At a panel discussion in New York City, Bridgeport Superintendent Paul Vallas made a startling admission. He said that the efforts to develop a teacher evaluation metric was a huge mess and that no one understands it.
He said:
“The Bridgeport, Conn. superintendent — who has served stints in Chicago, Philadelphia, and New Orleans and earned a reputation as a turnaround consultant for struggling districts with big budget gaps — said reforms he backed were at risk of collapsing “under the weight of how complicated we’re making it.”
“We’re working on the evaluation system right now,” Vallas said of Bridgeport. “And I’ll tell you, it is a nightmare.” Vallas went further and said: ““We’re losing the communications game because we don’t have a good message to communicate,” he said. In separate comments, Vallas criticized evaluations as a “testing industrial complex” and “a system where you literally have binders on individual teachers with rubrics that are so complicated … that they’ll just make you suicidal.”
A nightmare, yes. A testing-industrial complex, yes.
Professor Audrey Amrein Beardsley at Arizona State has written extensively about teacher evaluation and in her most recent study–not yet published–she reports the results of a 50-state survey. Not a single state has figured out how to use the value-added data to help teachers, and–get this–in every state the formulae are so complex that no one understands them other than those who created them. And the billions invested in this nutty endeavor are supposed to improve education!
David Coleman, as is his wont, was provocative. “Coleman was perhaps the night’s most outspoken panelist, at one point suggesting that those who believe that poverty is an insurmountable obstacle to improving student achievement should offer to cut teacher salaries and redistribute those funds to the poor.”
Why would he suggest cutting teachers’ salaries to reduce poverty? Why not start with the billionaires? I don’t understand this comment or his logic at all. Do you?
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Let’s start by cutting Coleman’s salary, since he adds no value to anyone except corporate profits and his own bank account
Oh, teacher ken, he sold the GROW Network to PGCPS 9 years ago. We (elementary schools) got in-serviced on it the last day of work for teachers in June 2004 and never used it again.
Agreed! How can anyone have faith in Coleman’s educational initiatives when he continually utters such nonsense?
Reblogged this on Crazy Crawfish's Blog and commented:
This is the previous New orleans RSD Superintendent explaining how their VAM system has created a “nightmare” “testing industrial complex” that will “make you suicidal” trying to figure out.
Unfortunately it looks like while Louisiana was one of the first states to run headlong onto the VAM wagon, if reports that our own system is widely accepted unfair, incomplete, corrupted by politicians, and largely inaccurate doesn’t sway people to s. crap it, we’ll likely be the last ones off the wagon too.
Why must we always be first and last in the worst categories?
It’s only a problem if it creates more work for Vallas. Now he can’t moonlight looking for new disasters to exploit and cash in on. His name is crap here too other than a few fawning political bozos. They are easily impressed and not too bright.
“Professor Audrey Amrein Beardsley at Arizona State has written extensively about teacher evaluation and in her most recent study–not yet published–she reports the results of a 50-state survey. Not a single state has figured out how to use the value-added data to help teachers, and–get this–in every state the formulae are so complex that no one understands them other than those who created them. And the billions invested in this nutty endeavor are supposed to improve education!”
Are the formulae public? I would very much like to see a sample formula (any state will do), but don’t know where/how to find it.
I’m in Georgia where we use Student Growth Percentiles. I have yet to see a formula for our state, but we have many explanations given to us. I’ve decided from the explanations that even the ones trying to explain the process do not truly understand what they are talking about. Because, if they did, they would know that reranking students based on percentiles does not measure growth in learning.
Hi Tony,
Did you take the survey that the state DOE put out about SGPs/teacher keys etc?
Sort of like push polling, (tell us how much the “data” has helped you be a better all around human being and improve your teaching in every conceivable way) but there are places to add your own comments!
Thanks! I was able to find some websites by searching for “Student Growth Percentiles.”
Several are part of state government websites. I have not yet been able to locate a formula.
Go to Bruce Baker’s site, School Finance 101 to find out why SGPs are just as bad as VAM.
Here is the formula Michelle Rhee and Jason Kamras created for DCPS several years back. It took Mr. Kamras several months to supply it to a teacher.
Thank you!!
Vallas was a disaster in New Orleans, it’s amazing how such a noted corporate reformer can make such a logical statement. But every now and then he slipped in New Orleans and say something that made sense, but shortly afterwards he was pushing the failed corporate reforms.
