Lyndsey Layton of the Washington Post has written a sympathetic article about Arne Duncan and the waning of his powers as Secretary of Education. He is a nice guy. He is a close friend of the President. He cares about individual children that he met along the way. The pending reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act will prohibit him and future Secretaries from interfering in state decisions about standards, curriculum, and assessment. His family has already moved back to Chicago. But he will stay on the job to the very end.
When Obama was elected, many educators and parents thought that Obama would bring a new vision of the federal role in education, one that freed schools from the test-and-punish mindset of George W. Bush’s No Child Left Behind. But Arne Duncan and Barack Obama had a vision no different from George W. Bush and doubled down on the importance of testing, while encouraging privatization and undermining the teaching profession with a $50 million grant to Teach for America to place more novice teachers in high-needs schools. Duncan never said a bad word about charters, no matter how many scandals and frauds were revealed.
During Duncan’s tenure in office,
*He used his control of billions of dollars to promote a dual school system of privately managed charter schools operating alongside public schools;
*He has done nothing to call attention to the fraud and corruption in the charter sector or to curb charters run by non-educators for profit or to insist on charter school accountability or to require charters to enroll the neediest children;
*He pushed to require states to evaluate teachers by the test scores of their students, which has caused massive demoralization among teachers, raised the stakes attached to testing, and produced no positive results;
*He used federal funds and waivers from NCLB to push the adoption of Common Core standards and to create two testing consortia, which many states have abandoned;
*The Common Core tests are so absurdly “rigorous” that most students have failed them, even in schools that send high percentages of students to four-year colleges, the failure rates have been highest among students who are English language learners, students with disabilities, and students of color;
*He has bemoaned rising resegregation of the schools but done nothing to reduce it;
*He has been silent as state after state has attacked collective bargaining and due process for teachers;
*He has done nothing in response to the explosion of voucher programs that transfer public funds to religious schools;
*Because of his policies, enrollments in teacher education programs, even in Teach for America, have plummeted, and many experienced teachers are taking early retirement;
*He has unleashed a mad frenzy of testing in classrooms across the country, treating standardized test scores as the goal of all education, rather than as a measure;
*His tenure has been marked by the rise of an aggressive privatization movement, which seeks to eliminate public education in urban districts, where residents have the least political power;
*He loosened the regulations on the federal student privacy act, permitting massive data mining of the data banks that federal funds created;
*He looked the other way as predatory for-profit colleges preyed on veterans and minorities, plunging students deep into debt;
*Duncan has regularly accused parents and teachers of “lying” to students. For reasons that are unclear, he wants everyone to believe that our public schools are terrible, our students are lazy, not too bright, and lacking ambition. If he were a basketball coach, he would have been encouraging the team to try harder and to reach for greater accomplishment, but instead he took every opportunity to run down the team and repeat how dreadful they are. He spoke of “respect” but he never showed it.
This era has not been good for students; nearly a quarter live in poverty, and fully 51% live in low-income families. This era has not been good for teachers, who feel disrespected and demeaned by governors, legislatures, and the U.S. Department of Education. This era has not been good for parents, who see their local public schools lose resources to charter schools and see their children subjected to endless, intensive testing.
It will take years to recover from the damage that Arne Duncan’s policies have inflicted on public education. He exceeded the authority of his office to promote a failed agenda, one that had no evidence behind it. The next President and the next Secretary of Education will have an enormous job to do to restore our nation’s public education system from the damage done by Race to the Top. We need leadership that believes in the joy of learning and in equality of educational opportunity. We have not had either for 15 years.
One word: fabulous. Thank you, Diane
Thank you, Diane.
Great summation, Diane. Case Closed. Duncan guilty as charged on all counts!
Does he get any leniency for be the employer of last resort for Dr. John B. King, Jr., former NYS Education Commissioner?
“The Era of Arne Err”
This decade, let’s be clear
Is “Era of Arne Err”
No education here
Just testing, VAMs and fear
The Era’s bitter end
With Arne and his friend
Will give us more of same
A legacy of shame
Amen. He’s made school a nightmare to give a new real estate market to businesses. That’s his legacy. What a disgrace!
“Duncan faces a political backlash that threatens to undercut his power and erase some of his most influential work. The bipartisan warmth he enjoyed on Capitol Hill has yielded to critics from the left and the right, including an odd alliance between tea party conservatives and the teachers unions. This week, both houses of Congress began debating legislation that would seriously dial back the education secretary’s legal authority; the Senate began Tuesday and the House approved a bill Wednesday.”
There is a reason that blogs on education are booming. We understand that “bipartisan warmth on Capitol Hill” is a euphemism for “supports the destruction of the community-based, fiscally-accountable public school.”
Articles like Layton’s send frustrated readers my way.
The real summary of Arne Duncan’s misguided policies is in what you wrote about the Duncan era of education, not the Post’s piece. Duncan is an elitist with his head in the clouds. He is unqualified to do justice to this job as he understands very little about what will benefit our students. He came with an agenda that tainted his policies and never once let reality get in his way. You should send a copy of your review of Duncan’s tenure to President Obama.
Thank you, Diane. Anyway this can be turned into a letter to POTUS and Duncan where we all add our names under yours? Perhaps we should also send it to FLOTUS.
One of Mrs. Obama’s campaign promises was that her husband would be different than other POTUSes because he would admit when he was wrong. POTUS has done this on some occasions, but not on education policy, to my knowledge.
I have not lost complete faith in the hope that if the voices of teachers speaking loudly, authoritatively, and in concert continue to speak to him, he may yet acknowledge his mistakes in this area.
I am pleased to report that this post has been cross-posted in Salon and Huffington Post
Wonderful. This is just what is needed to offset the spin and all too many shills paid to prop up a decade and a half of absurdly costly and miserable policies almost all aided by billionaires and investors eager to make a profit from public education while pretending that profit-seeking is a civil rights issue.
Why don’t you come down to Richmond on July 31 to see Judge Hughes direct Virginia to release all the Student Growth Percentile data by teacher. That would be quite a show for the union activists.
One of the most destructive individuals that the American people had to suffer through.
While Duncan was placed in a position that requires a strong advocate for the rights of our children, his primary goal was to destroy our public education system.
One hundred years from now, people will still be speaking his name, and the Obama Administration will be remembered as the closing of sixteen years of crimes committed against public education and its democratic virtues here in the United States, force fed through the dollars of the wealthy, who sought to steal from our children, and our future.
A crime of opportunity for the wealthy and their minions…the privatization of something that never should have been privatized…our public education system.
A new century opened and No Child Left Behind was unleashed on the American people.
A horrific legacy for anyone with a sense of morals and decency…owned by, and forever linked to Obama and Duncan.
“One hundred years from now, people will still be speaking his name. . . ”
No they won’t. As soon as Arne the Idiot’s term is up no one outside of a few thousand or so of those of us who have been challenging the idiocies of NCLB and RaTT will even remember his name nor the damage he has done.
Why, because obviously it’s all the greedy teacher union thugs who have destroyed public education.
maybe a tombstone would help people remember
“Arne’s Tombstone”
Here lies Arne Duncan
Six feet under ground
Said the schools were flunkin’
Tried to shut them down
Said the kids were stupid
That the teachers stank
That the moms were dup-ed
By the file and rank
Said the tests would save us
That the VAMs were great
All that Arne gave us
Was this lousy slate
‘was this lousy slate”
That’s what happens when you write poems on the fly
Hope Arne is not relying too heavily on former NY State Commissioner of Education John King who was laughed out of Albany after groveling before Chancellor Tisch and taking orders form the Cheater School industry. King john was a true bozo! It is pathetic to think that a totally discredited clown like King now has input on national education policy. Arne and he make one fine team!
“Sympathy For The Duncan”
Please allow me to introduce myself
I’m a man long since disgraced
I’ve been around for a long, long year
Stole many a child’s soul and faith
And I was ’round when Barack O’
Had his moment of doubt and pain
Made damn sure Billy Gates
Washed his hands and sealed his fate
Pleased to meet you
Hope you guess my name
But what’s puzzling you
Is the nature of my game
I stuck around Chicago-land
When I saw it was a time for a change
Killed the schools and the CTU
Parents all screamed in vain
I stacked and yanked
Held a point guard’s rank
Helped the charters rage
Teachers walked the plank
Pleased to meet you
Hope you guess my name, oh yeah
Ah, what’s puzzling you
Is the nature of my game, oh yeah
I watched with glee
While young Miss Hell Rhee
Taught for just ten days
Using masking tape
I shouted out,
“Who’s killin’ Public Schools?”
When after all
It is Bill and me
Let me please introduce myself
I’m a man long since disgraced
And I laid traps for Pre-K kids
Taking tests until they screeched No way
Pleased to meet you
Hope you guessed my name, oh yeah
But what’s puzzling you
Is the nature of my game, oh yeah, get down, baby
Pleased to meet you
Hope you guessed my name, oh yeah
But what’s confusing you
Is just the nature of my game
And every kid is just a data point
And all us reformers saints
As heads is tails
Just call me Arne-D
Cause I’m in need of some restraint
So if you meet me
Have some courtesy
Have some sympathy, and some taste
Be sure to use my Common Core
Or I’ll lay your schools to waste
Pleased to meet you
Hope you guessed my name, um yeah
But what’s puzzling you
Is the nature of my game,
You should put it to the music and post it on youtube. Clever!
Makes me want to become a Street Fighting Man.
Very clever indeed.
I love that one, NY Teacher.
‘Be sure to use my Common Core
Or I’ll lay your schools to waste’
ha ha ha ha!
Thanks for the laughs.
NY teacher
You do realize that between you and me and some others here, we could start a whole new genre of songs: Crock and Troll
My personal favorite:
FIXIN’ to TEST RAG
Gimme a T . . .”T” gimme an E . . . “E” gimme an S . . .”S” gimme another T . . .”T”
What’s that spell?
School!
What’s that spell?
School!
What’s that spell?
School!
Yeah come on all of you teachin’ folks
Billy Gates wants your hearts and souls
He got himself a brave new plan
Makin’ him the big money man
So put down your books and pick up a test!
We’re gonna rate ‘em worst to best
And it’s one, two, three,
What are we testing for?
Don’t tell me, I don’t give a damn!
Common Core’s just a testing scam!
And it’s five, six, seven, cashin’ in with Mister Gates!
Ah, they don’t know poems, they don’t know math!
Whoopee! They all better pass
Well come on Pearson you’d better move fast
Your big chance has come at last
Gotta go out and write that test
Only trick items – a white hot mess
You know that kids should never have fun
Let’s test ‘em all to Kingdom come
And it’s one, two, three,
What are we testing for?
Don’t tell me, I don’t give a damn!
Common Core’s just a testing scam!
And it’s five, six, seven, cashin in with Mister Gates!
Ah, they don’t know poems, they don’t know math!
Whoopee! They all better pass
Well come on Wall Street, don’t move slow,
Its school deform lets go, go
There’s plenty good money on the way
By supplying schools with tests today
Just hope and pray that when the students bomb,
They drag all their teachers along.
And it’s one, two, three,
What are we testing for?
Don’t tell me, I don’t give a damn!
Common Core’s just a testing scam!
And it’s five, six, seven, cashin in with Mister Gates!
Ah, they don’t know poems, they don’t know math!
Whoopee! They all better pass
Now Soccer moms throughout the land
Pack your kids off to test again
Come on fathers, don’t hesitate,
Send em off before it’s too late.
Be the first one on your block
To know your kid’s dumb as a rock
And it’s one, two, three,
What are we testing for?
Don’t tell me, I don’t give a damn!
Common Core’s just a testing scam!
And it’s five, six, seven, cashin in with Mister Gates!
Ah, they don’t know poems, they don’t know math!
Whoopee! They all better pass
Oh I love the Fixin to test rag. Thanks for sharing
NY teacher
I also like the Fix’n to test rag very much
Thanks
Here’s one from my own Arne Duncan singalong book
“Arne Duncan” (parody of Lincoln Duncan by Paul Simon)
Teachers in the next room
Bound to win a prize
They’ve been testing children all day long
Well, I’m trying to get some sleep
But these schoolroom walls are cheap
Arne Duncan is my name
And here’s my song, here’s my song.
My father was professor-man
My mama was professor-man’s friend
But I’m at home in the boardroom
And the charter
So when I reached my prime
I left my home and Chicago Times
Headed down the highway for
The White House, for the White House
Holes in my confidence
Holes in my B-ball dreams
I was left without a penny or a contract
Oooo-wee I was about destituted
As a man could be
And I wished I wore a (championship) ring
So I could hock it, I’d like to hock it.
Seen the President in a parking lot
Preaching to a crowd
Selling Hope and Change and reading teleprompter
Well, I told him I was lost
And he told me all about the double-cross
And I seen that man as the rug
To helicopter
Just later on the very same week
When I went to his House with a B-ball
And my long years of counting cents ended
Well, he hired me for the “B”
Saying “How ’bouts you head up the DOE?”
And just like a dog I was befriended, I was befriended.
Oh, oh, what a job
Oh what a garden of hobnob
Even now that sweet memory lingers
I was playing in the gym
Shooting one-on-one with him
Just thanking the Lord for my fingers
For my fingers,
For my fingers
“And I know, I know
I know, I know
I know it!
OK, I’ve got to get in on this thread. I’ve been a longtime admirer of your poems, but my literary efforts are more musical. While I spend much of my spare time writing and singing earth science song parodies, I occasionally dip my toe into other topics.
I wrote this ditty three years ago when I had to deal with the APPR and S.L.O. nonsense for the first time. S.L.O., S.L.O.,…”I’m an S.L.O.-man…”
Take a listen: http://www.nscsd.org/uploads/GFLICK/slo%20man%20draft%202.mp3
In this one I bought a karaoke version of “Soul Man”, and recorded my own vocal tracks.
Nice. Welcome to Parody Central. They almost make this too easy.
My apologies to Mr. Zimmerman:
“Must Be Bubbled-In” (Blowin in the Wind)
How many tests must a child withstand
Before we can kill this scam?
How many years will we need to resist?
With so many heads in the sand?
Yes, how many tests must our children endure?
Before test-and-punish is banned?
Right answers my friend, must be bubbled-in
Right answers again and again.
Yes, how many years can Arne still test?
Before he ends up like Rhee?
Yes, how many years can he still insist?
Before even Bill disagrees?
Yes, how many times can Congress turn its head?
Pretending they just cannot see?
Right answers my friend, must be bubbled-in
Right answers again and again.
Yes, how many tests must a child still take?
Before we really know why?
Yes, how many doubts must one nation have?
Before we can hear children cry?
Yes, how many fails will it take till we know
That too many people have lied?
Right answers my friend, must be bubbled-in
Right answers again and again
And if you’re a Paul Simon fan:
When we look back at
All the crap they taught in pre-school
It’s a wonder
Kids can think at all
This lack of rigor in education
Has hurt them some
Why can’t they close-read the writing on the wall
Common – Core- ore-ore
It ‘em gives questions full rigor
Marches to just one drummer
Makes them know all the world’s a gritty day
I got a Coleman standard
Love to give a Pearson test
So Ravitch don’t take our Common Core away
So Ravitch don’t take our Common Core away
So Ravitch don’t take our Common Core away
If you took all the teachers we knew
Back in high school
And brought them all together for one night
We know they’d couldn’t match
Arne’s weak imagination
Everything looks worse in black and white
A little Neil?
The Testing and the Damage Done
We caught you knockin’
at our classroom doors
You test our babies,
with your Common Core
Ooh, ooh, the damage done.
You hit the cities
all across the land
We watched you testing
with your voodoo VAM
Wrong, wrong, the damage done.
We sing the song
because we hate your plan
We know that none
of you can understand
W h y k i d s
keep on, op-ting out.
I’ve seen the testing
and the damage done
We want no part of it for anyone
But now reform is
like a settin’ sun.
“I’m a SLO man!”
Ha ha ha ha ha!
That pretty well sums it up.
