Negotiations Update Oct. 17, 2010
The PSTA Bargaining Team is seeking your input as we prepare for this year's negotiations. There are 4 ways to get involved:
1. Please attend the PSTA General Meeting on October 19 at James Workman at 4:00 p.m. This is a chance for you to hear about the negotiations process and to give feedback directly to us.
2. Participate in your site surveys. Site Reps have been asked to complete a site survey for your school as a whole. The purpose of this survey is to alert the Negotiation Team to specific needs of your school, particularly if there is a pattern of repeated problems.
3. Participate in the individual phone survey. The Bargaining Advisory Committee and the Negotiations Team are calling PSTA members randomly to solicit feedback. Please be thinking about any concerns you have. What issues should be our priorities? If you are not called or are unavailable to talk when we do call, please contact us at your convenience.
4. Contact us. Please use the e-mail or phone number below to send the Negotiations Team any information you believe we should know. It could be issues you are experiencing or your views on what our priorities should be this year.
Sincerely,
Richard Bomar
PSTA Negotiations Chair
sosciman@aol.com
760-409-4210
PSUSD School Board Elections!!!
Congratulations to the new and incumbent Board Members:
Karen Cornett, Gary Jeandron, & Justin Blake
Public Service Announcements
PSTA is looking for volunteers to be a part of a PSA campaign to create a positive education presence in our communities.
Volunteers would be creating a 10-20 second spot speaking to their commitment to public education and offering a special tip of how we can all ensure our student's success in school. We know it is a group effort so we are hoping to encourage all interested parties to become in involved in our student's education - parents, community members and the students' themselves.
If you are interested in writing the scripts, creating backdrops or being filmed and featured as a spokesperson for education, please contact our office.
760-416-9293.
Collective Bargaining Evaluation - PowerPoint
"Should the Harlem Children's Zone be used as a national model?" NY Times 10/12 <Click Here>
After September 20, 2010, all members who now obtain specialty medications from PrecisionRx Specialty Solutions (PRxSS) will obtain them from CuraScript, the Express Scripts specialty pharmacy. We will continue managing specialty pharmacy drug programs and will continue to provide a dedicated account service team. Members will keep their existing ID cards and numbers, Customer Service phone numbers, drug lists and benefit designs. However, specialty pharmacy members and website users will experience some changes upon migration.
What Isn't Changing:
- CuraScript order processing times are very similar to the member experience with PRxSS. Rather than targeting a turnaround time, CuraScript targets a required patient delivery date
- PRxSS will transfer to CuraScript any prescriptions that have remaining refills on active prescriptions less than one year old. The member will be able to place the refill orders online or by phone
- Members taking specialty medications should continue to use the same phone number (800-870-6419) and email address (specialtycustomerservice@express-scripts.com) they use today.
- All customer service hours remain the same
- Health plan-specific specialty drug lists remain the same.
What's Changing:
- Existing specialty pharmacy customers may notice changes to the automated phone system.
- The color and layout of paperwork in order packages from CuraScript will differ from what PRxSS used
- Customers may notice that their prescriptions are being filled at any of the three main CuraScript facilities (Indianapolis, IN, Orlando, FL, or New Castle, DE), but prescriptions could also be filled by other, smaller CuraScript facilities
- CuraScript will be the brand on all specialty pharmacy packages, label names and practice of pharmacy communication.
- CuraScript will offer its CareLogic clinical programs to transitioning PRxSS patients; these programs include those that PRxSS offers today.
Web Experience
Members may access our website for specialty pharmacy information and online tools. If they currently use our website to access their health plan information, they can now review their specialty pharmacy information there as well. After September 20, though, when they view their pharmacy information through our website, they will be redirected to the Express Scripts website and may be asked to provide registration information. This information will be used to manage their pharmacy benefits and preferences for communication and privacy.
Through our website, members will be able to use many of the web enhancements listed below to help them better manage their specialty medications:
- Review up to 18 months of prescription history
- Schedule refills for certain specialty medications (some medications require the patient to call)
- See when orders have shipped or are processing
- Choose from a variety of payment methods
- Set required delivery date for specialty medications
- Order supply kits, if needed
- View specialty and home delivery medications, if applicable, filled by Express Scripts on the same web page
The PRxSS website, precisionrxspecialtysolutions.com, will be retired after September 20, 2010. Those who visit precisionrxspecialtysolutions.com after that date will be re-directed to curascript.com.
Member communications
Beginning September 3, current PRxSS customers will be sent mailings, which include Frequently Asked Questions, to explain the transition.
Background
In late 2009, our parent company completed a deal to sell its NextRx pharmacy benefit management subsidiaries - including PrecisionRx Specialty Solutions, the specialty pharmacy - to Express Scripts, and subsequently entered into a contract with Express Scripts to provide certain operational and administrative support for our prescription drug plans. As a result, customers will gain the advantage of best-in-class programs from both organizations and integration of their medical and pharmacy benefits from leaders in their respective fields.
