Education Issues 2012 #3

Changing Direction, Teaching as a Career, Investment in Education, VAM in Teacher Training

(Click on the titles below to read the complete articles.)

NSBA President’s letter to Obama: please change direction!

We want for each American child the same things that you and Michelle want for Sasha and Malia—inspiration, aspiration, creativity. I know you don’t want an overemphasis on testing. I have heard you say it. Experience in schools and communities, supported by research, tells us that relentlessly focusing on standardized tests erodes our national competitiveness and deadens curiosity and drive. Clearly, we need some testing to gauge student learning, and we have no problem with appropriate accountability. But we have swung to a far extreme that is significantly hurting children. “Students are numbing over testing for testing’s sake…. We can’t test this country into excellence.” (Sonny Savoie, LA)

...the present narrow focus on accountability and trend of demonizing those in public education, arrogantly focusing on “failing schools,” is diametrically opposed to fostering excellence.

Mr. President, public education in the U.S. is on the wrong track. As we have moved decision-making farther from teachers and children, we have jeopardized our competitive edge and keys to our national success: our ingenuity, our openness to innovation, and our creativity.

The Hardest Job Everyone Thinks They Can Do

Are there billionaires who insist on making public policy for professions other than teaching? Does money qualify one as an expert in public education? How about attendance? Does having attended school give one the expertise needed to improve public education?

Can anyone be a teacher? Does it take any special training or development?

I realize now how little respect teachers get. Teaching is the toughest job everyone who’s never done it thinks they can do. I admit, I was guilty of these delusions myself. When I decided to make the switch from “doing” science to “teaching” science, I found out that I had to go back to school to get a teaching credential.

“What the f—?!?,” I screamed to any friends willing to put up with my griping. “I have a Ph.D.! Why do I need to go back to get a lousy teaching credential?!?”

I was baffled. How could I, with my advanced degree in biology, not be qualified to teach biology?!

Well, those school administrators were a stubborn bunch. I simply couldn’t get a job without a credential. And so, I begrudgingly enrolled in a secondary teaching credential program.

And boy, were my eyes opened. I understand now.

Teachers deserve our trust

No other profession is as readily dismissed in debates about their work. Politicians, businesspeople, parents, Treasury - we all know better how to "fix" the education system. Teachers matter, everyone agrees; but mostly when we're looking to apportion blame for education failure.

No Funds Left Behind

Why is it that those people who send their children to expensive private schools or well funded public schools are the ones who cry the loudest that money doesn't matter in education?

Last spring, as the Texas Legislature debated massive cuts to public schools—one of many desperate measures to close a $27 billion biennial budget deficit—10,000 protesters massed in Austin for a “Save Our Schools” rally. In the end, the damage to the state’s already-underfunded schools added up to $5.4 billion, forcing districts to lay off tens of thousands of teachers and staffers. In the city of Austin, public schools with rapidly growing enrollment found themselves facing a 5.5 percent cut in the 2011–2012 school year and 8.5 percent the next year. The quandary was far from extraordinary—37 states spent less on education in 2011 compared to 2010. Neither was one of the Austin schools’ solutions: seeking grant money from the world’s largest philanthropic organization, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

Ed Dept seeks to bring test-based assessment to teacher prep programs

We know that using Value Added Method (VAM) to evaluate teachers -- evaluating teachers using student test scores -- isn't valid. Why would the US Department of Education want to extend that use to evaluate teacher training institutions?

The Education Department just tried — and failed — to persuade a group of negotiators to agree to regulations that would rate colleges of education in large part on how K-12 students being taught by their graduates perform on standardized tests. As part of this scheme, financial aid to students in these programs would not be based entirely on need but, rather, would also be linked to test scores.

The department’s plans assume that standardized test scores can reliably and validly be used for such accountability purposes . Most researchers in this field say they can’t — for a number of reasons, including the limitations of the tests themselves — and therefore shouldn’t be used for any high stakes decision in education anywhere. They say that making test scores so important is one of the negative consequences of the last decade of No Child Left Behind, and shouldn’t be continued.