Excellent Rockhound2
The problem will not be fixed by the next President or Secretary of Education unless their solution is to shut down the US Dept. of Education. Then and only then can we begin to restore what once was the best education system in the world BEFORE ESEA and BEFORE the US Dept. of Education. When you target a class of people as being treated differently they begin to think of themselves as different and therefore inferior to others. The federal government has been telling minorities and the poor they cannot achieve greatness the same way everyone else can. They have been used to promote a progressive agenda and they have been held back from success by being told they cannot be held to the same standard as everyone else and achieve greatness. They need to learn how to use their hard life knocks to climb out and become successful because it is those hard knocks that make people stronger if they use them to their advantage. The welfare system has destroyed minority families and there in lies the biggest problem of all for minorities and the poor. All the money in the world, good books, good teachers in the world cannot make up for a horrible home environment that is detrimental to a child’s sense of value. Parents are the key not money. We need to rebuild the American family and traditional values. Until this all happens Americans need to step up and use good old American “know how” to work around this system of destruction. Teachers that see how bad this is need to ban together and start educating our children on their own. Set up small private schools or home school for working parents. Neighbors need to step up and help their neighbors. Set up home school consortiums. If your state doesn’t allow them then get a law passed that will allow them. But it is time for us to take control of our own destiny. Get up off your knees and STOP begging these criminals to do what is right because they NEVER will. What is happening in education is bigger than just America. It is a global agenda and it will not end pretty years from now. So all of us warriors lets put our American know how to work. Stop wasting out time with elected officials that just aren’t listening. We can create our own competitive College Board, we can create our own assessment companies, we can create our own book companies. We can and MUST educate our own children. We MUST get them out of the system.
I absolutely agree with you . . . What is needed is strengthening families, and parents taking back control of raising their own children.
Beautifully stated, Diane! I am sharing this with as many people as possible …
Beautiful indictment. Now can we establish a Star Chamber and try him?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Chamber
Dr. Ravitch, With all respect, I don’t understand this article. Your article about Duncan implies that he has made these decisions “himself.” Do you think those in power would let Obama’s basketball-playing buddy decide the fate of 310 million people and education? He is simply reading off a script for those in power. He has no say at all about policy. This goes for all politicians. He simply does what those who put him in power tell him to do, or he loses his job. You must be smart enough to see this. I don’t get it at all! It’s a waste of time to address people for decisions they didn’t make. It is like blaming the ventriloquist’s doll for the jokes. Blaming Duncan for being a spokesman is distracting.
Agreed. It’s like blaming Charlie McCarthy instead of Edgar Bergen.
Thanks for posting that one!
Steve. I disagree. Duncan and Obama are jointly responsible, but Duncan is the person who signed off on all of the official policies in the Federal Register, collaborated with and allowed others to frame and push these policies. He delivered the speeches calculated to blame teachers, parents, and students for policies designed to create the illusion of more failure that existed in public education . He lied. He claimed that policies were evidence based when they were not. He allowed McKinsey & Co. to formulate the white papers and protocols for the bizarrely named RESPECT program, teachers paid to be shills for a plan that would make it legitimate to put 100 kids in front of a teacher (with some aides) in exchange for a higher salary and no tenure.
The policies he authorized on teacher evaluation were so odious that he and his office had to invest millions in marketing them to state and district officials and thence to principals and teachers. Go to “Reform Support Network” to see some of the marketing materials prepared under contract with PR agencies.
He and people who had to report to him funded the SBAC and PARCC tests. Then they were so clueless that USDE had to offer both groups more funds for never published “curriculum units” so they could design the tests.
I have been working in education since 1957, witnessed the rise of federal power to control priorities in public education and regret to report that I even participated in some federally funded fiascos.
The closest approximation to Duncan’s distain for public education was that expressed by Secretary of Education Rod Paige whose much publicized “Texas miracle” was a fraud and who called teachers “terrorists.” Then in an afterlife from USDE, Paige and some his friends from the days of the Texas fraud peddled their “expertise” in destroying public education, for substantial fees, billed under his Chartwell advisory services.
Diane’s account is remarkably comprehensive, brief, well-informed, and frame as the skilled historian and journalist she is.
Steve, your post is incomplete too. Are you saying Arne was carrying out Obama’s wishes, or the wishes of the corporate lobbies, or someone else?
One thing for sure, is that by signing the current Senate bill into law, Obama is throwing Duncan under the bus, giving back some of the power that the Secretary grabbed over the last six years.
And what of Obama and his track record on education? During his first campaign in 2008, he was easily able to find the foremost experts in education to advise him, such as Linda Darling-Hammond.
But after he won, things took a strange turn, announcing Rahm Emanuel as his chief-of-staff and Arne Duncan as his Secretary of Education, a Chicago machine loyalist with no discernable experience in education other than turning everything over to charters.
Then, we saw the corporations move in – the Gates Foundation spent over $4 billion to bribe everyone coast-to-coast into accepting Common Core without a single democratic vote. Duncan used another $5 billion in bribes to get states to evaluate teachers based on testing, something that was in ALEC model legislation.
Producing sustained backlash and horrible results, Obama now seems poised to admit defeat, making CC and these evaluations voluntary. He seems like he will hold on to annual tests, but gut everything he had Duncan pushing. So when will talk turn to Obama and the Democrats? They have been even worse than Republicans, to the point that rightwing sites like TownHall are now complaining about pay-for-play and corporate donations….
When Duncan’s tenure is finally over, I hope NY Mayor DiBlasio will arrange for him to teach a 3rd grade class of 35 students, 1/3 of whom are special ed., 40% of whom speak various foreign languages as their native language, and 80% of whom qualify for free and reduced lunches. The class should be in a public school portion of a building shared with a charter which has siphoned resources from the public school portion. Duncan will have no teacher’s aide and he will be required to teach the students music and art since those teachers have long since disappeared. The students must take all the standardized tests and the average scores of Duncan’s class must be published in the local newspaper.
I’m aware that he is not a trained teacher, so the Mayor should arrange for Secy. Duncan to be trained by Teach for America folks for 5 weeks before he starts teaching.
I’m so anxious for him to show us all how it’s done.
Bravo!!!
“I’m so anxious for him to show us all how it’s done.”
It’s the ol “do as I say not as I didn’t do.”
Sad to say, there’s no guarantre that the next administration will be any better. Depending on the candidate, we could see the death of public schools in the United States. I profoundly hope that this does not come to pass, but there are too many signs (read: $$$) that it could. Please, future, prove me wrong!!!
Duncan said at one point that charter schools would comprise “10%” of public school systems.
I think it’s amusing that he believes he can control privatization once it’s unleashed. The arrogance of that amazes me.
He couldn’t have valued public schools coming in if he’s willing to take that kind of risk. He had to have started from a place where he saw no value in the existing system- that’s the predicate to unleashing something he can no more control than I can.
They’ve lost control already. Politicians who backed this will be irrelevant in a decade. They were useful only the extent that they were needed to get it rolling.
I don’t have any sympathy for them. When you “relinquish” your role in public education someone else picks it up, and in the US the “someone else” will be the private sector.
“He exceeded the authority of his office to promote a failed agenda, one that had no evidence behind it. ”
The US Congress has enormous power in our system. They have all the tools they need to do their jobs. If an executive branch appointee exceeded authority, it was with the full consent and cooperation of Congress.
I just don’t understand why we keep making excuses for them. They all backed this, because all of DC backs this. I guess it’s easier to have a single figure to blame but Arne Duncan was not stomping over all of these people because they are helpless before his mighty power. They gave it to him. You heard the Senators. They were debating process, not policy- should it come primarily from the states or the feds. The policy they all agree with, which is why they let Duncan run it.
That’s a good point Chiara. I think both parties, Democrat and Republican, are bad for our nation, but make sure you remember that it was a Democrat Congress and a Democrat President that enabled and empowered Arne Duncan.
I have retired from teaching last year. I retired early because of all the problems being blamed on teachers. and all the failed policies being promoted by the federal government. I hope that when Obama leaves office that these policies can be fixed. I think it will be a fight, the fox is in the coop with the chickens, and will be hard to get rid of.
“. . . the fox is in the coop with the chickens, and will be hard to get rid of.”
Nah, a double barrel shotgun with some 4s works just fine.
Quote: If he were a basketball coach, he would have been encouraging the team to try harder and to reach for greater accomplishment, but instead he took every opportunity to run down the team and repeat how dreadful they are.
I would add that If Duncan ran a basketball team the way he runs the Department of Education he would berate his players and tell them to just be taller.
If he were a basketball ball coach he would be calling the player with a ruptured Achilles a failure because he couldn’t dunk.
Among the remarkable aspects of his tenure is that I can’t remember him ever admitting a mistake.
Reblogged this on David R. Taylor-Thoughts on Texas Education.
Democrats put forth a bill for free community college.
We just saw how DC will toil day and night to pass a rubber stamp for a trade deal.
We’ll be able to measure their commitment to “the middle class” if we see the same level of effort with this bill.
President Obama got his trade deal because it was an actual priority. If free community college is a real priority he should be able to get that too.
Otherwise it’s yet another political stunt from Democrats to show interest in middle class concerns
Chiara,
Middle class students are in short supply in the community college where I am an adjunct.
Arne staying until the buzzer is, to use another basketball analogy, “garbage time.”
I know you are not talking about the greatest civil rights leader since the 1960’s? Unlike most teachers and activists like Carol Burris and Diane Ravitch, who couldn’t care less about kids, Arne Duncan has actually leveraged growth data to put effective teachers in schools. There is a reason that none of these activists have a STEM background and fundamentally do not understand the data/formulas.
If you think that some opt-out activists will change the trajectory of education, you are sorely mistaken.
– https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B5nQmOh4yk4MVmN4N0NQdjlTM2s/view?usp=sharing
Oh the Opt out movement is definitely effecting education but you just aren’t hearing about it. At Venice High School in Los Angeles most 11th graders opted out but it wasn’t publicized. The reason I know about it is that a colleague had to baby sit the opt out -ees.
There are entire schools where students are simply not testing because they know that 1) testing financially benefits private companies at the expense of real education for students and 2) the essays are either graded by machines or low paid readers who know nothing about teaching. By the way, most high school teachers are ignoring the common “bore” and teaching as Rafe Esquith would say like your hair is on fire. The reformers have lost because they failed to win the hearts and minds of those they disrespect- the teachers.
Are you referring to Rafe Esquith who is under investigation for potential liberties with minors?
Not sure whether it’s you that misunderstands economics or the students. But when testing only consume 0.54% of the K-12 education spending and there is a free market, there are not excess profits.
Those machine graders are actually more reliable than teacher graded tests. Imagine that!
Many of you may be effective teachers. How many of you are willing to go out on record saying that only 1% of teachers are ineffective? If you agree it’s higher, what is your solution to identify and replace them.
That is NOT what he is under “investigation for.” Stop slandering him. There is a 40 year old accusation that the district has been sitting on for 10 years. it dates to when he was in his early 20’s BEFORE he was a teacher.
The tests are not reliable. What students produce in the classroom is a far more reliable indicator of their abilities than standardized tests.
0.54% can send kids to Washington DC, can bring back vocational ed and specialized career education. 0.54% is an enormous amount of money. I do understand economics and I do teach economics. It’s the arrogance of the reformers that is embodied in your response.
There is no accusation that Esquith took “liberties with students.” Get your facts straight.
Barbara, we shall see on the accusations. If he has done nothing wrong (hopefully so), then they owe him an apology.
You have no evidence that in class products are any more reliable. First, teachers are notorious for inflating their students’ grades (see Atlanta cheating scandal). The MET study even found that principals systematically rate their own teachers higher than 3rd-party evaluators (even though the relative rankings were similar). But those in class products don’t measure how well students retain knowledge especially on cumulative tests. If you are trying to see the public on allowing teachers to grade themselves, GO FOR IT!
Regarding large $ amounts, that is easy. Teachers earn ~20% more than anybody knows because of their unreported pension contributions. If we reported the actual compensation of teachers (avg of $70K/yr for working 200 days instead of the reported $57K/yr), we could get better quality candidates. Those pensions cost 40x more than the tests; however, teachers refuse to even publish their “private sector equivalent compensation” for fear that the public will realize how much they make. As an economics teachers, you should promote financial transparency. So do you support publishing both the salaries and the equivalent compensation (salary + pension) of teachers?
It is time to objectively measure teachers. When we rank 27th out of 34 on international tests, it is time to perform a reality check. But before you ramble about poverty affecting those results, our affluent kids rank worse at 28th out of 34. So spare me the song and dance about how “great” our education system is and accept some accounability.
I have no evidence? Do you hear yourself? “Effective growth data?” Disgusting. Why don’t you really admit what you want is to move control away from the classroom from teachers to corporations? I was tested a total of three times in school- 4th grade, 8th grade and as a 10th grader. None of these tests were used to judge my teachers. How in the world did I manage to then get an AA degree, a BA degree three teaching credentials and a Master’s without “growth data?”
Have you seen the Hobart Shakespeareans in action? You are the enemy to all kids, parents and teachers who want kids to have real education. I think God my principal gives me the academic freedom I need to teach STUDENTS not growth targets. I am so glad my teachers never saw me as a meal ticket to higher pay and glory.
When you take kids out who iive in poverty we rank much higher than 27th. As poverty increases in the US, test scores will go down. Kids routinely miss school to babysit or work to help their families. This is much different than the largely middle class America i grew up in. Bring back jobs first -solar jobs, worker co ops and so forth, see the standard of living rise then you will see kids do better in school at the middle and high school level It is appalling that reformers think what my students go through has no bearing on their school performance. Yet when I taught a summer session in a more middle class area with higher rates of home ownership, kids were in school every day and no one failed the class.
Talking of proof, do you have evidence that I grade inflate because my students would certainly disagree with you. The fact is the varied writing from editorials to research to persuasive essays is far more indicative of their growth than a horribly conceived standardized test.
You have no business being anywhere near education or education policy.
You are all wrong. See the PISA results.
Btw, if Diane Ravitch will stop blocking my posts, I’ll respond to everyone tonight. In the meantime, why don’t you read up on statistics so we can have a rational discussion.
Virginia, your posts have never been blocked. Why don’t you sign your real name? You are not a teacher. You can’t be fired for signing your name. Otherwise many here will suspect you are a troll, speaking for some organization. You know my name and where I live. Please tell us your name and your school district.
How can a machine be more reliable than a teacher? It can’t grade for insight or organization of thoughts. Scary.
Barbara, let me introduce you to this innovation called “the scientific method”. You take a falsifiable hypothesis and then you test it. If it proves false, then the hypothesis was wrong. If it can’t be disproved, then it is true (until proven false).
In research studies evaluating written works (essays, etc.), they compare the grading between humans and machine algorithms. After the grades are assigned, they have additional “expert” humans evaluate the grading by providing their own independent assessment. If the experts’ grades are closer to the machine algorithm’s grades than the human graders’ judgments, then the machine algorithm is MORE reliable.
See how easy the scientific method is? Your intuition about teachers being reliable graders is wrong. In my county here in Loudoun, one principal wanted to have really high grades. So she pressured everyone to give high grades and allow extra credit, etc. The high school had the highest average classroom grades in the county. There was only one problem. It was an AP class. Thus, there was an objective test. Guess how those students scored on the AP exam? Yep, that school had the LOWEST AP scores in the county. The district hires an ethically challenged lawyer to conduct an “independent investigation” and she declares “nothing to see here”. This is why we don’t believe classroom grades are anywhere close to reliable.
– http://www.leesburgtoday.com/news/teacher-complaints-spur-probe-at-loudoun-valley/article_d87ae0aa-40fb-11e3-8f10-0019bb2963f4.html
Are there any other questions I can help you answer? My answers are free!
You write for the Onion yes? Your letter is hysterical. Your “civil rights leader” just enrolled his children in a Chicago private school. Guess Arne couldn’t find one single fabulous charter staffed by teach for a while “superstars”. Take your comedy show on the road. You’ll be a huge hit.
Have you seen this research from UNC? They didn’t even set out to measure TFA. Since TFA can only place 10% of their applicants, I like to say I’d prefer my kids to be educated by “TFA rejects”.
Any person who is unaccountable in their job is either not trustworthy or not competent. Rejecting objective accountability (VAMs) shows that you would protect ineffective teachers over disadvantaged kids. There’s a word for that: Evil!
