacia Toll. The group included parents like Nathan Jones (pictured), who showed up with his two sons to support the bill, which boosts funding for charter schools.
A live play-by-play account of the evening follows:
6:35 p.m.: Vin Sullo, 33, and three colleagues from Hillhouse High School join the back of the line to get into Cross. Sullo brought a news clipping from Malloy’s State of the State speech in February that outraged teachers across the state.
In order to earn tenure, Malloy said during that speech, “basically the only thing you have to do is show up for four years. Do that, and tenure is yours.”
“I think his quote is disgusting,” says Sullo, a seven-year classroom veteran who teaches 9th grade history at Hillhouse.
“I actually corrected papers,” taught classes, and prepared for lessons every day for four years before getting tenure, Sullo says.
“I wish I had known I just had to show up.”
If he gets the chance to grab the mic, he’d like to ask Malloy “how anything in SB24 improves student learning.”
6:45: Elsewhere in the line, Lillie Chambers brought her four daughters to support the bill, which would boost charter funding from $9,400 to $11,000 per student, with districts pitching in $1,000.
Chambers was part of a larger, New Haven-based contingent of charter advocates. Two of her kids attend Achievement First charter schools.
“They need all the funding they can get,” she says.
6:50: A New Haven teacher gave her own grades to Malloy’s plans — all Fs.
She held up her sign, but she declined to give her name or be photographed.
6:57: Lt. Gov. Nancy Wyman picks the names at random of lucky audience members who can ask questions of the governor tonight. (The first slots names are reserved for the teachers union.)
7:01: New Haven Mayor John DeStefano, Superintendent Reggie Mayo and teachers union President Dave Cicarella give opening remarks about their groundbreaking teachers contract and subsequent reforms that put New Haven ahead of many of the changes the state is seeking.
7:02: Malloy takes the mic. It’s a packed house. Capacity around 750. Standing room only.
“Any teachers here?”
Lots of applause.
7:09 Malloy runs through the bullet points of his plan.
Benefits to New Haven’s district include: $3,841,903 in additional funding, a possibility of state funding for 40 pre‑K seats, and part of a pot of $5 million for professional development.
Malloy keeps his remarks to about 10 minutes: “I’m here to hear from you.”
The first four questions are being reserved for New Haven Public School teachers.
7:12: Cicarella, the teachers union president, tackles tenure: He agrees that the time for dismissal hearings should be reduced, and that the number of arbitrators should be reduced from three to one. He calls for the arbiter’s decision to be final.
What he doesn’t mention is that he does not want tenure to be changed at all, beyond that. On Monday night, he called part of Malloy’s proposal to tie teacher tenure to teacher evaluations “un-American.” Cicarella has also pointed out that “tenure” for public school teachers means just that they get due-process rights when brought up for dismissal; it doesn’t man a guaranteed lifetime job like in higher education.
7:14: Malloy: A lot of what the state has done in overhauling teacher evaluations was based on “what you’ve done in New Haven.” They have common ground — one arbitrator, quicker time period for dismissal hearings. What we differ over, Malloy says, is what the arbitrator should do. Malloy believes the arbitrator’s role should be to see if the proper process was followed; teachers unions believe the arbitrator should take a fresh look at whether the teacher really deserved the failing mark that triggered the dismissal hearing.
Malloy turns to the audience: We don’t want to “destroy” tenure. But it should be earned and re-earned, and teachers who slip behind should get extra help, he says.
7:18:Marianne Maloney (pictured with Wyman), who’s taught in New Haven Public Schools for 11 years: “I’ve seen a lot of reforms come and go.” The reforms are made by people who don’t have classroom experience.
Lots of applause here.
“Your current plan to replace experienced teachers with new teachers is seriously flawed,” she says. Applause is growing here. Teachers are pretty revved up.
“Expert teachers are not born — they’re honed in a baptism of fire.”
Standing ovation! It’s getting rowdy in here.
Wyman: “I understand your feelings, but this is not the behavior we need.”
7:24 Malloy says he agrees. But “what we’re trying to do simply, is take what we all know needs to happen” — do a better job at educating kids, and have a new way of measuring that. The new way of measuring was approved by a coalition that included leaders of both teachers unions, he stressed.
7:28
Matt Presser, a New Haven teacher who recently graduated from Yale’s master of urban education program: “Even before I arrived, I realized that teaching is so much more than just showing up.”