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Evaluate Pediatricians using Child's Growth?

Parents Across America suggests that using a Value Added Model for evaluating teachers is like using children's physical growth to evaluate pediatricians...

What’s next? Judging pediatricians on patient “growth”?

Judging pediatricians on the changes in the height and weight of their young patients as measured at their annual physicals from one year to the next makes just as much sense as using student “growth” on annual standardized reading and math tests to evaluate teachers.

But that’s just what the Chicago Public Schools will be doing beginning this fall, despite warnings from some 100 local education experts, who spoke out last week about the dangers of this evaluation model. Chicago Public Schools is rushing into a system in which test scores will soon account for up to 40% of a teacher’s job evaluation.

Click here to read the entire article.

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Evaluating Pediatricians like Teachers

Parents Across America suggests that using a Value Added Model for evaluating teachers is like using children's physical growth to evaluate pediatricians...

What’s next? Judging pediatricians on patient “growth”?

Judging pediatricians on the changes in the height and weight of their young patients as measured at their annual physicals from one year to the next makes just as much sense as using student “growth” on annual standardized reading and math tests to evaluate teachers.

But that’s just what the Chicago Public Schools will be doing beginning this fall, despite warnings from some 100 local education experts, who spoke out last week about the dangers of this evaluation model. Chicago Public Schools is rushing into a system in which test scores will soon account for up to 40% of a teacher’s job evaluation.

Click here to read the entire article.

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Education Issues 2012 #2

Testing, Corporate Reform, Teacher Evaluation, Job Qualifications, ALEC, Arne Duncan,
Fiction vs. Non-Fiction

(Click on the titles below to read the complete articles.)

Testing isn't teaching

To understand how tests and learning become enemies, imagine the impact on teachers whose job security suddenly depends on the inappropriate application of a statistical model that almost all assessment experts warn cannot validly measure teachers' performance.

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Coming Soon to a School Near You: Big Ed

Corporate America has given us Big Banks - banks too big to fail. Corporate America has given us Big Pharma - a pharmaceutical industry too big to fight. Coming soon to a school near you, courtesy of corporate America: Big Ed - a centralized education system too big to question its self-serving, profit-driven, intellect-destroying priorities.

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Stephen Krashen on Teacher Evaluations

Stephen Krashen, professor emeritus at the University of Southern California, responds to a USA Today article about evaluating teachers using test scores.

A number of studies have shown that rating teachers using test score gains does not give consistent results. Different tests produce different ratings, and the same teacher's ratings can vary from year to year, sometimes quite a bit.

In addition, using test score gains for evaluation encourages gaming the system, trying to produce increases in scores by teaching test-taking strategies, not by encouraging real learning. This is like putting a match under the thermometer and claiming you have raised the temperature of the room.

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The Tragedy of Education Transformation: Leadership without Expertise

Professional degrees in education and experience in the classroom don't matter. So say some politicians who have no professional degrees in education or experience in the classroom.

South Carolina's Superintendent of Education Mick Zais makes several claims in The State (March 25, 2012) that build on one central argument: "The most important information about teachers isn’t the degrees they have or their years of seniority. Their effectiveness in the classroom matters much, much more."

Like Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, Zais has no experience teaching children in K-12 public education. This complete lack of teaching experience and degrees in the field of education is a suspect position from which to claim that these two characteristics do not matter. In fact, political appointees and elected officials sit in unique positions often above both accountability (the mantra du jour of the political elite regarding education) and qualifications—unlike the real world markets they often praise.

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Lobbyists, Guns and Money

ALEC isn’t single-handedly responsible for the corporatization of our political life; its influence is as much a symptom as a cause. But shining a light on ALEC and its supporters — a roster that includes many companies, from AT&T and Coca-Cola to UPS, that have so far managed to avoid being publicly associated with the hard-right agenda — is one good way to highlight what’s going on. And that kind of knowledge is what we need to start taking our country back.