Virginia,
This blog is dedicated to “a better education for all.” We do hear a wide range of opinions, some bizarre. Next time you write in defense of VAM, which I consider junk science, please cite at least three sources. And let me know how you would feel about using data to measure your effectiveness as a parent.
By all means.
1. http://obs.rc.fas.harvard.edu/chetty/ASA_discussion.pdf
2. http://www.gatesfoundation.org/media-center/press-releases/2013/01/measures-of-effective-teaching-project-releases-final-research-report
3. http://www.rand.org/topics/teacher-effectiveness.html
I would be happy to use algorithms to judge my effectiveness as a parent. In fact, I would probably pay to see that data to see where I could improve. However, please note that since I have taught my kids most everything they see in school prior to their attendance, my kids will be perfectly fine. The kids who will suffer are the disadvantaged kids who do not have as much parental involvement and whose parents may not be familiar with many of the concepts they will see in school. Their future incomes will be devastated by having ineffective teachers. In fact, many will likely drop out because of known, ineffective teachers.
You might be interested in the analysis that I conducted after I received SGP data from VDOE. It pretty much matches every other analysis that has been conducted (Chetty, MET, LA Times, etc.). As you can see from these slides, Loudoun County has over 1500 students that sat through clearly ineffective teachers’ classrooms over the last 3 years (that is being very conservative). They could have identified these teachers and remediated/removed them. Instead, they ignored the growth data (SGP) that Virginia promised to provide to teaches. The districts in Virginia are not even downloading the data per the direction of VDOE. Here are 3 other facts you’ll notice from the data:
–
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B5nQmOh4yk4MRWhHUmdSYjRGMlU/view?usp=sharing
1. Teachers in the bottom 20% in year 1 are 10x more likely to remain in the bottom 20% in year 2 than move to the top 20%.
2. Teachers in the bottom 20% in year 1 are more likely to remain in the bottom 20% than move to ANY of the other 4 quintiles in year 2
3. The same applies to teachers in the top 20%.
Now, I hear all this nonsense about the data being unreliable. While nobody would recommend using small samples sizes (at least 40+ scores over 2+ years) nor would they suggest that SGP/VAM data be the only component of teacher evaluations, it borders on malpractice to not include this data as 20-45% of a teacher’s evaluation.
Virginia,
Your desire to be rated as a parent by algorithms is simply bizarre.
Linda: I guess you didn’t get the memo about “objective accountability” aka VAM—
It’s just what the doctor ordered.
😏
¿? You know, Dr. Charlie Chaplin. “A day without laughter is a day wasted.”
I know my day wasn’t wasted.
😎
P.S. If you or others need some picker-uppers, I suggest:
1), Todd Farley, MAKING THE GRADES: MY MISADVENTURES IN THE STANDARDIZED TESTING INDUSTRY (2009);
2), Daniel Koretz, MEASURING UP: WHAT STANDARDIZED TESTING REALLY TELLS US (2009);
3), Audrey Amrein-Beardsley, RETHINKING VALUE-ADDED MODELS IN EDUCATION: CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES ON TESTS AND ASSESSMENT-BASED ACCOUNTABILITY (2014).
And, with a nod to Señor Swacker and my previous postings on this blog, a little Noel Wilson and Banesh Hoffman to wash it all down.
Bon appétit!
😃
See my post to Don Tabat in Valerie “never met a fact I couldn’t distort but yet they STILL call me a reporter” Strauss’ blog on WaPo. When effectiveness ratings based largely on VAM account for 42% and 71% respectively of elementary and middle school score variability, then anybody who refuses to accept accountability is choosing ineffective teachers over disadvantaged kids. That is evil!
– http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2015/07/08/well-ill-be-vamned-why-using-student-test-scores-to-evaluate-teachers-is-a-sham/
Virginia,
Sorry to disagree with your admiration for VAM. Are you aware that the American Statistical Assiciation warned against the use of VAM to evaluate individual teachers? ASA said that 1-14% of test score variation was attributable to teachers. What do you know that the ASA does not?
Ms. Ravitch, have you seen Prof Chetty/Rockoff/Friedman’s reply to the ASA? The ASA never said that they should not be used for anything, only that caution should be observed and the errors associated included. The ASA also said VAMs were appropriate to be used for evaluating policies across a school (e.g. in evaluation of a principal). This is because the reliability increases as more scores are included in the calculations. Maybe you have seen some of my posts in Valerie Strauss’ blog entries in the Washington Post.
– http://obs.rc.fas.harvard.edu/chetty/ASA_discussion.pdf
However, note that the 1-14% applies to test score variation and not the test score “gains” of a teacher’s class. When non-STEM majors (I assume you to not have majored in STEM) try to comprehend the conclusions of statistical analyses, there is tremendous confusion. As you can see from the prior posts, when 70%+ of student test score gains in middle school math are accounted for by evaluations that use VAMs as at least 50% of their composite, one would be foolish to not use them to evaluate teachers.
Ms. Ravitch, I’ll be in Richmond City Circuit Court on July 31 as we conduct a trial to release ALL Virginia SGP scores publicly. I would certainly welcome your presence or even participation. Or better yet, why don’t you propose an evaluation system that doesn’t rank only 1% of our teachers as ineffective. If the education profession could accurately evaluate, remediate, and transfer its ineffective teachers/principals/administrators, then we wouldn’t need all these VAMs, now would we?
I think the word you are reaching for is “Wise”.
What is evil is pushing discredited and unscientific numerical formulas as a way to measure teacher effectiveness, knowing all along it’s junk science.
That’s the definition of evil – knowingly doing harm to others.
virginiasgp
You clearly never taught a day in your life. And if I’m mistaken, you clearly wound up in the wrong line of work. Really bad career choice.
And if you in fact are not (or never have been) a teacher, what makes you think you have any credibility on teacher evaluation issues? Your not only arrogant, but you’re dead wrong. The business model you want to apply to children does not work.
The central problem with treating education as a production/manufacturing industry instead of a coping organization. The goal of a production industry is to reduce variation in processes in order to manufacture a product that customers are certain will perform according to expectations/specifications. In a coping organization you are confronted with uncertain inputs, uncertain processes, and uncertain outcomes. Added to the inability to control inputs, processes, and outcomes, what parents are looking for in schools are instructional programs that increase variation in outcomes—further develop the unique abilities, talents, and interests of their children. For this reason, as Deming attempted to point out, but which our school leadership and political class still don’t understand, is that managing a production industry and managing a school require entirely different set of intellectual and organizational tools. Not understanding the fundamental differences between manufacturing and educating is the reason that all the intellectual and organizational tools—merit base pay, standards, standardized testing, VAM, curriculum alignment—that the Duncan’s, Rhee’s, are implementing will fail, and in fact will result in the dysfunctional outcomes Deming describes in his books—cheating, drop outs, early exiting of teachers, etc.
Couple of points:
0.54% of $600 billion = $3.24 billion dollars on testing. Annually.
“our affluent kids rank worse at 28th out of 34.”
Can you cite the source?
“How many of you are willing to go out on record saying that only 1% of teachers are ineffective? If you agree it’s higher, what is your solution to identify and replace them.”
Maybe 2%. Just like every other workplace. Every building principal could give you their list in 30 seconds. Without VAM. Without Marzano or Danielson. Without the VAM BS you’re spewing here. What you really fail to realize is that the whole school experience (K to 12) for a student is much, much, greater than the sum of its parts (teachers, principals, curriculum, technology, field trips, plays, athletics, concerts, friends, bullies, cafeteria food, etc. )
In the course of that K to 12 experience a student encounters about 70 different teachers. Two% of that = 1 or 2 truly ineffective teachers.
You want to blow up the whole system with invalid crap like VAM for that? If so, you are a bigger fool than your comments lead me to believe. There isn’t a single person in this country, including you and me that didn’t experience a truly ineffective teacher or two, or three in our K to 12 years. That includes private schools as well. And we all survived. The students that don’t survive the public school system fail for reason that reach far beyond a bad teacher or two or three. It amazes me that you are so fast to blame teachers and abdicate the students and parents from their responsibilities in the learning process. As far as finding the replacement for the few truly harmful teachers – lots of luck looking for 60,000 unemployed super-teachers. If you are looking to point a finger at the system for that 2% of underachieving teachers, try looking at the administrators that read the resumes, culled the applicants, conducted the interviews, talked to their references, hired them, observed them for years, tenured them, and then failed to document their deficiencies, failed to counsel them out of the business, or file paperwork for dismissal.
Better yet, why don’t you get your clueless self into a classroom of 30+ high needs students; stick with it for ten years and then get back to us.
virginasgp says
“note that the 1-14% [in the ASA paper] applies to test score variation and not the test score “gains” of a teacher’s class. “
It’s crystal clear that you don’t understand what ASA meant by “variation in student scores”, eg, when they said
“Research on VAMs has been fairly consistent that aspects of educational effectiveness that are measurable and within teacher control represent a small part of the total variation in student test scores or growth; most estimates in the literature attribute between 1% and 14% of the total variability to teachers.”
I purposely bolded the text for you.
If you still think you are correct in your mis-interpretation of ASA, let me ask you this:
From a purely logical point, how likely would it be that ASA would have devoted several key parts of their paper to something (“variation in student scores”) that was at best subsidiary and (supposedly, by your reckoning) left out the part that had the greatest potential impact with regard to differentiating between teachers?
That would not make sense. And that’s actually not what they did. They focused on “variation in student test scores” because that is the key factor.
I realize it is unlikely that you will listen to anyone here, but good God, man get off your high STEM horse long enough to talk with someone whom you trust who actually has a clue about this stuff.
SomeDAM Poet, first, you have no idea what my background is so I would be very careful before you cast aspersions on my knowledge of VAMs. Let’s identify three different concepts so we can be crystal clear.
1. Variation in test scores: If we select Student A and try to predict his score without knowing anything else about him but his teacher (prior scores, SES, school, class size, etc), we have a very low chance of predicting his score. His current year teacher will have some effect on the score because he/she is responsible for the current year’s gains. But overall, the teacher will have very little effect on the total variability in test scores among students.
2. Variation in growth: If we select Student B and try to predict his growth (raw score in year 2 – raw score in year 1) without knowing anything else about him but his teacher (prior scores, SES, school, class size, etc.), we have a better chance of forecasting his growth but there are still more factors to consider. His current teacher will have significant effect on his raw score growth because he/she is responsible for the current year’s gains. But think about it like a child growth chart. The expected actual growth (in inches) each year depends on where they start out. Taller kids in general will be taller when they grow up. Thus, on average they will grow more each year than the shorter kids. Taller kids not only are taller at the end of each year, but they have grown more on average too. Gifted kids achieve greater raw score growth than disadvantaged kids.
3. Variation in growth among similar kids: If we select Student C and try to predict his growth knowing nearly all the variables to date (prior scores, SES, school, class size, etc.) including his teacher, we can make a pretty accurate prediction indeed. We know that gifted kids will achieve higher raw score growth than disadvantaged kids. We know that a large reason disadvantaged kids have low prior scores is because they have issues at home, lack of motivation, lack of access to technology or books, etc. Thus, we know when we compare growth of poor kids to other poor kids, those outside school factors have already been determined. This is WHAT VAMs MEASURE folks.
In the Gates MET study, when you look at the correlation between the VAMs and the actual growth of students (aggregated at the teacher level) in middle school math, the correlation was > 0.9!!!! That means that over 70% of the variation in growth among different teachers’ classrooms was due to the teachers themselves. If you don’t understand that, I cannot help you.
And while yes, the actual growth of any individual student is more variable, the issue at hand is whether there is a difference in growth among similar kids based on their teachers. If yes, and the answer is absolutely yes, then we must choose policies on that indisputable fact. The fact that folks parrot phrases from the ASA without knowing what they actually mean just points out that many teachers lack both STEM understanding and critical reading skills.
Please, pretty please, have one of your “vaunted professors” come on here and debate. They know what I’m saying is true. They will try to spin and use slight of hand with phrases such as “total variability in test scores”, but they know that variability in growth among similar students at the teacher level is highly dependent on the teacher.
Virginia, how do you explain the statement on VAM by the American Statistical Association? Can you name a single district where VAM has been successful?
It depends on what you mean by “successful”. For example, there are many policies which can be implemented regardless of whether teachers are promoted/fired based on VAMs.
1. Math VAMs show much greater variation than Reading VAMs. Yet, the effectiveness of teachers in both math and Reading are similar (good teachers can teach most anything, at least at younger grades). This means that a good teacher provide less benefit in Reading that he/she does in math. At the same time, a bad teacher is more harmful in math than in Reading. So a simple policy is to load all of your best teachers (or most of them) into the math courses. That would improve results without affecting a single teacher’s salary or employment status.
2. The other simple policy that has been advocated by many orgs is to vary the class size based on teacher effectiveness. Since good teachers are effective with larger class sizes, a district could provide the most effective teachers with more students. The least effective teachers would have fewer students and could spend more time with each. I would even argue to publish the VAMs by teacher and let parents decide what they prefer: smaller class size or higher VAMs (disclosure: I’m taking higher VAMs every day of the week and twice on Sunday -> 40 students/class is fine by me if I have a top 20% teacher).
Look, there are 3 different rationales for paying teachers more.
1. Teachers deserve more pay so let’s give them more money regardless of the effects.
2. Teachers will work harder if they are paid more. Let’s give incentive pay and see what happens. This has not worked in the trials so far I would argue that most teachers enter the profession because it is a cause. They are already trying as hard as they can. Some are good, some are not. The same applies to quarterbacks selected in the NFL’s first round. They are all talented and work hard. Some are effective. Others are not. But a team can’t hang on to an ineffective quarterback just because he “tries hard”. Ultimately these attempts will fail.
3. In order to get better teachers, we must pay them more. What current teachers don’t realize is that this necessitates that the current teachers are NOT as effective as we would like. I think most teachers who champion higher pay don’t even realize this consequence. I believe this is how we will improve education. We should:
a. Publish what teachers really make. I help the military forecast how much their personnel will cost. Most soldiers don’t realize that a whopping 32% of their pay is contributed to the Treasury to fund their future pension. They don’t see the money right away so they can’t properly valuate it. However, it is real. Teachers get about 20% of their salary in pension contributions. Private sector workers don’t get this. When a college student compares teaching to the private sector, they only look at salaries. They may “know” a pension exists, but can’t properly valuate it. If we simply publish private sector equivalent pay scales, we will have a lot more candidates apply and more talented ones as well.
b. Hire more STEM majors. Not education majors with extra math courses. Real STEM majors who chose that as a profession and then we convince them to teach. Colleges don’t hire education majors to teach physics or math. Why do we hire education majors to teach math/science in K-12? If we relaxed the training requirements (career switcher or TFA model) and then had serious, objective measurement of their performance, we could acquire highly effective STEM majors (obviously not all will be able to teach but many will).
c. Use VAMs to evaluate policies (e.g. tracking), identify the best teachers to generate best practices (we don’t need 30K different lesson plans for the same concept), and yes, determine which teachers/principals should be teaching core classes. I’m not saying that history or art are not important. But if you fail art, you can still earn a living. If you can’t read/write or understand math concepts, you will not have a successful career. Simply move the less effective teachers out of the math/Reading classes.
Where exactly do you disagree?
virginasgp
I addressed a very specific claim by you
“note that the 1-14% [in the ASA paper] applies to test score variation and not the test score “gains” of a teacher’s class. “
..and i will simply say again that it’s crystal clear that you don’t understand what ASA meant by “variation in student test scores”
I actually don’t care what your (supposed) knowledge of VAM may (or may not) be or whether you have a STEM degree (as do the people who wrote the ASA paper, by the way). It’s simply not relevant to my observation:
You made a statement which shows beyond all doubt that you have a fundamental misunderstanding about what ASA meant by “variation in student scores” in their paper which had to do with a central claim of their paper.
But if you wish to testify in public to the contrary of ASA, by all means, be my guest.
The variation among test score growth aggregated across classrooms that can be attributed to teachers is not 1-14%. Period.
That’s equivalent to saying that just because a rich kid might become a drug addict or that a poor kid can raise himself by the bootstraps to become wealthy, parental income is not that important to career success. When you aggregate the outcomes by parental income level, we see that it has enormous effects. Other effects such as beauty, GRIT, etc. have an effect and often more so at the individual level. But overall the dominant factors emerge when you aggregate across larger populations.