Is Paul Vallas now a superintendent? In Chicago he was the Chief Executive Officer appointed by the mayor. One of his first actions was to introduce the program Direct Instruction, a rote learning program in which children repeated what the teacher said. This was learning ! !
A colleague and I obtained a summary of research from the High Scope Educational Foundation comparing children in a traditional nursery curriculum, a Direct Instruction curriculum, and the High Scope curriculum. Children in Direct Instruction by the age of mid-twenties had three times the number of felony arrests – assault with a deadly weapon – as the children who were in the other programs.. Instead of learning social skills along with language and math, they spent most of the time being parrots. We sent this information to Mr. Vallas and instead of revising his ideas, he quietly put pressure on principals to implement it. We spoke at the Chicago Public School budget hearing and discovered that his Chief Education Officer and his Chief Accountability Officer looked absolutely surprised. He had never shared our information with them. Our influence was reported in Catalyst, the education reform magazine in Chicago.
Direct Instruction was promoted by the NCLB Reading First grants. Qui Tam suits should have been filed.
http://choosingdemocracy.blogspot.com/2006/09/reading-first-fraud-bush-cronyism.html
http://www.schoolsmatter.info/2011/01/succs-for-all-from-one-form-of-scripted.html
In a speech delivered on October 6, 2007, David Coleman’s mother, Elizabeth Coleman, president of Bennington College, said that, “I knew we and our students would be focused laser-like on the huge question of what it will take to do something about the abysmal condition of education in this country.”
Abysmal.
Mother Coleman seems to have a better understanding of poverty than Junior. “At a time when the wealth of the world is expanding dramatically, human suffering, because of horrendous poverty, expands at a similar, maybe greater pace.” Perhaps, David could do a little more study and see where he can connect the dots between horrendous poverty and the “abysmal condition of education”.
Her son’s social skills are abysmal. She should have focused on teaching: respect, integrity, compassion, empathy and humility. They both could use a few courses in child development.
Gosh, that Davey Coleman is one daring, provocative, forward-thinking dude!
Yeah, I don’t think I’ll ever buy another Coleman lantern, stove or tent again because of him!!
Don’t trust Vallas! He’s probably got something up his sleeve. The last time Vallas came out against testing, he complained that standardized tests had been a huge waste of time for years, because teachers didn’t learn anything from them about their students. (That was to the dismay of many in Chicago, because he had been the one who first made standardized testing high-stakes and wouldn’t let about 10,000 kids in Chicago be promoted or graduate because of them.)
Anyway, the result of Vallas’ rant about tests: MORE testing. That’s because standardized tests had been summative, so now we have standardized formative tests, whereas before, teachers had been permitted to use informal formative measures. The message? You cannot trust teachers to design and learn about students from their own tests.
BTW, from what I’ve read, Sanders, who developed VAM in TN, has proprietary rights and won’t release his formula.
Correction. That should have been 125,000 students who have been failed in Chicago due to Vallas’ high-stakes testing policy: http://pureparents.org/?p=19376
As the new leader of The College Board, he is reducing the staff by 1/3 … guess he’s contributing the savings to the to the poor – Coleman loves to make “eye-catching” statements. In his 45-minute speech three years ago rolling out the Common Core he inserted, the word “sh_t” in the middle of the speech …
If you want examples of gratuitous profanity, listen to the presentation Mr. Coleman gave recently at the Brookings Institution:
[audio src="http://brightcove.vo.llnwd.net/e1/uds/pd/102148458001/102148458001_1997709561001_121129-StandardizedTest-64k-itunes.mp3" /]
Starting at the 11:00 minute mark, you’ll be treated to a couple of f’s and an abundance of s’s, along with his trademark snarky smugness and some highly suspect logic. I found the speech hard to listen to. At times I couldn’t follow his train of thought. At other times I was trying to catalog his propaganda methods.
No matter how much he curses, he still can’t make a good case for “college-ready” standards for children. This is one of the main errors committed by the authors of the “Common Core”: they don’t respect the fact that kids don’t think like adults.