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Condi Rice-Joel Klein report: Not the new ‘A Nation at Risk’

The report cites lots of statistics that paint public schools in the worst possible light, and continues the trend of comparing America’s educational system with that of high-achieving countries — but doesn’t note that these countries generally don’t do the kinds of things these reformers endorse. Its recommendations would lead to further privatization of public schools and even more emphasis on standardized testing.

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Flunking Arne Duncan

Diane Ravitch gives US Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan, a report card.

Secretary of Education Arne Duncan loves evaluation. He insists that everyone should willingly submit to public grading of the work they do. The Race to the Top program he created for the Obama Administration requires states to evaluate all teachers based in large part on the test scores of their students. When the Los Angeles Times released public rankings that the newspaper devised for thousands of teachers, Duncan applauded and asked, “What’s there to hide?” Given Duncan’s enthusiasm for grading educators, it seems high time to evaluate his own performance as Secretary of Education.

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Fiction vs. Non-Fiction

Does non-fiction help children learn to read better than fiction? Maybe if you define "learn to read" as "passing a standardized test."

See also Keith Oatley's Scientific American article (Nov. 2011) Fiction Hones Social Skills.

The first article below touts a study showing that non-fiction helps students learn to read better than fiction.

Nonfiction Curriculum Enhanced Reading Skills, Study Finds

Children in New York City who learned to read using an experimental curriculum that emphasized nonfiction texts outperformed those at other schools that used methods that have been encouraged since the Bloomberg administration’s early days, according to a new study...

Howard Gardner, professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, responds.

Reading Curriculums

To the Editor:

Re “Nonfiction Curriculum Enhanced Reading Skills, Study Finds” (news article, March 12): It is instructive to know that second graders who received a Core Knowledge curriculum performed better than comparison groups on measures of reading. But every choice of curriculum — and, more important, every choice of an assessment measure — entails a value judgment.

Those educators who selected a reading program that valued fictional works presumably thought that was an appropriate emphasis. It is now up to those educators to provide measures that might reveal better performances on their curriculum — for example, richer imaginations by students or a greater likelihood of reading books of any sort outside the school environment.

HOWARD GARDNER
Cambridge, Mass., March 12, 2012

...and Neuroscience responds...

Your Brain on Fiction

Reading great literature, it has long been averred, enlarges and improves us as human beings. Brain science shows this claim is truer than we imagined.

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Education Issues: 2012 #1

Teacher Satisfaction and Morale, Corporate Reformers, Charters, ALEC, New York City Teacher Evaluations

The MetLife Survey of the American Teacher

Teachers are less satisfied with their careers; in the past two years there has been a significant decline in teachers’ satisfaction with their profession. In one of the most dramatic findings of the report, teacher satisfaction has decreased by 15 points since the MetLife Survey of the American Teacher measured job satisfaction two years ago, now reaching the lowest level of job satisfaction seen in the survey series in more than two decades. This decline in teacher satisfaction is coupled with large increases in the number of teachers who indicate that they are likely to leave teaching for another occupation and in the number who do not feel their jobs are secure.

‘You are so smart…why did you become a teacher?’

One of my finest teachers was near tears the other day. Her student had asked her, “You are so smart…why did you become a teacher?” Within the context of this teacher-bashing climate, that remark was just too much to bear, and I hugged her as she cried. Less than a mile away, her Governor had thumped on a podium at Molloy College saying “if they want the money, perform” as though she and her colleagues were trained seals.

Got Dough? How Billionaires Rule Our Schools

Drilling students on sample questions for weeks before a state test will not improve their education. The truly excellent charter schools depend on foundation money and their prerogative to send low-performing students back to traditional public schools. They cannot be replicated to serve millions of low-income children. Yet the reform movement, led by Gates, Broad, and Walton, has convinced most Americans who have an opinion about education (including most liberals) that their agenda deserves support.