As Chetty/Rockoff/Friedman clearly said:
“The ASA is correct in noting that the majority of variation in student test scores is “attributable to factors outside of the teacher’s control,” and that this “is not saying that teachers have little effect on students.” These statements sum up some of the major findings from VAM research. First, comparing teachers based on raw student tests scores without a VAM approach would be biased against teachers serving students from disadvantaged backgrounds. A VAM approach helps to level the playing field, so that students’ knowledge and skills when they enter a
classroom are not an impediment to a teacher receiving a positive evaluation of their performance.
Second, while it is true that a single teacher is unlikely to turn a remedial student into an honors student, our paper on teachers’ long-term impacts of
shows that teachers do have meaningful effects on students. For example, we
estimate that being assigned to a high-value added (top 5%) rather than an average teacher for a single grade raises a student’s lifetime earnings by more than $50,000. The fact that there is a lot of variance in student achievement due to numerous
other factors – such as parents, neighborhoods, or health – does not take away from the important role that teachers can and do play in improving students’ outcomes”
virginiasgp
When the ASA say “Most VAM studies find that teachers account for about 1% to 14% of the variability in test scores, ” they are talking about test score “gains.”
That’s clear from actual VAM studies, which yield variance in student test score gains (accounted for by teachers) that are indeed comparable to numbers within the range quoted by ASA for “variability in test scores” (ie, a big hint that your reading of ASA was wrong)
See, for example How Large are teacher effects?(Nye, Konstantopoulos, & Hedges, 2004) which found teachers account for about 13% of the variance in math test score gains and about 7% of the variance in reading test score gains.
There is also a table at the beginning which shows the range of variance values for earlier VAM studies with the vast majority of the variance values falling within the range quoted by ASA (a few are outside, but not many and I am not sure the precise studies that ASA was quoting, at any rate)
Ok, SomeDAM Poet, it all depends on what you are measuring and if you can really differentiate between achievement and true gains. See the following pages in this review
Page 9: “Neither of the value-added analyses
discussed indicates that classroom effects
on student achievement are large. But
each suffers from important interpretive
and methodological problems warranting
more discussion. Consider, first, some
problems with covariate adjustment
models. Several analysts have
demonstrated that covariate adjustment
models do not really model changes in
student achievement (Rogosa, 1995;
Stoolmiller & Bank, 1995). Instead, such
analyses are simply modeling students’
achievement status, which in a value-
added framework has been adjusted for
students’ social background and prior
achievement. When viewed in this way, it
is not surprising to find that teacher
effects are relatively small in covariate
adjustment models. Such models, in fact,
are assessing teacher effects on
achievement status, not change.
If one really wants to assess the size of
teacher effects on changes in student
achievement, models of annual gains in
achievement are preferable. As Rogosa
(1995) demonstrates, annual gains in
achievement are unbiased estimates of
students’ “true” rates of achievement
growth and are therefore preferable to
covariate adjustment models in the
analysis of change. However, simple gain
scores suffer from an important
methodological problem that researchers
need to guard against. As Rogosa (1995)
demonstrates, when there is little
variance among students in true rates of
academic growth, annual gains in
achievement provide very unreliable
measures of underlying differences
among students in rates of change. In
addition, in variance decomposition
models using gain scores, measurement
error due to unreliability in the gain
scores will be reflected in student-level
variance components, increasing the
denominator in effect size formulas and
thus reducing teacher effect size
coefficients. In fact, as we discuss below,
this problem is present in the Prospects
data, where differences among students
in true rates of academic growth are quite
small. For this reason, the effect sizes
derived from the gain score models
discussed in this report are almost
certainly underestimates of the overall
effects that classrooms have on growth in
students’ achievement”
Page 11: “More important for our purposes is a
second finding. The cross-classified
random effects models produce very
different estimates of the overall
magnitude of teacher effects on growth in
student achievement than do simple gain
scores models. For example, in the cross-
classified random effects analyses, we
found that after controlling for student
background variables, the classrooms to
which students were assigned in a given
year accounted for roughly 60-61% of the
reliable variance in students’ rates of
academic growth in reading achievement
(depending on the cohort), and 52-72% of
the reliable variance in students’ rates of
academic growth in mathematics
achievement. This yields d-type effect
sizes ranging from .77 to .78 for reading
growth (roughly two-to-three times what
we found using a simple gains model),
and d-type effect sizes ranging from .72 to
.85 for mathematics growth (again,
roughly two-to-three times what we find
using a simple gains model)! The
analysis also showed that school effects
on achievement growth were substantial
in these models (d = .55 for reading, and
d = .53 for mathematics)!”
Do you still want to claim that I have “no idea what I’m talking about”?
Virginia, you can cite research until the cows come home. Your philosophy of education is warped. Please stop posting here. I have reached the point where I can’t read your comments any more because my eyes glaze over. You are a VAM-obsessive.
Do it to your own children and leave the rest of us alone who don’t share your obsession.
All doubts resolved.
In Rheephormish: a Chettybot. *Hey, when in Rome, speak like the Romans.*
One example. How about “the soft bigotry of low expectations”—as a Chetty fangirl/fanboy, how can one reflexively assume an exact percentage of so-called “ineffective teachers” is greater or lesser than, or exactly at, 1% or any percent at all without having reliable and accurate and pertinent data available to everyone as framed/produced by transparent and verifiable/testable definitions?
Oh, that’s right: a Chetty fangirl/fanboy is automatically accorded the last word on anything because they’re the “Michael Jordans” of data analysis. Proof by assertion!
😱
Only problem: in practice, when it comes to data analysis, they’re the Rodney Dangerfields of comedy trying to make a go of it in pro basketball against the likes of Michael Jordan and Lebron James. *A not so sly reference to Dr. Raj’s Vergara testimony.*
Just one teensy weensy example: “teachers” is undefined. Public? Private? Home schooling parents are included, or not, as teachers? How about teaching staff in parochial schools? Do we include the teachers at schools like Lakeside and Delbarton and Harpeth Hall? And the data analysis beat goes on [apologies to Sonny & Cher]…
Want to try a hand at clarification instead of obfuscation? Then part the waters of ambiguity for us and define the “we” in the “we conduct a trial”—actual, genuine, ethical, inquiring minds want to know.
And please, as one of your “thought leaders” puts it: pretend you’re in the equivalent of a “no spin zone.” Not “we the concerned and loving parents of disadvantaged children that are tired of being beaten down by untrustworthy and unaccountable and incompetent and ineffective teachers.” Try being honest and direct and fair; works for me [caveat: of course, I am not perfect and stumble once in a while].
I ask the commenter in question to reevaluate and reexamine and remediate her/his clichés like “machine graders are actually more reliable than teacher graded tests”—reliable for what? *George Orwell’s famous essay on “Politics and the English Language” might be a help to you in this regard.*
And please, is it too much to ask to not invent your own facts? *Proven factoid: rheeal facts in the hands of fangirls/fanboys are a dangerous thing.* The Atlanta cheating scandal did not involve “in class products” produced by teachers but the sorts of high-stakes standardized tests imposed from above, i.e., what you are infatuated with. This is, as the HSers say, for reals: fact-checking and proofreading is not verboten on this blog.
And contrary to the way you see things through your Chetty-colored glasses: Atlanta, cheating scandal, example of Campbell’s Law, not Raj’s wishy-washy mislead/decoy/distractor “Campbell’s Conjecture.”
Suggestion: don’t engage in pearl clutching couch-fainting antics while on this blog. It is disrespectful and demeaning to you yourself when you make baseless claims that you are being blocked from being posted. Sometimes my comments get blocked too. I’m a grownup. It happens sometimes. The owner of this blog does not run the website. Best to get over yourself and post again. Show some grit and determination.
Almost last but not least: in the interests of learning how to “leverage growth data” I suggest you engage in the novel enterprise of reading, let’s say, the blogs of Mercedes Schneider (deutsch29), Mark Weber (JerseyJazzman), Gary Rubinstein, Audrey Amrein-Beardsley, Bruce Baker, GF Brandenburg, and others. You might discover a whole world of real facts (a sly reference to your reference to the Atlanta cheating scandal) and real data analysis. A mind is a terrible thing…
But perhaps I have completely missed the point. Maybe you’re John Steinbeck’s greatest fan:
“Man is the only kind of varmint sets his own trap, baits it, then steps in it.”
In that case, you have provided me, and many others I am sure, the gift of laughter. if so, thanks.
😎
Since some may be interested, I’ll quote from the actual American Statistical Association paper on VAM
“Research on VAMs has been fairly consistent that aspects of educational effectiveness that are measurable and within teacher control represent a small part of the total variation in student test scores or growth; most estimates in the literature attribute between 1% and 14% of the total variability to teachers. This is not saying that teachers have little effect on students, but that variation among teachers accounts for a small part of the variation in scores. The majority of the variation in test scores is attributable to factors outside of the teacher’s control such as student and family background, poverty, curriculum, and unmeasured influences.
Sooo, it’s really no “secret” that ASA is talking about “variation in student test scores” with their “1% and 14%” statement because they specifically state that.
And prominent critics of VAM like Diane Ravitch, Mercedes Schneider, Audrey Amrein-Beardsley, Gary Rubinstein, Moshe Adler (to name just a few) certainly understand this very basic point.
Diane Ravitch indicated as much above: “ASA said that 1-14% of test score variation was attributable to teachers.”
It’s also no secret that VAM is all about attempting to gauge “variation among teachers”.
About this, ASA are again very specific “that variation among teachers [from one teacher to another] accounts for a small part of the variation in scores”
VAMs very purpose in life is to gauge the variation among teachers — in many cases, for the purpose of labeling them “good” and “poor” (or other similar terminology)
And the fact is, VAM is very poor (some, including myself, would say “abysmal”) at doing that.
Even the nonstatistician can probably appreciate that the statement that “most estimates in the literature attribute between 1% and 14% of the total variability [in student test scores] to teachers” is hardly a particularly glowing recommendation for VAM …
…because, well, you know 1-14% is just “not much.”
In the field I was educated in (physics), the supposed “relationship” would be looked on askance (to put it mildly). That implies a very weak relationship (if any) and certainly not necessarily a causal one. And if someone claimed at a phsyics conference that important decisions should be based on such a weak “relationship”, well, they would probably be laughed right out of the room (if not the field). Ha ha ha ha ha!
But I recognize that some fields (economics, for example) have very low (limbo?) standards for evidence. So I can at least understand the fascination with weak (possibly non-existent) relationships. It’s a veritable well-spring of endless mathturbation, papers and even sometimes prizes.
But the “weak” link between teachers and student test score variation is only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to problems with using VAM to evaluate and rank (and possibly fire) individual teachers.
Again quoting ASA
“The VAM scores themselves have large standard errors, even when calculated using several years of data. These large standard errors make rankings unstable, even under the best scenarios for modeling. Combining VAMs across multiple years decreases the standard error of VAM scores. Multiple years of data, however, do not help problems caused when a model systematically undervalues teachers who work in specific contexts or with specific types of students, since that systematic undervaluation would be present in every year of data.”
What this means in practice is that VAM scores for an individual teacher can (and do) jump all over the place and the jump is often greater than the difference between scores for what are considered “good” and “poor” teachers.
So the very same teacher can be rated “top of the barrel” one year and “bottom of the barrel” the very next. Or even simultaneously “poor” and “good” (like Schroedinger’s cat, dead and alive!) when a teacher is given two different VAM scores for teaching different grades/same subject or different subjects/same grade in a single year. (Or even from one VAM to another)
Gary Rubinstein showed some of this very behavior in a series of blog posts using NY city VAM scores.
With a strong positive correlation between two variables, one would expect an upward sloping line with some small scatter about the line. But VAM shows no such strong relationship. Hardly!
Gary’s plots show instead almost a random scatter of points, meaning that if any relationship actually exists, it is very weak.
ASA did not come right out and say “Thou shalt not use VAM for making high stakes decisions about individual teachers like firing”.
They assumed (obviously incorrectly based on all the support VAM is still getting) that the people reading the report would be sufficiently smart and sufficiently reasonable to understand that basic (almost commonsense) point.
No STEM degree is required to understand their report. Their main points were stated in quite simple terms that most people (even those without a statistics background) can understand.
These two, for example
“VAMs are generally based on standardized test scores, and do not directly measure potential teacher contributions toward other student outcomes. ”
“the majority of opportunities for quality improvement are found in the system-level conditions. Ranking teachers by their VAM scores can have unintended consequences ”
PS
The claim that Arne Duncan is “the greatest civil rights leader since the 1960’s” is just bizarre.
I suppose Nelson Mandela (who only freed his people) is chopped liver compared to Arne (who freed the data and the economists)
Finally, the attack on Esquith in this thread is grotesque — and rather pathetic for the party making it.
“Let My Economists go”
Free the test scores
Free the VAMs
Let my economists go!
Free the flood doors
Free the scams
Let my economists go!
This thread is a sterling example of why I, and anyone else in favor of a “better education for all,” can do very little to poke fun at the self-styled “education reform” crowd.
That’s because rheephormsters do all the heavy lifting. I cannot portray them as pompous know-it-alls that don’t know what they don’t know [thank you, Donald Rumsfeld!] but rush in where angels fear to tread because—because they’ve already done all the work for me! I am left, not unhappily I should say, with not much to do other than recap their frenzied motions and regurgitate their peerless prose and gems of data-driven analysis.
And while we’re at it, howzabout lifting some students from the 13th to the 90th percentile? It’s rheeally not all that hard if you approach it in a Johnsonally sort of way…
“I reject that mind-set.” [Michelle Rhee]
But I already knew she would say that.
😎
KrazyTA is trying to obfuscate once again.
1. No teacher is going to raise a student from the 13th percentile in absolute test scores to the 90th percentile. Ain’t going to happen. If the teacher raises the student from the 13th to the 15th percentile, that would be excellent. In VAMs and SGPs, teachers are rated based on growth compared to similar kids.
2. But let’s see where the confusion reigns. Among all the teachers who instruct kids scoring at the 13th percentile in year 1, some will receive 90th percentile growth scores and some will receive 10th percentile growth scores. Those only reflect the growth of their students relative to similar students. If a student drops from 13th percentile to 5th percentile, that was clearly NOT a successful year. If a student increases from 13th percentile to the 18th percentile, that was an outstanding year.
3. Students can/will have wide fluctuations in their growth measures. Let’s say a student scores at the 13th percentile (in absolute scores) in year 1, at 18th percentile in year 2 and at the 9th percentile in year 3. The growth measure (say SGP) from year 1 -> 2 would be very high. Let’s say 90th percent among similar students. From year 2 -> 3, the growth score would be very low, say 10th percentile. So even though the achievement score doesn’t vary (13->18->9), the growth measure (value added) changes dramatically based upon the principal, teacher and outside factors (90 -> 10).
As you aggregate students (40+ scores over 2+ years), the outside factors offset each other among a group of kids. Pretty soon we see the significant effects of the teacher and wind up with the Gates MET study showing 70%+ of the variability in growth among similar students in middle school math among different classrooms is dependent on the teacher.
Virginia, can you name another nation that evaluates its teachers by test scores? Can you name an elite private school that does? Not Sidwell Friends, where the Obama children are students? Not the U of Chicago Lab School, where Arne Duncan’s children will enroll. And where Rahm sends his children. If VAM is so terrific, why do those who promulgate it avoid it?
I’m guessing Rahm’s school would score very high on VAMs. They pay well and have lots of prof dev. However, I simply would not send my kids to a school that chose not to use VAMs in any way whatsoever when they had access to the data.
I’m battling here in Virginia to have them simply give the SGPs to the teachers. We can deal with evaluations later on but they won’t even give the data to the teachers for crying out loud.
I work in data analytics. You get what you measure. Those measures must be good or you will get unintended and often bad outcomes. But we see the effects of data analytics around us every day. How do you think we improve traffic flow without building more roads? When they optimize the traffic signals, higher efficiency results. When a company puts its most effective workers on a challenging, yet important problem, they get results. What’s wrong with using VAMs to identify the best teachers and assigning them to the core classes? Nobody gets fired, right?
