Jersey Jazzman read Carol Burris’s account of her “training” sessions where she was being “calibrated” by people who know how to calibrate principals.
He saw behind the smokescreen.
The goal is to create a system so “objective” that principals have no room for judgment and teachers may be fired by those allegedly objective criteria.
We must have standards! We must stack and rank our employees! Where have we heard that before?
The answer is in the link.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
This sounds like what happened when courts decided to ‘calibrate’ people who commit crimes. Three strikes and you’re out in California, no matter what the offense. Draconian drug sentences in New York. Judges’ hands are tied when legislators think they can ‘calibrate’ life. If administrators don’t fight back this time, how can they expect teachers to find a voice?
In PA principals will be rated on the correlation between student value added scores and their rating on the rubric.
See slide 16 http://www.portal.state.pa.us/portal/http://www.portal.state.pa.us;80/portal/server.pt/gateway/PTARGS_0_148494_1275389_0_0_18/Measuring%20Principal%20Effectiveness.pdf
There you go…. it is a way to force compliance. And to make test scores trump all.
I’m surprised TN hasn’t already made a similar pronouncement. The TN Dept of Ed considers value-added to be inerrant. So, when there’s a disparity between an observation score and a TVAAS score, the fault, of course, lies with the administrator. From their review of TEAM evaluation released last summer:
“In many cases, evaluators are telling teachers they exceed expectations in their observation feedback when in fact student outcomes paint a very different picture. This behavior skirts managerial responsibility and ensures that districts fail to align professional development for teachers in a way that focuses on the greatest areas of need . . . This disparity between student results and observations signifies an unequal application of the evaluation system throughout the state.” (32)
In their scolding of evaluators for a disparity between teachers scoring a 1 on the observation and a 1 on TVAAS (far more scored 1 on TVAAS), they conveniently ignore the greater disparities at Level 4 and 5 that are plain as day in a chart in the same report:
Level 4
TVAAS 11.9%
Observation 53%
Level 5
TVAAS 31.9%
Observation 23.2%
I wrote to them and asked if they’d considered the possibility that the disparity stems from flaws in value-added (I included links to several studies). I also asked why they didn’t harp on administrators for inflating Level 4 scores or not scoring enough teachers at Level 5, since by their logic, TVAAS is the most accurate measure. My questions were met with circumlocution and a “we’ll just have to agree to disagree” sentiment.
I’ve heard about the need to rank employees from newly elected board members and budget hawks who are convinced that if we ran schools like a business it would be much more efficient and effective. These folks can be disabused of this notion when they discover that the teacher their child detested was beloved by another colleague’s child and vice versa. Judging the qualities of a teacher is much more difficult than judging the performance of an assembly line worker or salesman.
If only these newly elected board members and budget hawks would understand that “efficient” and “effective” are two different, and not necessarily related, things.
Just my opinion, but as a high school classroom teacher for 18 years, I don’t have a great opinion of administrators. I think, by and large, they were inadequate, unhappy teachers who transitioned into administrators and brought their inadequacies into a bigger arena. Happy at last to be making a decent salary, and have some power and say over the educational environment, they would do NOTHING to rock the boat, and go along with anything even if it made no sense whatsoever. Keep the school board happy, keep the superintendent happy, keep the parents happy….keep teachers happy???, nope, didn’t even figure into the mix, after all, someone has to be blamed.
This new evaluation process in the hands of the most robotic personnel in the educational system? It’s definitely the end, this will seal the system’s fate.
We know that the best schools have a collaborative culture focused on ensuing high levels of learning for all students. This is diametrically opposed to the rush to metrics and calibration, which fosters competition and paranoia. We have got to take back our profession!
Amen!
Robotic indeed, and with it we give up what matters in teaching, learning and learning to teach: human relationships, contestation, uncertainty, collaboration.
In teacher education we are pushing teacher educators aside to impose the edTPA, for which calibration is also required. So is a non-disclosure agreement, so teacher educators won’t be writing any pesky blogs like Carol’s that expose the dangerous nonsense. And don’t forget that there is money being made here. Lots. As states like NY require the edTPA for certification, think of the money when each student teacher pays upwards of $300 to have their student teaching scored by a calibrated scorer (which scorer is hired per scored edTPA–no contract, no benefits, cheap!).