If you have questions, please feel free to contact your sales representative.
[Full Disclosure: I’m an independent marketing consultant who works with ASCD on communicating about their products and stirring up trouble whenever I can.]
Last week, all H E double-hockey-sticks broke loose in the education community when the Los Angeles Times announced that it was going to publish a series of articles called Grading the Teachers that would ostensibly show “how effective Los Angeles Unified School District teachers have been at improving their students' performance on standardized tests.” The article that followed the announcement went so far as to identify to the public individual teachers as being “effective” or “ineffective” based on an evaluation method known as “value added” analysis.
Although US Secretary of Education Arne Duncan was fine with it, most people remotely related to education were not. Two prominent ASCD authors and commentators Diane Ravitch and Rick Hess, who often don’t see eye-to-eye on school policy-related matters, had no problem agreeing that the LAT’s public outing of teachers was out of line.
Ravitch criticized the LAT for using test scores alone as a basis for teacher evaluation, while Hess said the LAT’s treatment of teachers “confuses as much as it clarifies, puts more stress on primitive systems than they can bear, and promises to unnecessarily entangle a useful management tool in personalities and public reputations.”
A big problem with the LAT’s approach is that the value added methodology really doesn’t work for many reasons, as Daniel Willingham explains here.
Willingham also has a nifty animated video on YouTube that is probably the most easily digestible analysis of the many flaws with value added evaluation.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uONqxysWEk8&feature=player_embedded
Despite these misgivings with value added measurements of teachers’ performance, other states appear to be moving ahead with this approach. Part of the reason for this is that the federal government is requiring these types of evaluations in order to qualify for competitive grants such as Race to the Top. So the pressure will continue to build to evaluate teachers based on student test scores, at least in part.
ASCD has been looking at teacher evaluation for years. Ten years ago, two giants in the field Charlotte Danielson and Thomas McGreal wrote Teacher Evaluation for Professional Practice which emphasizes the role of professional development in teacher evaluation. In their third chapter, they explain that an effective teacher evaluation system has “three essential elements:”
”• A coherent definition of the domain of teaching (the ‘What?’), including decisions concerning the standard for acceptable performance (‘How good is good enough?’).
• Techniques and procedures for assessing all aspects of teaching (the ‘How?’).
• Trained evaluators who can make consistent judgments about performance, based on evidence of the teaching as manifested in the procedures.”
Four years later, ASCD published Linking Teacher Evaluation and Student Learning by Pamela D. Tucker and James H. Stronge. Their take is that teacher evaluations, in order to be effective, really need to include “objective data” of student learning, which could include test scores. They look at four different types of evaluation systems that incorporate objective data, including student work samples, standards-based criteria, student goal setting, and yes, value-added assessment. But Tucker and Stronge also point out that
”Accountability should be thought of as a collective responsibility for supporting learning by parents, principals, superintendents, school board members, and teachers, to say nothing of the students themselves. Holding teachers accountable for student achievement without recognition of the roles played by these other partners in the educational process is patently unfair and can amount to scapegoating.”
(emphasis not added)
So, safe to say that these ASCD authors wouldn’t approve of what happened in LA either.
Will the type of incident that happened in LA likely occur again? No doubt, the pressure to implement widespread teacher evaluations isn’t going to go away. But until there’s more clarity about how to do it, these types of public humiliations should not be repeated. And before there are more of these kinds of incidents, educators can develop approaches to teacher evaluation that are more fair and effective. What do you think?
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/california-politics/2010/08/students-to-get-a-voice-on-teacher-performance-under-new-state-law.html
August 26, 2010 | 12:48 pm | LA Times
ACSD SmartBrief
High school students will get a chance to say what they think of their teachers under a bill signed by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.
SB 1422, which was opposed by the California Teachers Assn., allows the student government at high schools to develop a survey of student opinions about their classes and "teacher effectiveness." Teachers may then circulate the surveys to the students in their classes to get feedback.
Under the bill, the survey results would only be shared with the teacher whose class is surveyed: Administrators would not see the surveys and the results would not go into the teachers’ personnel files.
Sen. Gloria Romero (D-Los Angeles) said the goal of her bill is to provide a way for teachers to incorporate student feedback into their teaching methods and curriculum. The proposal was the top priority of the California Assn. of Student Councils, she said.
"The students said. 'We want a voice in evaluating the people who teach us,''' Romero said after the bill was signed Wednesday. Schwarzenegger wants to go further in evaluating teachers, said spokesman Matt Connelly, who added, "This bill is a small step in the right direction when it comes to looking at teacher effectiveness in our schools.’’
-- Patrick McGreevy
Twitter: @latpoliticsca
Facebook: latimes
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