I know China/Korea/Japan/Singapore/etc. all value test scores very highly. There are cultural differences at play. The difference within schools and districts is even larger than the differences between schools and countries.
In the end, let’s let the folks decide. Half the country chooses to ignore VAMs. The other half can let VAMs inform who their teachers are. Deal?
Virginia, China/Korea/Singapore, etc. do NOT use VAMs. Why don’t you put your kids in a school that uses VAMS and agree to let the rest of us be free of them. They are junk science.
Diane, I think we may have an agreement.
1. Every teacher who instructs reading or math had a VAM calculated and published.
2. Teachers have no penalty for any VAM, even if it’s abysmal.
3. Parents can choose which teacher they want. The pro-VAM parents choose those with high VAMs. The anti-VAM parents choose the rest. After all, if VAMs are “junk science”, you shouldn’t care what VAM score your kids’ teacher received.
Deal? You can even come support my case against VDOE that advocates releasing VAM scores. See, in less than one day, we solved this whole controversy. I’m very impressed with your offer!
Virginia, we had VAM scores published in NYC, in the daily newspapers and online. They were nonsensical. The lowest scoring teacher in the city was teaching new immigrants who cycled in and out of her classroom every few months. Teachers of the gifted received low VAM scores because their students were already at the top and showed no growth.
Here is an offer. Let teachers choose if they want to be VAMMED. You may then send your children to their classrooms. Deal?
Meanwhile, I ask you kindly to stop positing about VAM on this blog. You have been monopolizing the space and frankly, you have become a bore. Go haunt VAMboozled, so that Audrey Amrein-Beardsley can correct your errors.
Well, I realized it was just a matter of time before I got booted. Note that I only posted on one of your blog entries. Except for the single post in which I acknowledged there were real questions with asking students to take tests on computers that had not been tested.
This is pretty standard. You will accept hundreds of posts that ridicule government leaders who support VAMs. But when I submit a couple dozen posts that dissect the truth about VAMs, I get booted. So apropos.
Adios. Enjoy leaving disadvantaged kids in ineffective teachers’ classrooms. I’m sure they will be thankful for all of your hard work.
THIS IS A BAD OUTCOME: Someone above said: “You get what you measure. Those measures must be good or you will get unintended and often bad outcomes.”
That is exactly why VAM is invalid. I see it first hand:
VAM falsely assumes that when kids have a bubble test in front of them, they go through it page by page and earnestly try to show what they have or haven’t learned. This is not the case. I’ve seen for years, in four different high-needs NYC schools, a large number of kids get the test and simply fill out the bubbles at random, while many more begin the test in earnest, but at some point give up because the content is above their functioning level.
Then, they fill the balance of the bubble sheet out at random.
How much is guessed? No one is measuring, the formulas bypass this factor completely, but they still treat the input data as legitimate. That’s the open, dirty secret – they know bad data is at the heart of low scores because the less kids know, the more they guess.
VAM has no formula to capture this significant metric. I see it in play every year I’ve taught, from kids who fill out the bubbles last-minute to kids who fill out the bubbles all down one row, to kids who can’t read English, taking ELA exams in utter confusion.
We treat scores the same whether the kid tried or not, which means we are blaming teachers for social-emotional issues, but without admitting it in their disclaimers.
Even in the high performing schools where 100% of students do their darndest to show what they know, the results are skewed because they are compared against results of kids who didn’t actually take the tests in massive numbers.
But in the middle ranges, the flaws are different.
Any use of a 1-in-4 multiple choice question means any given answer could be guessed. Across the nation, there are untold cases of scores that ended up right on the borderline between passing or failing, with one question making the difference.
Because there are high stakes attached, we need to know. If the kid passed by one correct answer, it means ANY question guessed correctly on the test meant the difference — but did not actually measure their knowledge, in that case we are measuring the kid’s luck, a wholly arbitrary measure.
Thus, the teacher that got credit for that passing grade was not deserving and the metrics are flawed. More often, it’s the opposite, where a kid failed by one question and the teacher takes the blame. But in either case, the kid did not know the answer, or wasn’t even reading the question – and there could be millions of these cases every year for all we know, figured into “official” scoring, teacher and school rankings.
So before we even discuss the validity of growth formulas, we need to admit how much of the input data is invalid from the start. It’s not possible to scientifically measure teacher efficiency from bubbled-in marks on a piece of paper, period. To say those black marks represent knowledge or lack thereof, when teachers can plainly see the sheets filled in at random, it’s an attempt to close off reality in order to satisfy political agendas or make money.
Meanwhile, inner city teachers would love VAM scientists to hear WHY kids aren’t really trying on their tests. Year after year, they won’t listen.
Amerigus, you raise some key issues and are confused on some others. Let me highlight the confusion first.
1. You should not mention VAM and “proficient” in the same sentence as they have nothing to do with one another. Without VAMs, we are left to evaluate schools based on the number of students who “passed” a given test. In those cases, a single correct answer does make a difference. However, I would argue that statistically speaking, it’s negligible. With VAMs, we only measure growth among similar kids. Thus, it doesn’t matter if every single student “failed” the test, those teachers could have the highest VAMs in the district in they achieved significant growth in their students (think 3 years behind to start and ending only 1 year behind).
2. Second, you seem to focus on this “guessing”. Carol Burris made the same mistake in her response about NY VAM scores. Her confusion results from a total lack of understanding regarding probability and statistics. Carol claimed that a “good guesser” could correctly guess 30 out of 86 questions on a test. This is patently false. If they were purely guessing, there is < 2.3% chance they could raise their expected score from a 21.5 (1/4 of 86 questions) to 30. A well-designed test would (a) include penalties for incorrect answers and (b) have a larger percentage of questions needed to be rated as "proficient". In order for (b) to occur, there needs to be more of the less challenging questions on the test relative to the harder questions. But see my 7:08am post on 7/8/2015 in that column above to see how eliminating possible answers improves a score. It is tantamount to partial credit. But as each answer is eliminated (the student knows more), he/she is rewarded more for each elimination. Multiple choice tests really do measure partial knowledge within a given question.
3. As far as kids not trying, that is a legitimate issue. It can be addressed in several ways; however, I cannot speak to whether NY, or any state, is taking these measures.
a. One can determine if kids guess randomly in multiple ways. "Christmas tree" patterns can be detected. Also, the variability in test scores by the same student can be detected. If a student's scores drop significantly one year or vary wildly from year to year, they are unreliable and should be dropped. The IRS implements similar data mining efforts to detect abnormal tax returns for auditing.
b. There needs to be adaptive testing to ensure we can detect knowledge below grade level and above grade level. This will prevent those kids from becoming too frustrated to continue. But note that as tests become more targeted to the knowledge/skills that kids actually have, the amount of variability in test score gains related to teachers will increase. Part of the variability now occurs because we have imperfect tests to determine the exact knowledge of a student. As those improve, the measurement error will drop and the variability shown to result from teachers will rise.
c. No teacher should be measured on an inadequate set of scores. The state needs to determine the minimum number, but Virginia recommended 40+ scores over 2+ years. Having certain students refuse shouldn't affect that score significantly as long as those minimum thresholds are met. Obviously, the opt-out activists are trying to undermine the reliability of the tests (in a cowardly way). I guess when you can't win the battle politically, they figure they will employ any means necessary. If federal funding (or even better, transfer payments to individual households) were tied to participation, all this nonsense would end in a heartbeat.
So yes, you have some legitimate questions. But the fact that readers still don't understand VAMs and how they differ from proficiency ratings is truly scary.
Virginiasgp, Your faith in standardized testing is misplaced. Read Todd Farley’s “Making the Grades.”
KrazyTA,
You have such a great way with words
“I cannot portray them as pompous know-it-alls that don’t know what they don’t know [thank you, Donald Rumsfeld!] but rush in where angels fear to tread because—because they’ve already done all the work for me!”
It leaves me speechless…
but not verseless
“Parody lost at Sea”
Parody cannot hope
To match reality
Cuz parody’s a boat
Reality the sea
I am not a gambling man but nothing could be more true than the phrase “put your money where your mouth is”. In fact, hedge funds are based on small variations creating tremendous differences over time.
So here’s the $10K bet. We can make it to the charity of your choice so we don’t run afoul of any laws but feel free to setup a charity for your own kids/etc.
All of you say VAMs are hocus pocus. That they don’t really measure anything of significance and fluctuate highly from year to year. So we’ll take 10,000 students at the beginning of the year spread across the spectrum. We each get 5000 students to track. I’ll choose the 5000 who are taught by the teachers with the highest VAMs. You choose them at random since “hey, VAMs are not reliable”.
At the end of the year, we compare test score growth on an apples-to-apples basis. Kids with similar prior scores are compared against other kids with similar scores. The side that has the best gains in test scores wins the $10K bet.
Any takers? We are about to see SomeDAM Poet go totally quiet (or in street terms – ST*U!!!!).
Oh my….
John Steinbeck’s greatest fanboy has struck again.
“Man is the only kind of varmint sets his own trap, baits it, then steps in it.”
😏
13th percentile. 90th percentile. That’s what one of the greatest “thought leaders” of the self-styled “education reform” movement said she did, all by her lonesome [forget that pesky co-teacher!] when she did her brief teaching stint. [From which experience she created her truly sad if self-wounding “lawdy lawdy” speech.] Repeated ad nauseam for years and years and years until she couldn’t ignore repeated questions about how she came up with that ‘hard data point.’ Turns out she not only couldn’t prove it, she actually floated the following rheephorm balloon: that her principal told her, in private with no witnesses present, that that was what she had done. Of course, that principal and her co-teachers have never, ever, verified the educational equivalent of walking on water. Balloon pricked, air let out, claim dropped completely.
Genuflect before another data-driven decision maker/analyst, former DC Public Schools Chancellor, Michelle Rhee.
And on a par with 13th and 90th, there’s the matter of those “in class products” produced by those reprehensible teachers in Atlanta that turned out to be something very different: state-mandated high-stakes standardized tests.
Pair the fiercely self-wounding quote from Steinbeck—meant, as I see it, as an admonition against not an encouragement for—with the following:
[start]
A petard was a small bomb used for blowing up gates and walls when breaching fortifications. It is of French origin and dates back to the sixteenth century. A typical petard was a conical or rectangular metal object containing 2–3 kg (5 or 6 pounds) of gunpowder, with a slow match for a fuse. …
The pétard, a rather primitive and exceedingly dangerous explosive device, consisted of a brass or iron bell-shaped device filled with gunpowder fixed to a wooden base called a madrier. This was attached to a wall or gate using hooks and rings, the fuse lit and, if successful, the resulting explosive force, concentrated at the target point, would blow a hole in the obstruction, allowing assault troops to enter.
The word remains in modern usage in the phrase hoist with one’s own petard, which means “to be harmed by one’s own plan to harm someone else” or “to fall into one’s own trap,” implying that one could be lifted up (hoist, or blown upward) by one’s own bomb.
[end]
Link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petard
Steinbeck. Hoist. Petard.
What’s old is new again.
I couldn’t do more damage, whether in seriousness or satire, to vacuous rheephormista argumentation than rheephormsters do to themselves.
I humbly admit defeat. I am powerless to compete with masters of self-parody.
Although, to be perfectly honest, I don’t mind losing that contest…
😎
Diane, I am one of the lucky ones. Even though my school in Los Angeles was reconstituted in 2010 and I went through a few tough years, I now work at a n alternative public school with a fabulous principal and we hardly do any testing at all. All of us realize how fortunate we are to work there. .
What Duncan has done has paradoxically – in some states at least- created a situation in which veteran teachers have more job security than ever because new teachers are not entering the profession. I easily obtained a summer school assignment and work an additional job with my district. Believe it or not, there was a shortage of English and social science teachers for summer school.
I guess in a way, I have Arne Duncan to thank for that- but at the expense of many wonderful colleagues who exited teaching in the last four years. The reformers have created the opposite situation than the one they wanted. I see almost no young teachers around me. I suppose I could work another 20 years if I wanted to.
Barbara,
I have met teachers in NYC new small schools who tell me the senior teacher in their school has only 9 years experience
So depending on the geographical area. there are either few young teachers or many. I think the dynamics of each district, even large urban ones are distinct. I think younger teachers may be fleeing LA due to rapidly rising rents as well as relatively low pay in LAUSD when compared to the cost of living.
So in NY city, veteran teachers are either retiring early or going to other districts?
I know that there has been about a 70% drop of students in teacher credential programs and many have very few students.
To all who replied to: “virginiasgp” Thank you. It was a pleasure reading the take-down, smack-down, what ever you want to call it. I’m loving it. Again, thanks!
Mark, no parent would write what that alleged mother wrote
I agree. Troll was the first thing that came to mine. Unbalanced was the second. “Use data and algorithms to improve my parenting.” As Keith Jackson would utter: Whoa Nelly! I’m glad I’m not her progeny. Otherwise I’d be best friends with the receptionist at VA’s Child Protective Services. I’d love to be in Richmond for the press farce she speaks off and to catch at glance of her. I must say, when reading her ramblings I truly thought I was reading parts of a sci-fi novel. My head is still shaking and swaying.
mind not mine. oops!
First, I am a father, a former Naval submarine officer who absolutely wrote that. You can check out my Virginia SGP page on Facebook or see @freethatdata on Twitter. Or come meet me in person at the Richmond county courthouse in Virginia on July 31. See Emma Brown’s Mar 16 WaPo story for more details.
Please give me time to respond. I understand that since you only work 200 days per year, you are likely out by the pool but private sector workers have jobs in the summer. More tonight.
Certainly answers one of Diane’s questions regarding your lack of teaching experience. Now Mystery Dad.,I suggest you enroll in a real teacher education program and drag yourself to an inner-city or Title ! school and apply for a teaching job. Why am I wasting my time? Just as I have no idea what your job entailed,you have no idea of mine. I do wish to thank you. I apologize for assuming that you were female. Next time I’ll be gender neutral. By the way, I’m working right now. Seems that the time off allows me to supplement my meager income and allows me to replenish my school supplies account. Like petty cash since teachers spend their own money for their classrooms. Silly huh?
http://thejournal.com/articles/2013/07/01/k12-teachers-out-of-pocket-1-point-6-billion-on-classroom-tools.aspx
I look forward to your remarks, but I’ll be attending to family business this weekend and I unplug then.
Well actually Virginia, I spend my ‘time off” organizing my current curriculum and finding more. And i work summer school and a second job during the year. It is obvious you hate teachers and think we have it easy. If we did, there would be few openings for teachers yet there are many. I spent my entire Thanksgiving break last year researching North Korea for a unit I did with my students. Nice try but teachers spend as much time working outside the classroom as inside teaching
I would argue more time outside than in. The payoff is hearing from you’ re students 5-10-15 years down the road. Thanks to the computer, social media, and email they can stay in touch or if you’re lucky, you can spot a former student in a Lady Gaga video like I did a few years ago. To non-teachers its hard to describe why we love the job and deal with the abuse. But, to borrow a phrase from some of my colleagues: You can’t fix stupid. Much as we try.
Tell me about it, Mark. I hope “you’re” students didn’t have you for English class.
Btw, how does a backup cameo role in a Lady Gaga video pay? I bet parents are rushing to sign their kids up for your class.
No, History. I thought you were busy Virginia. My apologies for just writing and commenting where formal rules don’t necessarily apply. So, you commanded a sub? Glad you’re not in charge of one anymore. Sounds like you’re channeling The Great Santini. One last dig. She was actually a primary back-up. She had a nice amount of screen time. Oh, one more thing – she graduated from GW with a degree in History. Who knows…perhaps it might have been my class. I have many, many more stories with about students in other fields. I detect anger. Was the retirement voluntary or was it “up and out”?
“VAPs and Palgorithms”
Palgorithms are the thing
Value Added Parenting
Measuring with VAPs and such
Evaluating loving touch
No, Virginia, there isn’t a Santa Claus
Virginia, I usually catch errors and proof read. Sometimes mistakes and errors happen. Thanks for catching it and pointing it out.