Read more–this is coming to you if it is not already there:
http://atthechalkface.com/2013/02/04/pearson-comes-to-teacher-education-and-we-are-supposed-to-be-cool-with-that/
Ahhh! You nailed it!! Robotics and the measuring of human capacity
and capital. Reduce the most important element of our society, our children, to the measured, assessed, evaluated, and labeled (value-added or discarded) to the self-serve future of the unseen architects
of these Rhee-forms and Rhee-formers! But first you have to have the tool (our educated and certified administrators) to be that instrument for the real culprits to satify their ends. A society with many tiers neatly living in each others shadows much like human history around the planet.
As the trains take our prisoners (the pushed through dropped out and hopeless) from over populated government cells in the NE to the rented for profit prisons across the country (go West young felon! a greed industry with a solution for a ready made low wage earner to rebuild our infrastructure with a cheap workforce) with nobody really caring but everyone having had a hand in this. How convenient and put in place over the last twenty years. Walls around cities and now
the prospect of drones (robotic air surveilance).
We are historically sitting on the edge of yesterday, while our children are being thrust into a new world order of tomorrow and by our own hand and ignorance or apathy. Cold, expedient, efficient, measured, like the lines in the concentration camps of Nazi Germany where human fodder could be used for everything from a lamp shade to the experiments of medical maniacs. Too harsh?! Tragically, I think not! And not that long ago in the history of “civilized” human beings.
The silverlining is that humans have a capacity to rise up and find a way to survive. But for that they need to awaken before it is too late for their children. This takes more then hope and prayer, it takes self will and action in concert with each other.
They are off course turning observations into a standardized, multiple choice test.
As a student, I took the time to do a quick search of peer reviewed journals. I used the search term “stack ranking.” As yet, I have been unable to locate any research t support this practice.
The interconnected pieces of these reforms center on technical, easily quantified bits of data. This approach is essentially alienating and dehumanizing. Initiatives have infiltrated k-12 and are leaving human detritus behind. Soon, when the edTPA has reinforced a compliant, “data-driven” teacher workforce, no one will even understand the need to resist.
The edTPA is the next insidious step. Attention must be paid!
i guess I have a dark picture of at least half of the principals I’ve had to deal with (make that suffer under), so grading/stacking, whatever is just sharing the pain of the Rhee/Duncan/Jeb, etc. group! One thing’s for sure; there are many more sub par principals than teachers in my three decade long career’s experience, and in their positions of power, they are far more destructive to teachers and students alike!
Calibration……. of people…… Really? Seems rather Orwellian to me. Anyway – down here in Gates County Florida (the County formerly known as Hillsborough), we pay some fine entrepreneurs calling themselves “Cambridge Education” $500,000 every time they come down to “calibrate” our evaluators. Every principal and AP, along with the cadre of hundreds of District Evaluators, must be kept in constant calibration. If you look at the document linked just below, you can share the madness.
Click to access Attch_20121023_13429_000.pdf
You will read of fidelity standards for “calibration”. Our district people must “agree” with the “experts” on 50% of the items scored. They can only be out-of-synch by one level on the “errors”. One rating is allowed to be off by 2 levels (there are only 4 levels).
Here comes the fun part. Cambridge has multiple calibrationers? calibrators? calibrationists? – not really sure what they are. Presumably, they are periodically “calibrated” to the big-dog himself (the room goes silent in awe of this education Deity). I don’t know anything about the big-dog, but (insert gender neutral personal pronoun here) must be as special as Michelle Rhee.
Back to the story. Cambridge calibration consultants are calibrated to the ONE, and for argument’s sake, must maintain the same fidelity demanded of our people. Thus, 50% of all ratings can be one level on either side of the big-kahuna. Important part – “on either side”. That means they can have a span of three levels (again – there are only four).
Now comes the punchline. When these slightly-less-than-perfect calibration collaborators calibrate our people, the same 50%, off one level, acceptable “error” exists. Get it? We started with a worst case calibratologist error of 50% spread over three levels; the multiplicative effect of error now brings this to100% of District evaluators can be off by all four levels! Even if Michelle Rhee and Beverly Hall came to Tampa with a semi-truck full of erasers could this be fixed.
I presented my findings to the Gates County School Board. Eyes glazed over at “multiplicative effect of error”. They wrote the $500,000 check. Meanwhile, the District Superintendent (a Gates disciple) attempted to vaporize me with her stare. I’ll post the video clip from that Board meeting somewhere. It was a hoot.
Nationwide, we need to put responsible people on local School Boards. The fight to save public education must be fought on all levels. You don’t need to understand “multiplicative effect of error”; you just need to be a conscientious enough public steward to recognize a potential problem when it is presented to you. Don’t sign the check until you have asked for unbiased explanations.
But hey – it’s only Federal RTT money – it’s not like we are spending our own. Anyway, if we don’t spend it, it will go to waste.