One of Mr. Coleman’s main points was that testing actually is instruction, and anyone who disagrees with this is constructing a false dichotomy and being disingenuous. This is where he dropped his big f-bomb, apparently directed at teachers who complain that increased testing is crowding out other classroom activities. When he violently curses the people who actually know something about kids and schools, he disqualifies himself for any job related to education. Maybe the College Board will take note.
Just listened again to one of the f-bomb sections of the speech–it could be that Mr. Coleman is cursing the test makers, not the teachers using the test. Around the 20:00 minute mark he starts talking about how teachers have no faith in testing and that the test makers, standards writers, and policy need to “redeem” testing. He may not be directly cursing teachers, but he is pointedly dismissing their views. More foolish talk about how to assess writing follows… cherry picking research and pointless anecdotes and so on.
Yes, cherry picking for sure and dismissive is the perfect word for his view and attitude towards teachers.
Coleman is clearly impressed with himself.
Subvert, ignore and close the door.
My goodness, how professional!
I don’t get this guy. I think it may be because he lacks experience as a classroom teacher.
For example, I have repeatedly heard Coleman call teachers “disingenuous” because they do test prep. I have refused to do test prep, but “disingenuous”? Really? He says teachers should look at the standards. OK, I think standards can be great guides when developmentally appropriate. But he also says that if something is on an assessment, then teachers are ethically responsible for having children practice it 100 times.
WTF? In these days of increased test security to prevent cheating, how can teachers even know what is on the tests? And doesn’t requiring kids to practice the same thing 100 times sound excessive –and rather like test prep (and drill and kill)?
I would assume Coleman feels the same way about the standards, since he wrote them, but is there enough time in the school day and year to practice each of the grade level standards listed for ELA and Math 100 times? And what about all of the other disciplines, like Science, Social Studies, etc?
Does this sound sane to others? Do any of you do this? Am I missing something?
I also think that Coleman harbors a false belief that informational texts were not a major component of education until he hit the scene. Nonfiction has always been very important in my neck of the woods.
He is so irritating. His arrogance is palpable.
I have to agree with you, Randal. It was not easy to listen to Coleman’s speech. Whether reading from notes or dialoging in the question and answer session, for someone who was a Rhodes scholar and is supposed to be an expert in ELA, he has a rather poor command of oral language. First, he’s a fast talker. Compound that with his propensity to begin sentences and then go off on something completely different. And he ends sentences with swallows or just cuts off abruptly. Then he says, “ya know?” a lot, checking for comprehension. I’m like, Well maybe if you’d complete more of your sentences I’d have a better clue.
Geeze! So I’ve had to start and stop and go back and listen again, repeatedly, to try to understand what he’s trying to say. It seems like a futile exercise. I like what the others had to say a whole lot more, especially Whitehurst.
I’ll gladly take him on in a profanity contest!!
Where are the politicians? Where are the U.S. Representatives, the U.S. Senators and the governors? Why is no one taking a stand against this idiocy? Are they all afraid to stand up to Obama and Duncan? Let’s remember, that Mrs. Clinton does not have a great track record with teachers (ask folks in Arkansas), so we can’t expect any change in attitude with a new Clinton White House. Why is the president of the NEA not speaking out? DId he get bought-out, too? We have no leadership on our side. It’s going to be up to us.
The president of NEA looks..watches….and advertises for members..
Useless bunch!
The last teacher that I know that reached out to the NEA was told they could do nothing to stop the harassment from this fake doctor administrator..
Paid for his PHD from a Gulfport Mississippi building housing 3 workers..
The fake doctor administrator resigned 2 years later…several weeks ago in fact…
on a Friday afternoon at 6.
Caught him making up a fictitious moving company 6 years earlier and he had to pay back the approximately $19,000 he took fo his move from one state to another..
He harassed and intimidated so many teachers. Super had to be aware of this fake Doctor’s activities….NEA so advised and did absolutely nothing to help any of these teachers..nothing…
NEA = A JOKE..Do not waste your money.
you had your chance NEA and you let these teachers down!
How about a bumper sticker or t-shirt that reads – “I/We don’t give a sh#t what Coleman thinks”
David Coleman: architect of the Common Core and arrogant deployer of straw man arguments and red herrings.
Hi Mr Coleman–I give 10% of my take home pay back to my school–which is also my alma mater. I give it mostly to the music program, to remove economic barriers so that all students have an opportunity to participate fully in our programs, get private lessons, etc. It doesn’t dent the $$ we lose to for-profit charter schools, but it helps. Many teachers across the country give as much or more.