Let’s not forget the Arne is enrolling his children in a 30000 per year private school in Chicago when the family returns….. I guess he does not want to subject them to the public school system he set up in Chicago years ago, or the national public school system he has ruined. It should be a requirement that any secretary of education who has school aged children should have those children attend public schools…. in fact I’d say that should be true for any elected official who has a vote related to public education. They should have to think of the consequences for their own children before they start messing with other people’s kids.
Shucks I forgot to edit .I have many, many more stories with about students in other fields. That sentence should be: I have many, many more stories about students in other fields.
Mark, it’s called a smartphone in between meetings.
Btw, I don’t mind typos but I just thought one dig (can’t fix stupid) deserved another. Now why don’t we discuss the merits from here on out.
Virginiasgp, I don’t like your tone. You obviously have contempt for teachers and for public education. Clean it up or go elsewhere.
So a poster says “you can’t fix stupid” with respect to me and yet I’m not the one showing respect? Seriously?
Btw, have you seen what some of your commenters have said about the Secretary of Education? Or Bill Gates? I see that it depends on who one criticizes as opposed to what one actually says.
I will argue on the merits when I have time to write more this evening.
Diane Ravitch, I have neither contempt for teachers nor for public education. I was educated in South Carolina by public school teachers. Most were very good because this was back in the 1980’s when talented women would often go into teaching because of the culture. The feminist movement freed many women to pursue a myriad of careers (and boost the economy) but dealt a heavy blow to the education sector who had benefited from talent at below-market wages. That is no longer the case.
If I only wanted to put my kids in private school, why would I spend time and energy promoting good policy? I want my kids in public school. Rather than bailing out, I am determined to change them. You can see my three goals at http://www.facebook.com/virginiasgp.
But let me relay why objective measurement is so important. Diane, why wouldn’t I want more information (objective) on how I am parenting? Ultimately, I am the customer so I can decide how to use that information. I want all the information I can get. If somebody is paying me for a service, they should have information on how I am performing as well.
Besides, you do realize that those calculations can be used to do that very thing that teachers keep threatening parents with? VAMs are a partial derivative on the teacher contributions to academic growth. Once you know that relationship and depending on the other data, you can solve for parental influence. For example, if you knew parental income and education, and had measured teacher influence, you could then effectively solve for parental influence (or a large part of it). I have no problems if you do that.
But let me tell you why honest critiques are necessary. I served onboard nuclear naval submarines. We were constantly under pressure to perform and rightly so. When you operate a $1B vessel with a live nuclear reactor onboard (remember many of those nuclear plants sit beside populated areas like Honolulu or San Diego or Norfolk), you cannot tolerate any mishaps. Every single one of us made a mistake at one point or another. Did we cover it up? Did we say oh well it must have been an outside factor? No, we were instantly disqualified from our position. What does that mean? It means we cannot stand watch or operate the plant. It means that our peers must assume those duties for us in an already busy and stressful job.
What happened next? We reviewed what went wrong together. Everybody participated in deconstructing the mistake and analyzing any lessons learned. Then the disqualified person was assigned some training and/or remediation. If we were out to sea, this all happened pretty fast because that’s all you work on till you are restored to duty (maybe 24-36 hours). But the point is we became comfortable admitting our mistakes (in fact reporting them to others), being removed from our position and working to become qualified again.
Can you imagine if a teacher, upon teaching a concept incorrectly, was “disqualified” from teaching his/her class until the teacher was remediated on that concept? You folks would howl like the earth was coming to an end. But that is exactly what very highly trained (I can guarantee you the SAT scores of nearly everyone on that sub are top 25-33% among college students) personnel accepted and supported. Furthermore, not everyone was rated as “the best of the best”. We instituted a bell curve for evaluations. Now, we contend (and can prove) that due to the rigorous requirements to join the nuclear Navy that our sailors were much more effective than the average Navy sailor. Yet, we had a normalized rating system within the submarine force to differentiate. In fact, you were up or out. That wasn’t a factor when I was in because the economy generally entice most to get out (I only served six years).
But can you imagine if we told teachers that we only had x number of slots for 15+ year teachers and if they didn’t become one of the best teachers in the school, they would be forced out? Once again, you would think the Earth was coming to an end from the howls of “persecution”.
We lobby for reform because we sincerely believe this is the best policy for America’s schools. My kids will end up just fine because I can teach them anything they don’t learn in school. Who speaks for the disadvantaged kids with one parent who never went to college? When that kid has an ineffective teacher (I know, I know, you all teach in Lake Wobegone where ALL teachers are perfect, or at least 99%+ are), who gives 2 cents about whether he is bored/confused out of his mind and drops out because of that teacher? Most teachers are good or great, but if you think 4-8% are not ineffective, you are crazy.
Again, think about that submarine in which 25-40% of the candidates are weeded out before they even arrive on a sub (what’s the % of teachers that are “weeded out”? 2-5% maybe). Yet, we are very strict on performance and admit that everyone has faults. Are you simply willing to do the same?
Virginia, about 40% of teachers are “weeded out” within their first five years. Is that enough for you? Or would you prefer more than 40%? In some districts, like DC, which practices VAM, the proportion is higher.
Diane, did you mean 17%? Funny how propaganda gets stuck in our heads. Even I had been quoting that 40-50% number for years.
I think your hero, Ingersoll, should roll his comments back in light of hard data. But it seems like he doubles down.
Do you believe that folks should agree with hard data? I’m fully prepared to admit I’m wrong in light of new data.
Virginia, I meant 40-50%. Ingersoll is not the only source of that data. NYC regularly reports attrition numbers in that range, as do other districts. Virginia, I can’t spend a disproportionate amount of time responding to your arguments in favor of turning education into a statistical exercise. I philosophically disagree. I believe VAM invariably narrows the curriculum. That is not what I would want for my children or grandchildren. When Sidwell Friends and the U. of Chicago Lab School and Dalton and Exeter and Andover start using VAM, let me know. I will wait to hear more from you. I am still waiting for you to identify the other nations that use VAM or any elite private school that uses it.
Virgina, since you seem certain that the true attrition rate is rather trivial (17%), I will quote civil rights attorney Mary Levy, who has been monitoring the D.C. public school system for many years. She wrote me in 2012:
About 20% of all teachers have left the DC system annually since the mayoral takeover and the appointment of Michelle Rhee in 2007-08. In the years preceding – 2001-2007 – about 15% left. Of new hires, 25% leave within a year, 50% within two years, 75% within five years. On the average this was the case before as well as during Michelle Rhee’s tenure.
She included graphs to demonstrate this horrendous rate of attrition, but I can’t reproduce them in a comment. 75% within five years! Is that high enough for you?
If you could find that research, it would be helpful.
Note that I spoke to a DC teacher after he contacted me on the WaPo chat boards. He and I agreed on many things after speaking on the phone. He indicated how administrators often degrade their performance by tolerating discipline problems. When a student strikes a teacher, the student should NEVER be allowed back in the classroom of that teacher. Period. But his administration did just that.
And we have to get over this aversion to any type of tracking. “Differentiated instruction” when you have students from the very bottom of abilities to the very top in impossible!
You do realize that we could measure how these policies affect outcomes with VAMs, right? Allow some principals to put all kids back in class and to not track. Allow others to do it. Then, we can see the difference. Most of the critiques of the teacher had to do with policies. The one very legitimate criticism I shared related to testing of students far below grade level. I have no problem giving a below-average student a test in which he/she only gets 25-40% correct. But if there are literally no questions that assess his/her knowledge when it’s 2-3 grade levels below average, that is a big problem. We need tests that measure 2-3 grade levels below and 2-3 grade levels above. Adaptive testing is the ideal way but they must be verified to be accurate first.
We all know there are many problems in DC. Previously, teachers could sit in there for life. Not an easy job but very secure. Now, it’s still not easy and less secure. I agree that many have unrealistic expectations of teachers in DC. And the culture issues (see above) have to be dealt with before teachers will stay. But the leaders just want effective (not credentialed) teachers in those schools. Let’s have effective teachers instruct in an environment conducive to learning. If a few students have to be removed so that 90% can learn in peace, so be it. And even then, those students will not be rocket scientists. But they will be much better prepared for a successful career.
Diane, I agree with you that VAMs have had the unintended effect of narrowing the curriculum in many places. But it shouldn’t be that way.
The Gates MET study found that the best teachers were least likely to be judged by their students as “teaching to the test”. Why do we let teachers focus on “test prep”? All that means is that the teacher is likely not effective and can’t communicate/engage/inspire students to learn. Ask the best teachers who don’t teach to the test AND get great test results how they do it.
I contend that those teachers have 1) higher aptitude overall, 2) more charisma and 3) understand and can explain the concepts better. The goal is to hire MORE of those teachers by publishing what teachers really make.
I think that everyone on here believe teachers are THE most important part of the solution. We value teachers. That’s why we engage in this debate. It’s just a difference of opinion on how to solve it. For all those saying pay teachers more to get better teachers, they are secretly criticizing the current crop of teachers. Do you disagree?
Let’s say President Obama and Sec Duncan could raise teacher pay by 20% with his pen tomorrow. Would you be onboard? What if it didn’t cost him a dime?! You see, college students don’t understand those teacher pensions that account for ~20% above the salary. If we simply tell college student what teachers make, we will get more and better candidates overall. That’s not to say we don’t have great teachers now. But who wouldn’t want more supply of teachers? Maybe the ineffective teachers who simply want their paycheck to increase?
From the article:
“Butcher, a retired attorney and frequent critic of Richmond city schools, said he found a teacher whose students on average ranked in the bottom 1 percent in student growth percentiles.”
Butcher a current ignoramus does not realize that many excellent teachers who teach the highest achieving students end up showing the least amount of “growth”. If the trig teacher gets an accelerated group of high achievers who scored in the upper 90s in geometry and gets those same kids to score in the upper 90s, she would show virtually zero growth.
Link to WaPo article:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/parent-suing-state-officials-to-make-teacher-evaluation-data-public/2015/03/15/9b441a58-c98f-11e4-b2a1-bed1aaea2816_story.html
Btw, I am not Butcher although I do communicate with him. He’s done great analysis of the SGP data we had released. When the median SGP score (remember these are percentiles from 1-99 and the median is typically in a range of 30-70) is around 1-5 percentile, that is an atrocious teacher. How can anyone let that teacher continue to teach disadvantaged kids year after year after year?
You can find more info here:
Facebook
Twitter
YouTube Channel
Google Drive folder with SGP data and presentations
My name is Brian Davison btw. I have to sign the FOIA petitions so unlike many, I have no choice in anonymity.
NY teacher: if you haven’t already, read Audrey Amrein-Beardsley, RETHINKING VALUE-ADDED MODELS IN EDUCATION: CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES ON TESTS AND ASSESSMENT-BASED ACCOUNTABILITY (2014).
Yes, one of the ridiculously predictable and tragically toxic effects of VAManiacal schemes is to measure-to-punish those teachers whose students are at the “top” (or “bottom”) of growth re test scores. And a reminder to viewers of this blog: VAM doesn’t measure anything absolute/fixed/entire in and of itself. It measures relative this and relative that, so if the students are already near the top with almost nowhere up to go, then where are the teachers and the students to go? They become the victims of their own success. Relatively speaking, they can only make pitiful progress relative to others—even if the teachers are successfully preparing the students for top-tier colleges and universities!
Thank you for your comments.
😎
Krazy TA, you cannot have it both ways. You can’t say on the one hand that Common Core is too difficult and then complain that kids used to max out the scales and thus have little differentiation among their scores. The reason that CC and adaptive testing is a huge plus is that it allows us to see variation among the high and low achievers. When the SAT changed its scale in the early 1990’s, we lost granularity among the top scorers (std dev was widened and mean was shifted from 900 to 1000). But the SAT was designed to differentiate between 800 and 1200, not between 1400 and 1600 so that was the intended effect.
Do you understand that when you say “growth” at the top, you are talking about the normalized percentiles and not the actual raw score? Those top achievers actually have a greater increase in raw scores than anybody else. Virginia uses SGPs which compare like kids against each other literally. The SOL scale goes up to 600. Since kids max out pretty easy, SGPs are not created if kids score > 500 multiple years in a row. But consider the “top achievers” that are measured. If the kid has scored 495 for a couple of years, his/her growth is NOT compared against a kid who scored 415 or 350. It’s only compared against kids with similar scores to his/her 495. So exactly how does a high-achieving student “hurt” these teachers? The teacher would only be hurt relative to teachers of other high-scoring students. In other words, some of the teachers who instruct 495 kids do receive a 90-99th percentile SGP. Some of the teachers who instruct 495 kids do receive a 1-10th percentile SGP. Do you understand that?
Pardon the late reply, I just got out of the pool. The water was extra wet so toweling off took longer than usual.
This guy is a hoot! Does he realize that the Virginia Standards of Learning exams used to produce his magical VAM scores have not
been validated – and the SOL test developers have presented no evidence (that I could find) for degree of “instructional sensitivity”
From the article linked below:
“By “instructional sensitivity” we mean the degree to which students’ performances on a test accurately reflect the quality of instruction specifically provided to promote students’ mastery of what is being assessed.”
“Regrettably, most of the educational accountability tests now being used to appraise the caliber of a school staff’s performance or, more recently, to determine the skill-levels of individual teachers are unaccompanied by any evidence—any at all—bearing on the
instructional sensitivity of those assessments.”
Click to access Popham_article_DETECTING%20THE%20INSTRUCTIONAL%20SENSITIVITY.pdf
Link to VA SOL tests:
http://www.doe.virginia.gov/testing/sol/released_tests/
Yes, I’ve seen this nonsense about “what if teachers are not actually teaching what’s in the curriculum”. This goes down in the pages of “if you can’t prove without a shadow of a doubt that every possible error – down to 0.0000% – is eliminated then we feel quite comfortable leaving that disadvantaged student to suffer in the ineffective teacher’s classroom” mantra.
Look, the Gates Foundation showed that effectiveness on state standardized tests was correlated to results on higher order thinking skills. Those higher order thinking skills were not targeted to the curriculum of the tests! The bottom line is that great teachers inspire, they convey concepts, they teach kids how to think and they engage students. This shows up across the board.
So are you ready to dismiss the benefits of Head Start? The gains disappear in 2-3 years. Outcomes can be measured years down the line just like Chetty/Rockoff/Friedman found with VAMs. The exact mechanism may be unknown but the results exist. I would even venture to say that it’s more how teachers connect with students than what they teach. A great teacher forces you to be curious, to be interested in school and learning altogether. That reveals itself on assessments measuring knowledge attainment. But the teacher may not have even been more skilled at conveying the concepts, just in engaging the students. These tests are measuring all types of things. But in the end, the fact that VAMs affect outcomes is what really matters.
How about this. We let the parents decided. Most of the opt-out activists believe VAMs have no benefit whatsoever. I actually don’t care that they hold that belief. Go for it. But the rational actors in the room know that VAMs matter. Let parents choose their teachers. I pick the high-VAM one. The opt-out activists probably don’t care because they discount VAMs. In fact, let the high-VAM teachers instruct 30 kids/class and the low-VAM ones instruct 20 kids/class.
We BOTH win. Or will you even let us try this out?
NY Teacher: “This guy is a hoot!”
I would only add that when compared to other “thought leaders” of the self-proclaimed “new civil rights movement of our time” he is a “highly effective hoot” or as we mere mortals might say, in the spirit of 100% charter school graduation rates—
A hoot and a half!
😏
On a related matter, a hootenanny all in itself, I can assert with total confidence that the most rigorous google search of my comments on this blog will not come up with one hit that proves that KrazyTA ever argued that Common Core should be “too difficult.” Or “too easy.” That is not what your local neighborhood KrazyTA would write because krazy kriticism is very different from such nebulous concepts as “too difficult” or “too easy.” I have written over and over again that CCSS aligned tests, like all high-stakes standardized tests, are designed, pretested, and then produced to client specifications. That’s the nature of modern, state-of-the-art, psychometrically “sound” and “up-to-date” standardized eduproducts. On the recent NYS CC-aligned tests the approx. 70% failure rate was built in (remember Comm. John King predicted as much beforehand) before they were administered en masse. To be expected. No surprise. *To be clear: generally speaking, I am in favor of class-specific developmentally appropriate tests produced by teachers that know the test takers by name and face and learning level.*
One link among many re NY CC-aligned tests: https://dianeravitch.net/2014/04/30/carol-burris-the-danger-done-by-fools-with-tools/
In any case, some homework, because a mind is a terrible thing to waste: Daniel Koretz, MEASURING UP: WHAT STANDARDIZED EDUCATIONAL TESTING REALLY TELLS US (2008).
