Thursday, July 14, 2011

Large payment to New Teacher Project

On another post Anonymous wrote:

"Maybe this should be a new topic:

"This district paid an outside company (the New Teachers Project) more than a million dollars to hire 38 teachers that would never step foot into a classroom and scheduled executive raises ONE DAY before the Governor released his budget"

It is so easy to connect the dots.

http://pureparents.org/?p=17333
"In 2009, a Gates-financed group, the New Teacher Project, issued an influential report detailing how existing evaluation systems tended to give high ratings to nearly all teachers. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan cited it repeatedly and wrote rules into the federal Race to the Top grant competition encouraging states to overhaul those systems. Then a string of Gates-backed nonprofit groups worked to promote legislation across the country: at least 20 states, including New York, are now designing new evaluation systems." "

3 comments:

Questioner said...

Since the project has been canceled, shouldn't PFS at least try asking for the money back?

Think about how $1M could be used by some of our district schools. Maybe PPS could have a contest, following the model for Race to the Top and other federal funds, where schools could say what activity they would apply a windfall of, say, 100,000 to. We would probably get some amazing proposals. The top 10 could win!

Re: "existing evaluation systems tended to give high ratings to nearly all teachers"- would we be surpried if high ratings are given to nearly all PELA's? How many Broad trainees or superintendents receive a poor evaluation from the Broad Foundation?

Anonymous said...

Is this $1 million a FACT? How can this be verified? Who can tell us what happened to the $1 million?

All suggestions aside: There needs to be a public accounting for one million dollars!!??!!

Anonymous said...

This is like a trailer for a future "how we got there":

Board minutes, 11/24/09

The New Teacher Project - That the Board enter into a contract with The New Teacher Project (TNTP). TNTP is a national nonprofit dedicated to closing the
achievement gap by ensuring that high-need students get outstanding teachers. The contract is contingent upon ongoing grant support from the Gates Foundation to fund the Empowering Effective Teachers Plan. Services proposed:
1) Establishing a Pittsburgh Teaching Fellows program, which will attract and train approximately 30 - 50 teachers annually, and will be focused on filling highneed vacancies in math, science, special education.
2) Launching TNTP's highly successful Practitioner Teacher Program® in Pittsburgh to effectively prepare and certify the new alternate route teachers;
3) Launching the Model Staffing Initiative to provide direct teacher hiring support for leaders of 20-25 of the hardest to staff PPS schools to help them build strong instructional teams before the start of the school year and then working with PPS Recruiting & Staffing to sustain and replicate a high-quality staffing practices
used in the hardest to staff schools throughout the entire district. The operating period shall run from December 1, 2009 to November 1, 2013. The total cost shall not exceed $2,771,288...