Anthony Cody calls out John Merrow for inconsistency on the Vergara decision. Merrow, Cody notes, has become increasingly outspoken as a critic of high-stakes testing, et fails to appreciate that his support for the Vergara decision is support for bubble testing as the ultimate judge of teacher quality.
Cody writes:
“The Vergara decision follows the poorly founded logic of the Chetty study, which makes dubious claims of future student success based on differences in test score gains between teachers. What is the effect on teachers and students when “student performance” becomes a factor in teacher evaluation – as Merrow advocates here? Student performance is almost always measured by test scores, and we already have many states that have gone down this path, and are using Value Added Models to predict what student test scores should be, resulting in poor evaluations for teachers whose students don’t grow as fast as the VAM system predicts they should. English learners, special ed, and even the gifted and talented tend to perform poorly in these systems, meaning that teachers who work with these students are likely to suffer from poor evaluations. And ALL teachers will be obligated to make whatever tests are used for these purposes central to their teaching, to avoid being terminated.
“Merrow closes his post with this statement:
“The effort to blame poor education results on teachers and unions is misguided and malicious. It’s scapegoating, pure and simple, but-it must be said-protectionist policies like those in California play into the stereotype.
“Let’s think about what this stance suggests we ought to do.
“In spite of the fact that the effort to blame poor results on teachers and unions is totally wrong, we should capitulate to the central demands of the “reformers.” Get rid of seniority. Base evaluations – and the decision as to who is terminated — more on student performance (test scores) and principal judgment.
“The result will be to make a profession that has become less and less desirable, even less so.
“Turnover has already been on the rise. Charter schools already are demonstrating the model at work, and have significantly higher teacher turnover to show for it. Moving public schools in this direction will drive turnover upwards there as well. Turnover has been shown to have a strong negative effect on student performance. This report should not be forgotten. It found that:
“For each analysis, students taught by teachers in the same grade-level team in the same school did worse in years where turnover rates were higher, compared with years in which there was less teacher turnover.
“An increase in teacher turnover by 1 standard deviation corresponded with a decrease in math achievement of 2 percent of a standard deviation; students in grade levels with 100 percent turnover were especially affected, with lower test scores by anywhere from 6 percent to 10 percent of a standard deviation based on the content area.
“The effects were seen in both large and small schools, new and old ones.
“The negative effect of turnover on student achievement was larger in schools with more low-achieving and black students.”
Cody maintains that low-performing schools need a policy of teacher retention, not teacher firing.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
The Obama Administration has issued another statement validating and endorsing the trial court’s decision in California.
They’ve helpfully offered some management tips to reduce employee turnover in schools, though.
People in education may not know this, but Duncan’s suggestions on teacher management are boilerplate business advice on reducing employee turnover. One can read lists like his on any business site, or just Google the word “turn-over”.
It’s never mentioned in education but employee turnover is expensive. If charter schools have high “churn”, they’re spending money on recruiting and training employees that could be “going into the classroom”. There are other costs, too. High turn-over workplaces are bad places to work, and, I would think, not great places to go to school. It becomes a cycle and it’s very difficult to break once it is established.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2014/06/15/arne-duncan-issues-new-statement-with-the-right-lessons-from-vergara-trial/
No where in this article, nor in the world of public dialogue, does anyone mention the need for good parental involvement. Parents are a child’s first teacher. If the parents are in prison, or are alcohol or drug addicted, or dual diagnosis as is often the case, if there is no father in the home, if there is grinding poverty and poor health and nutrition care for the child, if children live on the streets in Skid Row, the educational outcome is almost 100% doomed to failure.
Teachers cannot make up for this deficit in the lives of poor children.
A high percentage of public school students in America live in abject poverty.
Also, is anyone watching the privatization and profitization of pre-K?
This sector probably takes off like a rocket after additional public funding of pre-K.
Here, the administration pulled a Head Start grant from a public school and put it up for bid. It was initially outsourced to a for-profit provider out of Colorado (it’s in Toledo) and now the public entity has to share the grant with a for-profit provider out of Pittsburgh.
http://www.toledoblade.com/Education/2014/06/10/Toledo-Public-Schools-receives-a-portion-of-Head-Start-grant.html
How much of this is the Administration doing? Who are the for-profits in pre-K, and perhaps more importantly, which politicians are they donating to?
Is anyone concerned that increases in pre-k funding under this Administration will drive the creation and growth of publicly-funded for-profit, national pre-k companies?
Thank you for pointing this out, Chiara: universal pre-k is a Trojan Horse for a privatized child care system, and for data miners to get their fangs into kids at an even earlier age. This is even happening under the imprimatur of ostensible political progressives such as Bill De Blasio, whom seems to have problem with handing it over to charter operators, who will be glad to take him up on the offer.
I am very concerned about what you state so succinctly here:
“Is anyone concerned that increases in pre-k funding under this Administration will drive the creation and growth of publicly-funded for-profit, national pre-k companies?”
Privatizers are like locusts. Where there is fuel they will devour it, and in the process they will destroy it. My concern is that they will control what is taught in preschool and that it won’t be good.