So, NY Teacher, enjoy yourself some maxed out granularity and remember what one old dead French guy said:
“Ridicule dishonors a man more than dishonor does.” [François de la Rochefoucauld]
Gosh, what would he say about self-ridicule?
😎
Yes, NY teacher
As Edward Haertel ( leading expert on accountability systems ) put it
“This is a data problem, not an analysis problem. The information just isn’t there in the available test data to do a really good job of distinguishing between strong and weak teachers. The sources of bias and sources of distortion are just too large.”
He also says in his linked-to analysis
“My first conclusion should come as no surprise: Teacher VAM scores should emphatically not be included as a substantial factor with a fixed weight in consequential teacher personnel decisions. The information they provide is simply not good enough to use in that way. It is not just that the information is noisy. Much more serious is the fact that the scores may be systematically biased for some teachers and against others, and major potential sources of bias stem from the way our school system is organized. No statistical manipulation can assure fair comparisons of teachers working in very different schools, with very different students, under very different conditions. One cannot do a good enough job of isolating the signal of teacher effects from the massive influences of students’ individual aptitudes, prior educational histories, out-of-school experiences, peer influences, and differential summer learning loss, nor can one adequately adjust away the varying academic climates of different schools. Even if acceptably small bias from all these factors could be assured, the resulting scores would still be highly unreliable and overly sensitive to the particular achievement test employed.”
//end of Haertel quote
The bogus claims from the posers like virginiasgp grow tiresome.
The fellow apparently believes the people who research educational assessment (including VAM) for a living are idiots and doesn’t even realize he has made a very basic goof in his interpretation of what ASA meant in a key part of their VAM paper (see my comment here)
But I somehow doubt he will ever even recognize this error (to say nothing of admit it) — or any other error, for that matter.
SomeDAM Poet can’t seem to understand that the 1-14% variation is essentially measuring achievement differences as opposed to true growth differences. That’s why high VAM teachers have been shown to generate an extra 3+ months of learning for their students. And even if one believed the data were noisy, one could simply use data over more years and weight the VAMs differently.
But you bring up a good point about aptitudes. Why don’t we include aptitude in the VAMs? Nearly every school administers these tests but they are hardly used for anything. They should be included.
The national center for education analyzed type 1 abd 2 errors. When using 3 years of data and restricting the identification to .3 sd’s, the error rate was less than 6%. So basically it comes down to this. If we know with 96% probability that a teacher is ineffective, do we side with the disadvantaged kids in the class and give them an effective teacher? Or do we revel in our evil tendencies to protect that teacher at the expense of the students?
That is the question at hand!
APPR FOUND FLAWED: The Lower Hudson Council of School Superintendents commissioned a study of APPR (NY’s version of VAM) by Education Analytics of Wisconsin. They found APPR to be a “governmental travesty” wasting millions of dollars.
http://www.lohud.com/story/opinion/contributors/2014/11/06/view-lower-hudson-council-school-superintendents-blasts-appr/18591403/
Click to access teacheraccountability.pdf
Click to access nysgrowthmodel.pdf
From the Grade 3 Virginia SOL test in ELA:
1) Which two words are synonyms of ordinary?
“One of Mario’s toy cars is very rare, while the other is quite ordinary?
a) regular
b) easy
c) popular
d) common
e) interesting
A perfect example of “instructional insensitivity”
To: virginiasgp
Reformers and VAM are done!
It really amazes me some newcomer claiming public school educator barges in defense and VAMpire machine and Duncanstein. Must be running out of blood.
virginiasgp is under a fundamental misapprehension about a key statement in the American Statistical Association VAM paper.
He claims “note that the 1-14% applies to test score variation and not the test score “gains” of a teacher’s class. “
because he simply does not understand what ASA meant by “variation in student test scores” (obvious from the VAM literature) when ASA said in their report
“VAM has been fairly consistent that aspects of educational effectiveness that are measurable and within teacher control represent a small part of the total variation in student test scores or growth; most estimates in the literature attribute between 1% and 14% of the total variability to teachers.
Unbeknownst to “virgiana”, test score gains were precisely what ASA was referring to. (They even used the word “growth”, which means the same thing)
See my comment here
This fellow’s cocky pretense to knowing more than the researchers who study this stuff for a living.is actually a bit painful to watch.
SomeDAM Poet’s misunderstanding knows no bounds. The latter studies use new techniques to tease out the gains as opposed to the achievement. Any signal with high noise has large variability. But when one combines large numbers of scores and adjust for simply gains, effects at least 2-3 times were recorded. I guess he must not be very good in physics.
Let me put this in terms that a pompous union activist can understand. Human effects have virtually no bearing on the temperatures this week. Therefore, global warming estimates are unreliable and “junk science”, right? Over the long term, global warming will have visible effects. And even though the slopes of their lines have been systematically overestimated, it is real.
Same applies to VAMs. They are real and account for much of the variability among classrooms. Even the ASA said that it was untrue to say “teachers have little effect”. Maybe Poet needs to give back his STEM degree.
Virginia, you misquote the ASA statement. True, they say that it is wrong to say “teachers have little effect.” But did you read the ASA statement? https://www.amstat.org/policy/pdfs/ASA_VAM_Statement.pdf
It says that VAM measures “correlation, not causation,” and that the scores may be influenced by factors over which the teacher has no control. VAM scores may change when a different model or test is used.
“RANKING TEACHERS BY THEIR VAM SCORES CAN HAVE UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCES THAT REDUCE QUALITY.”
ASA also cautions: “ATTACHING TOO MUCH IMPORTANCE TO A SINGLE ITEM OF QUANTITATIVE INFORMATION IS COUNTER-PRODUCTIVE–IN FACT, IT CAN BE DETRIMENTAL TO THE GOAL OF IMPROVING QUALITY.”
You assume that education is a laboratory science and that schools are factories where the machinery can be adjusted to spit out exactly what you expect them to produce, if only you get the numbers right. Children are not clay, nor are they molten metal that can be shaped at will.
You are so terribly misguided about what education is and what it should be that engaging in dialogue with you is not at all interesting. You say the same things over and over, and you don’t listen to anyone who disagrees with you. Most of those you are in conversation with are career educators. They wouldn’t tell you how to run your occupation and how to evaluate those who work under your command. Why do you presume to make declarations about how teachers should be evaluated, which is incredibly presumptuous since you have never taught nor been a principal or a supervisor. VAM is junk science. I am still waiting for you to identify any other nation in the world that uses it.
The “latter studies?”
What? since the ASA report came out?
ha ha ha ha.
Now you are simply playing games.
Because you can’t/won’t recognize the issue that I pointed out.
remember? It was song ago, I know
Your misintepretation/misunderstanding of the ASA’s statement ” 1% and 14% of the total variability to teachers.”
They were most certainly referring to variance in student test score gains
Here’s a paper by edward Haertel (2013) wherein he also refers specifically to “variance in student test score gains” of about the size claimed by ASA (and actually quotes the paper I linked to) in the chapter entitled “How much does teacher effectiveness matter?” That was dated 2013, so apparently your claimed wondrous VAM miracle occurred after that?
You really should read it. Who knows, there is even a remote possibility that you might learn something (though I doubt it)
The rest of your statement is quite irrelevant to any statement that I actually made and I won’t dignify the rest of your nonsense with a reply.
As I said, if you wish to stick with your original claim “note that the 1-14% applies to test score variation and not the test score “gains” of a teacher’s class. “ and even continue to make it in a public forum, that’s fine by me.
Be my guest. 🙂
Virginiasgp
I didn’t see your comment on the other page before but see that you have now modified your terminology
“Ok, SomeDAM Poet, it all depends on what you are measuring and if you can really differentiate between achievement and true gains.”
So, all is now clear. This has been a conversation about the meaning of “is” 🙂
All of my responses to you were regarding a claim you made “that the 1-14% applies to test score variation and not the test score “gains” of a teacher’s class. “
And now that I have pointed out that the ASA indeed was talking about gains (and even referenced papers that used the word “gains”) you have now switched to “true gains”
In science it is actually important to be very careful with terminology and as it stands, your original claim does not accurately represent what the ASA said because the whole purpose of “growth” models like VAM is to get a handle on “gains” (from one year to the next). The ASA certainly understood that when they wrote their report.
Whether they were talking about what you call “true gains” or not may be a different issue. But they were talking about “gains”. Clearly.
FWIW (not that it matters), I am now convinced that you at least understand what the ASA meant — and ****retract my claim that you did not ****, but that actually does not excuse your sloppiness with terminology (indeed just the opposite is true) and you may wish to be a little more careful in the future about that because if you engage in such sloppiness in a real debate with an actual expert on this stuff, they will make you look foolish.
With regard to the 2-3 factor improvement with “true gains” (TM?), I’m skeptical. I’d really have to do a lot more digging to be convinced.
And quite frankly, given all the other problems associated with VAM — not least of all the validity and reliability of the standardized test data on which it is based — I’m not sure it would be worth my time. My gut feeling is that if the ASA did not talk about such a claimed 2-3 factor improvement, there is probably a legitimate reason why. Eg, perhaps it has not been convincingly established.
Finally, your implication that I somehow claimed that “teachers have little effect” is just wrong.I never said that or even implied it.
here’s what I actually said in the other part of the thread:
“Even the nonstatistician can probably appreciate that the statement that “most estimates in the literature attribute between 1% and 14% of the total variability [in student test scores] to teachers” is hardly a particularly glowing recommendation for VAM…because, well, you know 1-14% is just “not much.”
That was a reference to the effect due to “variation among teachers” , which is indeed small.
That is precisely why ASA felt inclined to make it crystal clear that they were not saying “teachers have little effect” with their statement that “most estimates in the literature attribute between 1% and 14% of the total variability to teachers” by including the statement that followed
“This is not saying that teachers have little effect on students, but that variation among teachers accounts for a small part of the variation in scores. “”
The small part due to variation among teachers is what I was referring to. And whether you know it or not, in physics, claiming that one variable accounts for only 1-14% of the variance in another is considered a very weak claim.
One thing is true (and i think you might agree). This whole ‘debate” about what ASA meant has been a complete waste of time. Mine and yours.
And just for the record.
from reading some of your other comments (outside the fairly useless exchange that we had) it does appear to me that you have a genuine concern about improving schools. I don’t happen to agree with your approach — think it is entirely misguided, in fact. But that doesn’t mean you are not sincere, of course.
Don’t have time to fully respond. I think we have more common ground here than at first we may have believed. I think most on here have good intentions. I get frustrated that many activists try to over simplify the issues. Most on here cannot delve into the weeds of VAM algorithms and the talking points don’t do justice to the real issues.
I want to hold everyone accountable, whether that is me as a parent or especially the administrators. Many of these administrators simply don’t have the skills to perform their jobs now that it requires data analysis and effective implementation of organizational management/psychology. They need to be supporting teachers much more effectively than they are. There is much too little discussion on the failings of administrators. We almost need a wholesale turnover of the district administrators to really see the tangible benefits we all want.
Stick around for a later post in which I detail an ongoing lawsuite against Dennis Bakke’s right-hand man in my county school board (Bakke of for-profit Imagine School’s fame). Seems they thought they could have him elected to be chair of the school board without EVER dislosing his conflicts of interest in charter schools and then have him repeatedly vote on charter schools before the board. That, my dear friends, is a crime. And my case was just filed on July 6, 2015. I’ll be sure to show videos of me lambasting the LCSB about Eric Hornberger’s lack of disclosure as well. They are pretty entertaining if I do say so myself.
SomeDAM Poet, agreed on most points. I think the ASA’s statement was rather political. However, we would agree the standard errors need to be included with all reported VAMs so folks don’t take a single number as gospel. STEM folks are comfortable with uncertainty. It is a fact of life. Many others are not. They simply believe that whatever scientific theory holds at the moment, then it must be true for all time without any deviation. And whatever headline number is published is the final tally. That is a shame.
I will be the first to admit that no teacher should ever be fired off a single year’s worth of data. They could very well be among the top teachers even if that is a remote chance. We should use other factors to inform that decision. I would suggest that a composite evaluation is doing just that. But rather than fire them, simply train them first. Then, move them to a non-core class. And use Dallas’ model which only promotes teachers when they demonstrate increased skill and effectiveness over a range of measures (similar to every other professional field). I’m not suggesting that all districts apply such a measured approach now, but there is room for compromise.
I do think that the most room for improvement is in systemic gains. These are the ones I talked about in another long post. Administrators must provide best-of-breed materials, opportunities for collaboration, mentors, professional development, and analyze policies that work. I save my harshest criticism for the administrators. As I like to say, even an ineffective teacher does not know he/she is not effective. They are trying hard and think they are ok. But since they never get to see another teacher’s classroom, how would they even know? It’s the administration’s job to train them and if they cannot, then to take other actions.
Finally, I will leave you with this. The “reliable variance” is what separates the 1-14% number from the 40-60% numbers and it’s based on the following. Assume that the actual difference in growth among students was not that big and that there were large measurement errors (noise) in the test score gains. Suppose that there were not other variables that explained the difference but noise was simply generating that large “overall” variance. If that were the case, and we could use a larger set of data via a “cross-classified model” that boosts some of the signal and is able to use more data points (some models can only use a complete set of scores from a student whereas this model can use incomplete scores too), then we could get more accurate measures of the effects of teachers. We are effectively reducing the variance in the denominator (“reliable variance”) to eliminate the component due to noise. That is what the following papers are suggesting in the cross-classified model. They were written well before the ASA statement. A teacher effect of 1-14% just doesn’t fit with some models showing 3-6 months of additional learning in some classrooms. More research is needed to confirm but the ASA should have mentioned these models. My understanding is this cross-classified model is what the Gates Foundation used and is what many of the current vendors use (SAS). Would you submit that if it’s true that teachers can generate 40%+ of the effects in growth (some of the math subject areas suggest 70%+) vice the 1-14% cited in ASA, then your position on the use of VAMs might change?
– http://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED477466.pdf (published in 2002)
– http://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/monographs/2004/RAND_MG158.pdf (published in 2003)
SomeDAM Poet: don’t hold your breath waiting for virginiasgp to actually engage people on the actual issues and viewpoints presented here on this thread.
I write this with no pleasure or enjoyment whatsoever. I have followed this blog from its first day. IMHO, he now holds the record on any single thread for simply inventing facts and putting words in other people’s mouths and generally betraying a self-wounding zeal that puts his own POV in ridicule.
It’s one thing to have a different interpretation of things. But how can someone literally, not figuratively, expect to be taken seriously when he baldly asserts that “in class products” of teachers were at the heart of the Atlanta teaching scandal when it is an easily found fact (google!) that they were mandated high-stakes standardized tests—and not correct and apologize for such an egregious self-serving error? And I just now saw the assertion that “VAMs have had the unintended effect of narrowing the curriculum in many places”—it’s not unintended when, after so much VAM under the bridge has passed, it’s been noted and analyzed and become a perfectly predictable and inevitable result of VAMania and rheephormish testocratic practice. And desperately trying to drive discussion here in the direction of other rheephorm bromides like making teachers the be-all and end-all of education—here’s that sad “leverage” argument from the Gates Foundation that Anthony Cody describes so well in his THE EDUCATOR AND THE OLIGARCH (2014).
I thought I was being a little foolishly funny when I described the 3DM mantra of self-proclaimed “education reformers” as “data-drivel decision making” but a new word or phrase is going to be needed when someone simply ignores easily verifiable facts and openly creates very thin straw men POVs and arguments—all in plain view.
It’s like watching a magician put the rabbit up his sleeve or down his pants or in his hat right in front of the audience—and then pretending when he produces it moments later, that he’s delighting the crowd with his sleight-of-hand. Perhaps this kind of rheephorm-like magic should use a homophone of “sleight”—“slight” as in “small in degree; inconsiderable” “or “somewhat trivial or superficial.”