[That’s a dig at Malloy’s tenure quote that Sullo found “disgusting.”]
“What drew me to teaching here, Mr. Governor, was the creativity,” Presser says. But “what I find here is a crushing focus on preparing students for standardized tests.”
“This bill will just intensify those efforts to use narrow measures to test our students.”
He asks what Malloy would do to keep teachers like him from abandoning the district in frustration due to over-emphasis of teaching to the test.
7:30: “Loan forgiveness,” Malloy starts to respond, drawing heckles from the crowd.
Malloy says only 17 percent of New Haven Public School 10th graders score at goal in math and reading [for reading, it’s 16 percent]. Schools aren’t doing enough to teach kids how to read or write, he says.
This time there’s a smattering of applause from the charter/ ConnCAN contingent.
Now Malloy’s back to defending the teacher evaluation system set by the PEAC council.
Teachers are booing.
7:35: David Low, New Haven teachers union vice president, says over 600 people have now signed his and Presser’s petition blasting Malloy’s bill.
“If you make it too onerous, too top-down, and too much of a gotcha,” teachers like Presser “are leaving, and we’re not going to get them back.”
“We need to support innovation,” he adds.
7:37: Malloy: “I don’t think there’s anything you just said that I don’t agree with.”
“There is nothing in this package, despite what you’ve been told,” that is not fully supportive of teaching. “This is about how do we get to a fair and objective way to evaluate whether we’re being successful.”
There’s a lot that does help teachers — more pre‑K, professional development — that has all been “swept under the rug, and I don’t know why,” Malloy says.
“Because you attacked teachers!” yells a man from the crowd.
7:40:Low: There’s a lot that can be changed in education, but “changing teachers isn’t going to do that.” That’s like changing the managers in a factory.
Another standing ovation. Teachers are really pumped up.
Malloy maintains he agrees with almost everything Low said. He gets applause from charter advocates, but it’s clear that contingent is far overpowered here.
A student asks how Malloy’s reforms would directly help the classroom.
More bantering breaks out among teachers.
“Show some civility!” cries a voice.
A woman, apparently a supporter of SB24, stands up and turns to the teachers: “Stop graduating people from high school when their damn reading level is at the 4th or 5th level!”
“Watch your language!” responds a teacher.
Things are falling apart. Malloy keeps calm. He urges everyone to “take a breath.”
7:50: Tom James, a Yale undergrad in the university’s soon-to-be-defunct teacher prep program: Not all teachers believe evaluations are the best way to improve education. The teachers union felt it needed to be as cooperative as possible in accepting the reforms through its landmark 2009 city contract.
“While good teachers may have nothing to fear in terms of being fired,” he says, “they may have something to fear in terms of” their creativity and autonomy suffering.
Malloy: We put money in the bill to train evaluators. It’s a shame the discussion is focusing on one small part of the bill — the teaching evaluation. “Let that discussion not dissuade us from doing what we have to do.”
Connecticut still has the largest achievement gap in the nation.
“We know what is not working, in classroom construction, in school construction, in how things were done in the past. … We all want a system that works better.” Let’s start replicating successful models.
Malloy is on a roll here until he offends teachers again: Connecticut educators have a tradition of going home in June and bemoaning what went wrong, but not fixing the problems before the fall starts again, he begins to say.
“Boo!”
“Come into the classroom!” calls out one teacher.
“Come take the CMT!” calls out another.
“I understand the frustrations,” Malloy replies.
7:57: Malloy: “The reality is that there are children who are not successful” in public schools, and teachers need to “go out of the box” to find new solutions.
A teacher in the back is yelling now. (It’s Jennifer Drury, pictured, who teaches English at Career High in New Haven.)
“How can I go out of the box while someone else writes my curriculum?”
And so the fiery hour ends, with more boos from teachers. Teachers are leaving for a post-meeting protest.
Outside the entrance, teachers and charter proponents continue the debate.
I watched the session. Two quick points: One, not sure whether people realize that all the evaluation pieces also apply to administrators, I know my evaluation in New Haven includes student achievement (as it should). Its not an administrator vs. teacher issue.
and second: there continues to be this thread that somehow curriculum, or forced lack of creativity is to blame... teachers have lots of opportunity for creativity in planning daily lessons that teach students (not simply hand them work to do), and prepare them with the skills they need... and nothing in the bill would stifle that.
Richard Therrien
NHPS Science Supervisor