Thanks Chiara…this info was published today by media all over the country. It is vital for voters to pay attention since it is such an obvious ploy by Obama/Duncan to gift this huge population of pre-school children’s early education to the hawks from the hedge funds and the charterizers/privatizers. Their language is couched in buzz words that seem to indicate a great public service, but in reality it means that the race now for the profiteers is to open Pre K charters.
I have consulted with Head Start for over 30 years and it is the one highly successful program that has been funded by government. There is no reason to make any change at this time, but the need is for more funding directed to this exemplar program.
Cody’s arguments are, of course, unassailable. The problem is the assumption that those promoting these policies are actually interested in improving education, when really they wish merely to improve the profitability of education. In that case VAM, tests, churn, and all the rest make perfect sense.
Well, to his credit, Merrow admits this:
“The effort to blame poor education results on teachers and unions is misguided and malicious. It’s scapegoating, pure and simple”
I don’t know how he then gets to “compromise” though, because if the intent is malicious then compromising won’t get you anywhere.
Merrow’s already been proved wrong. The CT laws are different than those in CA and they’ve announced they’ll sue to have those thrown out by a court, too.
If it was about CA’s specific laws, they wouldn’t be suing in CT.
John Merrow’s aside about how malicious and misguided the attacks on teachers are is a little too late, and a little too closely resembles journalists lamenting the execution of an innocent man their reports helped put on Death Row.
Alan: a simple truth written succinctly.
Chiara: good point.
Michael Fiorillo: John Merrow has been down this path before. There is no one who did more to build up Michelle Rhee as a shining star in the firmament of so-called “education reform” than John Merrow. Nonetheless, when he finally decided that simple honesty and decency required him to critique and criticize his own actions [including filming a principal being fired] he decided that the greatest blame for promoting her was—
“Who created that character, that symbol? I can identify four possible parents: She created herself. We created her. “They” did. U did.” [See link below.]
His thinking goes like this [first three cited in part, but they are all shorter than #4]:
1), “Michelle Rhee created “Michelle Rhee.” There’s some evidence for this line of thinking.”
2), “We, the mainstream media, created “Michelle Rhee.” Good argument there.”
3), ““They” created her. “They,” according to conspiracy theorists, are the Walton Foundation and other right-leaning organizations; ALEC; the Koch brothers, Eli Broad and other wealthy individuals; and influential power-brokers like Joel Klein. Without them, this explanation has it, she would be nothing.”
And I save the best for last—by far the longest most detailed explanation (aka personal exculpation). I cite in full:
4), “And finally U created her. “U” is my shorthand for teacher unions. This is simple physics: “For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.” The “Michelle Rhee” phenomenon is the inevitable product of, and reaction to, intransigent teacher union policies like the ones that produced New York City’s famous “rubber room,” where teachers who couldn’t be fired spent their days reading, napping, and doing crossword puzzles–on full salary and with the full support of the United Federation of Teachers, the local union. (See Steven Brill’s Class Warfare.) She’s the inevitable reaction to union leaders who devote their energy to preserving seniority at the expense of talented young teachers, not to mention children. She’s the product of the California Teachers Association, which I recall was willing to sacrifice librarians’ jobs in order to preserve salary increases for teachers. She’s a social reaction to union leaders like Vice President Jack Steinberg of the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers. In an interview that is burned into my memory, Steinberg asserted that teachers can never be held accountable for student results. No teacher! Not ever! Jack was muzzled when he said that on national televiosn [sic] in 1996, but he and his union have stayed on message.
But let’s remember that union intransigence didn’t just spring up all of a sudden out of nowhere. It too was produced by that same law of physics. Teacher union militancy was a long time coming and was the reaction to administrative policies that infantilized and trivialized teaching.
Nevertheless, it seems to me that U(nions) also created the social phenomenon that is “Michelle Rhee”–and are now reaping that bitter fruit.
So ‘They,’ we and U created the social phenomenon that is “Michelle Rhee.” What happens next?”
[brackets mine]
Link: http://takingnote.learningmatters.tv/?p=6316
While I applaud John Merrow for some of his reporting, I think his attempt at protecting himself by the “diffused responsibility” argument does him no credit. And while he apparently feels confident that it absolves him of further investigating Michelle Rhee—elsewhere he frames it in psychological terms as letting go of an obsession—I respectfully disagree.
He ends the above linked piece with this short paragraph: “I have said this before, but we need to be measuring what we value, instead of valuing what we measure (usually cheaply). What do we value? That’s a more important question than ‘Who created Michelle Rhee’?”
What do we value indeed… How about one’s personal and professional integrity and honor? You, sir, lent her yours. You should take them back. You are one of the few truly indispensable figures in making her—and the so-called “education reform” movement—what it is today.
You owe it to yourself, as much as to us, to set right what you created wrong. A piece of friendly advice: just as in your words re the Vergara decision, word salad [a la Arne Duncan’s speech to the 2013 AERA meeting) won’t do.
Just my dos centavitos worth…
😎
The privatizers don’t care about the truth. They are slaves to an insane ideology that says the public sector is illegitimate because it is public. Public education shouldn’t exist because it is public–private is always better, except that it isn’t and is usually worse.