Your attitude is disgusting. Karma, David
“Why would he suggest cutting teachers’ salaries to reduce poverty? Why not start with the billionaires? I don’t understand this comment or his logic at all. Do you?”
This seems to be Coleman’s version of the corporate “reform” position that poverty need not be addressed. At bottom, that is really a defense of the super-rich, who actually have the money to make a dent in eradicating poverty, including by paying their own employees a livable wage and not outsourcing jobs or importing foreign workers they can pay a pittance, but clearly they are opposed to redistributing wealth.
Coleman’s Students Achievement Partners received millions from Gates last year: http://www.gatesfoundation.org/How-We-Work/Quick-Links/Grants-Database#q/k=%22Student%20Achievement%20Partners%22 (Think he left there before or after that???)
It also sounds like Coleman has a strong disdain for teachers. Considering the importance of teacher buy-in, any change agent should consider their audience when they speak publicly. Coleman may be bright and know a lot about English literature, but given his history of making snide public remarks, he appears to have an issue with impulse control and would be wise to work on his executive functioning skills (and good manners).
ADDD = attention deficit douche disorder
Haha, Linda. (Cheers!)
“It also sounds like Coleman has a strong disdain for teachers.”
Someone tell me again why anyone in the education field should take this yahoo and his Common Core seriously? After his disparaging remarks about us, we should boycott the entire movement. Can public schools truly fire EVERY teacher?
I just checked on the dates. Coleman’s Student Achievement Partners organization was awarded the Gates funds in June, 2012 and Coleman went to the College Board in October. 2012. That’s plenty of time for him to have benefitted from the $6,533,350 windfall: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/16/education/david-coleman-to-lead-college-board.html
So coleman is a CHANGE AGENT. Lets tell all the naive and duped parents out there that instead of filling their childrens heads with exciting historical facts, multitudes of classic literature, art science music, that coleman wants only to CHaNGE them. Cognitive restructruring franfurt freudo ugliness. Oh and to end poverty. Thats hilarious. He is a hater, and a limosine
lunatic. Deeply engage with this text and go work at the UN, coleman.
By “change agent” I meant in regard to teachers.
Coleman and other corporate “reformers” see teachers as resistant to change and defenders of the status quo –a tired characterization considering reform has been the status quo for many, many years now.
The current target of change is teacher’s perceptions of assessments and data. Considering both are quantitative and substitute for qualitative measures, teacher-made tests and professional judgements, such a significant reliance on them implies a basic mistrust of teachers. Making crass public comments about teachers only serves to further alienate them.
Rotsa ruck, David.
Not a change agent, Other & e.e.–strictly a dollars agent, as in
David “Gimme Your Ed. Dollars” Coleman. Clearly, he’s only interested in $$$$–ka-ching!
Oh yeah, retirebutmissthekids, You’re absolutely right that it’s about money. Coleman was honored as one of the NewSchools Venture Fund “Change Agents of the Year” in 2012: http://www.newschools.org/news/social-entrepreneurs-honored
The NewSchools Venture Fund promotes entrepreneurs and privatization, including a long list of charter schools. Makes you wonder what Coleman’s involvement in CCSS has to do with them, since charter schools don’t typically have to follow those standards. Could the link be that the real purpose of the much more rigorous CCSS is to bring down record numbers of public schools, so they can be closed and “transformed” into charters? $$$$-Ka-ching
Let’s ask Michelle Rhee to tape his mouth shut.
Let’s get Michelle Rhee to tape Coleman’s mouth shut.
Comment of the day!
“Why would he suggest cutting teachers’ salaries to reduce poverty?” Well, since we are supposed to overcome the effects with our excellentness, if we don’t cure it, we don’t deserve our exorbitant salaries.
Vallas went further and said: ““We’re losing the communications game because we don’t have a good message to communicate.”
They still think this playing with lives is a game.
What an incredible cast of losers head up “corporate ed reform.” Milkin, a billionaire felon, Murdoch, a billionaire hacker, Gates, a billionaire narcisist/nerd, and their hyper-aggressive technocrats who have little to no teaching experience, Coleman, a potty mouth idiot, Rhee, a smug cheater, Vallas, Chicago-style sleazy. And so many more. All scammers. And all invited by the Obama administration to develop RttT to create a national education market. And to ruin the teaching profession for the middle class in America.
