������Ƶ

Editor’s note: This Community Voice was written by the author noted above in collaboration with her following teacher colleagues: Bea DeRego of Kaneohe, Kelly Kellee of Keaau, Mike Landes of Kihei, Adam LoRusso of Aiea, Lisa Morrison of Wailuku, Michal Nowicki of Moiliili, Micah Pregitzer of Kailua, Bill Taylor of Honolulu, Cynthia Tong of Pearl City, Crystal Stafford of Kaneohe and Amber Tyndzik of Honolulu.

Hawaii teachers have just been informed that, after a year during which most teachers were on hiatus from the burden and drudgery of the Educator Effectiveness System (EES), evaluations will resume next year.

Teachers have repeatedly requested that EES be effectively suspended until the end of our contract in the summer of 2017. We have backed up our request with research challenging the validity and worth of the evaluation system, and we have also provided ample testimony to the negative impact EES has had on our ability to carry out our work in the classroom.

In light of the refusal of DOE leadership to honor our legitimate request, we are led to posit reasons behind the unwillingness of our employer to concede that some of its recent initiatives, including EES and the latest crop of standardized tests, have failed. It is a matter of deep concern that there seems to be no willingness to acknowledge that the direction we’ve been heading in is a bad one or to begin subscribing to positive change that will result in a better school system.

The following list of possible factors is based on Robbie Alms’ work on resistance to change in his recent book, The Faith of Leadership, and reflects months of speculation on the part of teachers:

1. Because they generally appear in schools only for orchestrated events intended to showcase school success, DOE leaders lack understanding of why change is being requested.
2. Because they are not in schools on a regular basis, there is no real incentive for them to promote change. Indeed, the DOE likely perceives that it would lose punitive power over teachers by letting go of high-stakes teacher evaluations.
3. Because they are unwilling to examine problems that are being brought to their attention, DOE leaders lack a sense of urgency about doing things differently. Their perception is, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”
4. Because authentic change represents uncharted territory, and because the DOE lacks confidence in the teachers at the heart of the system, an element of fear is likely at work.
5. Because they have not been involved in the changes that are already underway elsewhere, DOE leaders likely feel somewhat powerless and perhaps embarrassed.
6. The rise to power of the current DOE leadership is bound up with the design and implementation of the status quo we seek to change. District leaders wrote the Race to the Top grant application that led to the mess that we are now in and that we share with other RTTT states. They could fear the loss of their jobs as the narrow focus on bad data that this pro-testing regime exhibits becomes visible for what it is – namely, an effort to hold teachers and schools unfairly accountable for factors beyond their control.

Until the DOE discontinues its practice of turning a blind eye to the effects of its bad decisions on schools and a deaf ear to those who are taxed with implementing these policies in the classrooms, teachers will have no choice but to cast the motivations of DOE leadership in the negative light suggested above.

In progressive school districts across the country, teachers are rising up and demanding that their employers reverse years of poor decisions that have resulted in incalculable damage to public school culture. It is time that the officials in charge of educational decisions in Hawaii begin listening to teachers as they demand positive change, including the serious reduction of standardized testing and the elimination of demeaning evaluation systems that waste money and manpower and that help no one.