The ideology, neoliberalism, isn’t really a true political ideology but a justification for the rich to have everything while the rest of us remain poor.
The Administration must be thrilled. They got the result they wanted, the lawsuits will spread without their involvement and their fingerprints aren’t on it in an election year.
People in DC who supposedly work for us now see us as people who need “advice”.
Not advocacy or action on behalf OF citizens, but stern lectures TO citizens. It’s pretty amusing, given how unpopular DC is right now.
I don’t accept a lecture from Mr. Duncan on how public schools should be run. I think I’ll get a second opinion.
On Sunday, the Star Ledger editorial board printed an Op Ed in favor of the Vergara decision. Long story short, how dare those teachers have tenure, seniority and LIFO. The principals and administrators should have the ability to fire at will at any time any teacher that they deem ineffective. The elites and their lackeys in the media are determined to bust the unions and any protections for teachers. Once they get rid of tenure and LIFO, the older and more expensive teachers will have a target on their backs. This is deplorable.
Didn’t Duncan get the memo? 10K fine every time you use the word “status quo”. I quit reading right then and there.
Relevant blog post from MathBabe (Cathy O’Neil) —
Why Chetty’s Value-Added Model Studies Leave Me Unconvinced
And here’s another —
Getting Rid of Teacher Tenure Does Not Solve the Problem
Personally I like Merrow, because he is willing to play devil’s advocate and look at things from different angles. On Vergara I can agree on his point, why argue against common sense solutions? Two year probation versus three year probation? O.K. whatever, is it a big deal? Like the judge said, 1.75 years, 16 actual months? Sure, splitting hairs. The part I’m curious about is how you determine the exact right length for probation when it defends civil rights, ya right, give me a good laugh? Call in Chetty and let’s use double integration to find out when the civil rights curve intersects the probationary curve at exactly 3.45789 years.
Indefensible? Yes, this trial was. The lack of logic and correlation. The students didn’t have teachers the district was even trying to suspend. Allowing a student to render an official judgement of a teacher in open court as a “bad teacher”? Yes, an indefensible mockery of judgement, a mockery of respect of elders, a mockery of respect for the profession of teaching.
The students and civil rights had nothing to do with executing two minor nonscientific improvements to the hiring and dismissal process. Parading the students, civil rights, and science, where they didn’t apply, was indefensible.
“Devil’s advocate” is the mark of a deceitful individual. If you want to make a point, you state flat-out you are trying to take the “other side” to create debate, but he doesn’t do that. He believes the garbage he spews.
He’s always been a tool of the privatizers
In no other occupation, save for college teaching, does any employee have such a long probationary period as do public school teachers.
The reason some states have or want to lengthen the already too-long probationary period is to find a way to deny pension vesting to new teachers without having to replace them every year or two. Making it four or five years, absolutely ludicrous, by the way, just so teachers can be eligible for a bogus hearing, helps administrators string these teachers along until right before they can get pension vesting (five years). Then they are dumped.
The stress of having to be under the radar for years, keeping quiet and being constantly scared of being fired, before getting post-probationary status is more than many new teachers are willing to tolerate.
TC…I agree that some of the rulings seem logical such as tenure after 3 years, not 18 months. What is most egregious about this judge’s conclusions is that they are based on fantasy stats pulled out of thin air offered by the witnesses for the plaintiffs.
This ruling establishes precedent however, and all the multitude of cases across the country, many being filed today, will use his ruling as their basis and will build tougher and tougher cases to intensify future rulings. It is a snowball effect.
As Willie Shakespeare so aptly put it…”A tale told by an idiot, signifying nothing.”
…forgot the “full of sound and fury” which is evident even in the news today.
” A tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing” certainly describes our government, particularly Arne the Oaf.
Actually, Leonard Isenberg should be the one to do a column for Anthony Cody, since he knows all about the filthy politics in LAUSD. He’s been a targeted and ousted teacher, so he knows all about that “lifetime job security” teachers allegedly have.
Teachers who have been through the meat grinder of those railroad jobs called “due process hearings” are the people best qualified to speak about Vergara and “seniority,” the latter SOP in most jobs, both public and private sector, because it is FAIR.
John Merrow is a tool, always has been, always will be.
If I were to sum up the Vergara decision in a nutshell, it would be this.
Staticians say poor and minorities are stuck with most of the poor teachers between the negative second and third deviation on the bell curve. Check.
Try to get rid of these teachers. Check.
Poor and minorities are stuck with most of the poor teachers between the negative first and second deviation on the bell curve. Check.
Equity restored and civil rights protected. Huh?
Here’s the perspective of a young teacher who is the union steward in her Minneapolis district school:
http://www.minncan.org/news-blog/blog/vergara-let%E2%80%99s-change-conversation
In part, she writes: “So please join me in changing the conversation, from one in which teachers are victims, to one that celebrates us as the best agents to elevate our profession and reward talent, to improve American public schools and provide all kids equally with a top-notch education…Restructuring traditional seniority-based pay and lay-off systems will make teaching a more attractive career option and keep highly effective and expert—not just senior—teachers in the classroom.”