Hey, you left out the Funcan and his boss Obomber.
But–that’s exactly the truth.
And none of you ever did have “a good message to communicate,” Paul.
And you never will!
It remains surprising to me that Coleman’s narcissistic megalomania is not already the first subject of conversation whenever his name comes up. Rhee has become synonymous with cheating, Coleman’s ongoing temper tantrum at not being fawned over and worshiped should have generated at least a few snarky cartoons and other cultural smack downs by now. Douche nozzles like him are such a target rich environment, I just don’t get it. Maybe he needs to get out more.
begtodiffer, gold star 2 U. I’d take out a loan for the tickets to watch Rhee and Coleman tape each others mouths shut!
Hobbyists like Gates, Murdoch, Rhee, Spellings, and Duncan and lobbyists like Kress and Bryan have met their match with the Texas moms. The hobbyists’ and lobbyists’ multi-billion dollar ride using PK-12 students for federal and state contracts is almost over. All parents in every state need to form an association like TAMSA. Reform insiders dismiss professional educators, but they are fearful of strong parents who are informed and are following the money. Parents need to file state and federal open records requests for the high-stakes testing contracts funneled to certain contractors with NO value for students.
http://www.tamsatx.org
Vallas has been a tragedy wherever he has been. He is not to be trusted for anything as his DNA is destructive. He is correct on the teacher evaluations though. The corporatists game is in the game of falling apart through its own false weight. Lies always catch up with you.
Oh ya.
Gates spent billions on propaganda so that the lies wouldn’t catch up with them. But all the polls in the world will only show how you can’t fool all the people all the time.
Is Coleman suggesting that he can save the poor without funding? Good luck dude.
Now if only there was a road to Damascus in Houston! Superintendent Terry Grier or any board member of the Houston Independent School District needs such an epiphany. HISD’s ASPIRE program has been running for several years and I am not aware of any significant improvement in teacher retention or quality. The carrot is a vague and mysterious as the stick in that curious system created by SAS (?), a German entity, and some group called Battle for Kids. HISD’s new appraisal system is being guided by TNTP consultants.
Such systems don’t work for complex endeavors such as education as the RSA video by Daniel Pink explains.
Coleman’s comment was meant to bully and shut down the conversation
It didn’t end the conversation–just reinforced the impression he acts like a self-important ass.
In case anyone missed it, Coleman was identified by Time Magazine last month as “One of the 100 Most Influential People in the World,” and none other than conservative education privatizer Jeb Bush sang his praises in that issue:
http://time100.time.com/2013/04/18/time-100/slide/david-coleman/JebBush
Here is a propaganda video promoting the Common Core: https://vimeo.com/44521437 I think Coleman demonstrates how little he knows about education starting about 8:30 in, where he said,
“And none of us needs to argue and I will not dare to lecture you on the fact that, if a student can’t read past the 8th grade level with confidence, they are doomed in terms of being ready for college or the demands of career. For high school texts of any range, all of it is an evasion for them because they can’t access them, so none of us needs to talk about whether that’s important or not.”
This is wrong on so many levels and we can’t even talk about it just because Coleman says so on his bully pulpit?
I don’t think so. That WAS a lecture and we MUST talk about it, especially when a non-educator like this makes such sweeping claims with such authority.
The popular press is typically written at a 6th or 7th grade level. If students have no problem reading a newspaper or a magazine, I can usually work with them in college.
At that literacy level, I don’t see any reason why they should not be able to succeed in most trades, too. People do not stop learning just because they’re out of school, and repeated exposure to job related literature that has meaning to them in work environments is very likely to expand vocabulary and promote further learning.
Since he knows Grover “Russ” Whitehurst, I am very surprised that Coleman is not more familiar with Whitehurst’s research on vocabulary development. But, again, Coleman is clearly not an educator.
David Coleman’s speech is an object lesson that test prep is not learning. Had he learned a wide-ranging vocabulary, he could have used that knowledge instead of resorting to common vulgarisms. Further, had he learned to use rhetorical devices, he would have been able to call upon irony and satire, among other devices, to make his points. Instead, Coleman demonstrates the shallow outcome of bubble-based “learning”.