Corporate Foxes in the IN DOE Henhouse: The Chain School Gospel of Jeb Bush, Jon Hage and WalMart

When the Indiana Charter School Board recently approved two new Charter Schools USA schools to open in Indianapolis, the corporate school honeymoon was on. The East Indianapolis Charter Academy and the South Indianapolis Charter Academy, Charter Schools USA claimed, would be “feeder schools” for students to eventually enter the three other Indiana public schools the Florida for-profit company will be handed $2 million yearly to “turnaround.” “Feeder schools” is an appropriate term, for what these schools do is “feed” taxpayer’s money to Charter Schools USA (CS USA) and whatever other for-profit companies it brings to Indiana.

A Smart ALEC Threatens Public Education

A legislative contagion seemed to sweep across the Midwest during the early months of 2011. First, Wisconsin legislators wanted to strip public employees of the right to bargain. Then, Indiana legislators got into the act. Then, it was Ohio. In each case, Republican governors and Republican-controlled state legislatures had introduced substantially similar bills that sought sweeping changes to each state’s collective bargaining statutes and various school funding provisions.

What was going on? How could elected officials in multiple states suddenly introduce essentially the same legislation?

The answer: The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC).

A Dark Day for New York

Last week, with Cuomo's deadline looming, the state and the unions reached an agreement. It says that 20 percent of teachers' evaluation will be based on the state tests and another 20 percent on locally designed tests, or on the state tests used in a different way. (It's the same scores, used for the same purpose; I have no idea how those scores might be used in "a different way,") The remaining 60 percent is supposed to consist of classroom observations and other measures. All teachers must be rated on a scale from 0 to 100, using these multiple measures. This draconian point system will guarantee that a teacher with a perfect 60 out of 60 on teaching skill will nonetheless be judged "ineffective" if he or she is in the ineffective range on scores. As it now stands, the rating system is so bizarre that a teacher could be rated effective in all three categories and still be rated "ineffective" overall.

Secretary Duncan hailed the pact and urged other governors to follow Cuomo's example. I am sure that Secretary Duncan knows that President Barack Obama wants teachers to "stop teaching to the test," as he said in his State of the Union address, and to teach with "creativity and passion."

Does anyone seriously believe that teachers in New York state will dare to stop teaching to the test? How many will be fired if they take that risk?

In addition to the parties involved, charter school supporters hailed the agreement, which was odd because teachers in charter schools will not be subject to its provisions.

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Test Based Teacher Evaluations Released in NYC

New York City has released evaluation numbers based on student test scores for city teachers. The teachers union has argued that personnel information should be protected from publication and when the evaluation was first begun, then chancellor Joel Klein promised that, because the procedure was "experimental," it would be held in strict confidence. The administration, however, has reneged on that promise and has released the information.

Last week the newspapers in New York City published the results on tens of thousands of teachers.

Testing experts know that using student test scores to evaluate teachers is neither valid nor reliable. Diane Ravitch wrote in How to Demoralize Teachers,

Most testing experts believe that value-added assessment has many technical problems that reduce its validity and reliability. The most recent research review appears in the current issue of the Phi Delta Kappan. Unfortunately, advocates of measuring teacher quality by student test scores never let research or evidence or, in New York City's case, unequivocal commitments to privacy, get in their way.

The backlash against teachers has begun. Here's the story of one NY teacher who was the subject of misinformation, harassment and personal humiliation.

The True Story of Pascale Mauclair

As in many other cases, the story of Pascale Mauclair and P.S. 11 begins with a tale of the flawed methodology and invalid measurements of the Teacher Data Reports.

P.S. 11 is located at the epicenter of a number of different immigrant communities in northern Queens, and over a quarter of its students are English Language Learners. Mauclair is an ESL teacher, and over the last five years she has had small, self-contained classes of recently arrived immigrants who do not speak English. Her students arrive at different times of the school year, depending upon that date of their family’s migration; consequently, it is not unusual for her students to take the 6th grade exams when they have only been in her class for a matter of a few months. Two factors which produce particularly contorted TDR results – teaching the highest academic need students and having a small sample of students that take the standardized state exams – define her teaching situation.

If a journalist with integrity had examined the TDR data, a number of red flags which suggested something was seriously amiss with the scores for Mauclair and P.S. 11 would have presented themselves.

Read the complete story here.
More on the New York City teacher evaluations here and here.

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