If I may… I usually disagreed with Mr. Harlan Underhill. But he had a heart. When the occasion arose, he wished the owner of this blog (with whom he had profound disagreements) well when she was injured and recovering. No tricks or sneaky asides. And you always knew what he thought, love it or hate it or ignore it. When he made his faux numbers & stats claim that 1/3 to 1/2 of all teachers were deadwood, he could have taken the easy way out but he quickly owned up to it being unproven scuttlebutt.
We may not see his like again.
SomeDAM Poet: I much appreciate your contributions to the threads on this blog.
Most krazy props. Keep writing. I’ll keep reading.
😎
VAsgp
Apparently you think it’s a great idea to run public schools like the Navy runs its nuclear submarine fleet. Well thanks for the inspiration man. You really are a hoot-n-a-half on this. Shear genius. Now let’s take your fantabulous idea and put it to work for the Navy.
Don’t worry, I am highly qualified to help the US Navy mainly because I have zero experience with nuclear submarines. At least we’re square on the experience piece. Well, here goes – my suggestion . . . no, make that my insistence!
We must run the Navy’s nuclear submarine fleet just like a high needs, impoverished urban, Title 1 public school. As chief submarine Officer, please understand that there will be a few simple changes to protocol.
1) Your evaluation will be based on the ability of you and your crew to navigate a detailed, three dimensional attack course. You evaluation will be based on precision of tracking , speed and acceleration control, and stealth. Numerical data will be assigned to each of these three variables. I’ll even give you one of the newly commissioned, Virginia class ( SSN-774) nuclear-powered fast attack submarines. Seems appropriate Virginia.
2) Your crew will consist, instead of the usual adult Navy volunteers, 7th and 8th grade students from the worst performing middle school in the Bronx. Don’t worry, we will give them the same 5 week crash course that a TFAer would get and – you get to teach them! The U.S. Naval Submarine School New London in Groton CT works for me.
As the chief submarine Officer you must ensure that all systems run smoothly. That means you are responsible for your crew of youngsters and their jobs:
1) Operating a nuclear reactor and nuclear propulsion system
2) Maintaining on board weapons systems
3) Managing atmosphere control and fire control
4) Driving the vessel and charting its position
5) Operating communications and intelligence equipment
FYI/Heads Up:
On any given day or at any given moment, any one or more of your teenage crew may . . .
Be highly distracted and completely inattentive
Refuse to follow orders
Give you the one finger salute
Text and snap chat incessantly while on duty
Be very loud and boisterous
Ask permission to go to the bathroom – every 40 min.
Fight and argue with each other
Argue with you
Sleep on the job
Be absent from duty – some chronically
Disrupt crew meetings
Report for duty under the influence of illegal substances
Express their inner drama queen
Hang out in small groups and completely ignore you
Frequently exhibit silly, irrational, or bizarre behaviors
Forget most of what you taught them in the 5 week’r
Laugh when you yell at them
Stick chewing gum into electronic ports
Complain incessantly
Kind of tickles your innards knowing that your Naval career rests on the whims of a crew of mostly dysfunctional adolescents, doesn’t it?
Care to take this to WaPo? Your “fearless leader” booted me. So courageous to comment when I cannot respond.
Virginiasgp,
You are a bore.
Diane, it sure seems like all of your readers thought my submarine analogy was a “bore”. I guess that’s what someone without any integrity, living in NeverNeverLand, might say.
Your Johnny One-Note is a bore.
As we say with the Djoker wiping the court with RFed today, some folks just don’t know when to retire.
As for my “one note”, I would beg to differ. Here are a few:
1. My calls for publishing “private sector equivalent” pay scales would actually move the needle on teacher talent. As I’ve said before, you can generate efficiencies by measuring effectiveness (better allocation of students and/or promotions), but the real driver is obtaining more and better talent. There’s a reason most NFL prospects wash out within a few years. When you have a virtually limitless pool of candidates and are able to retain just the best, your end product is much better. Do you object to simply publishing teacher pay scales in which the pension contributions are included? As I’ve noted before, the military contributes 32%+ of basic pay to military pensions each and every year. They should be aware of those benefits before deciding to leave.
2. I have called for actually hiring STEM majors. Not education majors with STEM add-ons, but folks who wanted to study engineering, chemistry, physics, etc. in college and were convinced to pursue teaching. The first couple of years could include extra prof dev to get them up to speed on pedagogy and psychology of teaching. Many won’t be a good fit for teaching, but as a wise man once told me, the goal of an employer is to maximize talented candidates, not pick just 1-2 that might be a good fit.
3. We should give every new teacher a 2-3 complete sets of lesson plans to start. They can later tailor them to their needs and/or create their own, but it’s nuts to think that we need 10,000 unique lesson plans for the same grade. In programming, virtually everybody shares/re-uses code. That makes one more efficient. The open source movement is huge. The same should apply to lesson plans. Give the teachers a royalty/sales fee on it, but by all means, let’s find and use the best of breed. That’s not saying there is only one lesson plan that works, but there can’t be more than 100. When I asked an assistant principal in my district whether such lesson plans were provided to first-year teachers, she said that’s it’s the teacher’s responsibility to create their own (with the help of older teachers). That’s just silly.
4. We use implement and train teachers on “flipping” the classroom. Virtually every teacher wants their kids to review the lesson prior to class. Most parents are not able to help kids with homework (certainly not advanced homework). It’s a much more efficient use of time to have teachers engage students in solving problems in class. This is not as relevant in the early grades and all kids benefit from shared discussion, but Sal Khan has brought more innovation to teaching than anyone in the last 50 years.
5. Use of individualized, customized computerized lessons. The military used to build expensive simulators for training (aviation, submarine, etc.). Now, they simply use the commercial game software because it’s superior (when I was in the Navy, we began to use the sub game software since it was virtually identical to what you saw on the boat). While I’m not recommending we use it for all instruction, animated videos can be very effective. Both my kids learned the entire alphabet within 2 weeks because the of the “Letter Factory” video from Leap Frog (it’s like crack cocaine for kids).
6. We should conduct analysis on grading patterns and evaluations. In my district, a high school had the highest classroom grades in the district but when they took the AP exam, they all received the lowest AP exam scores in the district. Obviously, one cannot trust teachers to give out consistent grades (Rockoff has shown the same applies to evaluations). While this was a principal issue (she was forcing teachers to raise grades and even overwriting them), we need to compare grades in an honest way. The same goes for evaluations. Let’s see if VAMs have a different relative ranking to observations. Research shows they are consistent, but the VAMs are objective and actually score more than 1% of teachers as ineffective.
7. Districts should establish collaboration groups among schools. I believe Fairfax County had such collaboration among AP chemistry teachers (can’t find the article anymore) and it greatly facilitated their instruction. It’s difficult for the teachers to set this up themselves.
8. Teachers should be selected to be mentors and provided the opportunity to observe other teachers instructing students on a regular basis. In my district, teachers almost never observe their peers instructing so they have no idea who is more effective. Just as athletes watch their competition to learn where to improve, 5 days of observation/yr would be very effective.
9. Grading assistants could relieve the workload off of teachers at much lower costs. Teachers need to know how their students are performing; however, they don’t need to spend hours after school grading all those papers (including essays). Graduate students would be adept at grading student work and could provide some consistency (e.g. graduate Literature student). The graders could place notes on the grades and the teachers could always review the work, but just like we outsource cleaning of buildings (why pay teachers or professionals to clean their own buildings), this just makes sense.
10. I’ve already talked about evaluating policies like tracking, discipline, and efficient allocation of students (put more students in the classrooms of more effective teachers). All of these hold administrators accountable for the management of their divisions.
So you may claim that I am a “one trick” pony; however, the only theme to my comments are expecting excellence from our schools. While you will never find me claiming to be “intelligent” (as others have condescendingly accused me of in the past), I do not suffer fools well.
I will respect your wishes to stop posting unless you rescind the “boot”. I would encourage others to join me on a free and fair forum such as WaPo. My peers and I signed up to serve in the military to protect both your safety and your right to speak freely. I am always surprised how those who “would not” serve are so quick to silence the voices of those of us who did serve.
Virginiasgp,
You monopolize the comments section. You say the same things over and over. Please calm down and behave like a gentleman. If I were a teacher, I would call your mother.
My mother actually taught me to respond when someone asks me a question. That’s called Southern hospitality for you Yankees.
And she also taught me that folks learn in different ways, even obstinate union activists. That’s why I try to provide plenty of different analogies. Maybe your teacher fans should try it, in their classrooms.
Virginiasgp,
More people might hear you if you weren’t so insulting to others, especially teachers.
Still waiting for you to tell me what other nation uses VAM to evaluate teachers. Did I miss it?
Maybe you could mention a district or state where VAM has worked.
The submarine analogy was not a “bore”. You provided us all with a fascinating insight into just how misunderstood the teaching and learning process can be – even by very intelligent and highly accomplished adults.
Like some of the outsiders that think they know better, I truly believe you think that by shear force of intellect, combined with real world leadership experience you can actually contribute important ideas that worked for you in your sphere (nuclear submarine) of influence. Thanks for caring enough to take so much of your time here. As a Naval officer I know it makes you uncomfortable when we all don’t just salute you and say “aye aye sir”. But if your listening skills matched your leadership skills you might realize that no one is always right. In this case, the subjective use of highly flawed VAM measurements does way more harm than good and sorry to say, you are simply wrong on this. I wish you could channel your high energy level, intelligence, and obvious concern in a more helpful direction. Here’s to hoping you appear in that Richmond courthouse with a new viewpoint and help make our case against VAM.
By the way, if you asked any building principal if they would like a magic wand that would allow them to make their “ineffective” teachers just disappear, the vast majority would flat out refuse out of fear of what the replacements would bring. Struggling. high needs schools are generally chaotic environments that are balanced on the emotions of children with classroom teachers doing their best under impossibly challenging realities, constantly working against the effects of generational poverty/dependence, family dysfunction, and abject hopelessness.
NY Teacher I certainly wasn’t expecting any salutes. I’m an I/E NTJ so I don’t exactly always think inside the box. I just take offense at folks lambasting an official who really doesn’t earn that much (Duncan could make much, much more on the outside) and is able to continuously serve throughout all this heat that he takes. Obviously, I don’t turn the other cheek nearly as well. You know what they say about mud wrestling with a pig. But as I like to say, somebody has to do it or the pigs are the only ones throwing dirt around.
If you accepted my suggestions without fully understanding them, then I would be dismissive of you too. And note that I think VAMs are useful for all schools. I like to classify districts into 4 quadrants:
1. The Failures: low-scoring and low growth. These are the ones Duncan cares about since these kids need help. I think they need help and more $$ too.
2. The Stars: high-scoring and high growth. These are the districts everybody is familiar with. I knew Fairfax had high scores but didn’t realize till I saw the data how outstanding they are. Public perception is reality.
3. The Miracle Workers: low-scoring but high growth. These districts apply best practices and are getting results. The ESEA waivers were intended to help these schools by recognizing great teaching in poor neighborhoods.
4. The Underachievers: high-scoring but low growth. My district falls here. They have affluent kids but imagine you took below average teachers and put them here. The kids would still score well because they have aptitude, resources at home and concerned parents. Without the SGP/VAM data, how would we know? In fact, both the district and most parents claim we are the “best of the best”. The involved ones know we are not but we could be.
So let me tell you some more sea stories. Each year, submarines undergo a thorough evaluation. It involves tests of the sailors, inspection of records/equipment and real simulated exercises on the submarine (both damage control and reactor drills). A team of 3rd-party instructors board at 6am and the day begins. You have at least 3 long (1-2 hour) drills in which there is often a lot of physical exertion (breathing through self-contained oxygen tanks/hoses) in the dark while moving to put out fires. Nobody runs from a fire on a sub because that is your ride home. It requires a lot of mental processing and control under pressure. When the reactor shuts down (scrams), you better get it back up safely or you aren’t going anywhere (diesel engines can’t get you from here to there and will get you killed in a fight). While there are meals served, I often found I had not eaten when the drills ended at midnight. The following day involves more examinations of the records. They “inspect the inspector”. You see we are expected to train ourselves continuously and record it. If your training did not occur or was not effective (as measured by tests), you could fail. Every year, there was a boat (or more) that failed. One cannot really afford to have underachieving subs. And remember that this was among highly screened and highly motivated crews.
The point is that everyone should want to measure their effectiveness on a regular basis. If we fail or underachieve, we get extra help. Many folks were just not cut out for the subs. Even though you needed relatively high scores to enter the program, many did not make it through pre-sub training (believe it was 25%+ for enlisted and 10% for officers). The guy next to me in power school failed even though he was there late every night. Just because you want to serve on subs (or as a teacher in a classroom) doesn’t give you the right to do so. And even when folks had the book smarts, sometimes they had psychological issues or just couldn’t perform under pressure (turn on 4-8 bells/alarms and try to discern what 20+ gauges are telling you in an extreme casualty and you’ll get my drift). The same is true of talented quarterbacks who wash out in the NFL.
Why am I getting involved now? Well, I was always interested and had thought about teaching. I wanted to try out lots of experiments (separate subject) but thought I could explain STEM concepts quite well. As you can tell, I might not get along with many teachers in an actual school. As my kids have entered elementary school, I noticed some great teachers, some average teachers and some poor teachers. And I noticed some horrible administrators. After kids took the aptitude tests, the school didn’t even try to give enhancement materials to the high-performing kids. When I forced the issue, they would provide them to my child (not claiming anything of note but the example is enlightening). I asked that they provide the same to other kids who scored well. They refused. They claimed that they didn’t want to look at aptitude scores because it might “bias” their instruction. Say what?!!!! The teacher had pegged the kid as a middle-of-the-road student even after the aptitude test (because she never looked at the result). How many bored boys are pulling their hair out. Throughout the year, I could never get them to target material at the talented kids. Our pace was much slower than the curriculum in neighboring Fairfax who already has a gifted program. Yet our parents, admins, and teachers always congratulate themselves on our “great” schools. The only reason our scores are higher on average than Fairfax is because we have one half the amount of ESL and FRL kids that they do. This is not just a problem of the inner cities. Who, exactly, is going to produce the next Microsoft, Facebook, Paypal, Akamai, etc? It’s kids from districts like mine who often generate innovation. So I finally decided to get involved. And a lawyer friend was kind enough to mention FOIA (given my zeal in the courts, the lawyer is a little sorry to have mentioned it now). I plan to get involved in efforts in the school (math league, battle of books, debate, etc.). But it’s unfair to ask STEM parents (btw, everything I say is just “common sense” to other STEM parents – their words, not mine) to remain on the sidelines when they see issues regarding STEM education.
In the end, we need 3M or so K-12 teachers. That is a lot! And it begs the question of whether our pool is diluted. We are not going to be able to select from the top 10% of college students only. But we need to at least measure outcomes and try to improve everyone’s performance. If we all believe this is important, can you give me one good reason we should not be informed by VAMs even if they are not the end-all of metrics?
And will just one person on here convince me that 1% is an accurate measure of the ineffective teachers. Assuming 25 students per class, that’s suggesting that there is only a single teacher in a high school with 600 students/grade that is ineffective. Does anybody believe that? Tighten up your existing observation-based evaluations and then we’ll talk.
Btw, I’m sure Diane is getting at least a little boost from the STEM stories. As O’Reilly would say, you must keep it interesting for the “folks”.
Please, Virginiasgp, you keep writing the same things over and over. Enough! You are monopolizing the comments section. Get a new idea, please!
Diane, ok, here is a new idea that can whip your opt-out activists up into a frenzy!
In general, I support charter schools. I say to each their own. However, I am generally not inclined to send my kids to charter schools for a variety of reasons. I prefer the public schools for their size (ability to offer classes) and experiences (sports, cross-section of population, etc.). But one thing I insist on is for politicians to disclose their conflicts of interest.
Enter the Bakkes of Imagine Schools, Inc. fame. You know, the ones who recently had their charter school in Ohio shut down when it saddled the school with $700K in annual rent on just $1.3M in revenues all so that Imagine’s subsidiary could make a cool $1.1M profit on a land/building deal. The same one that “cautioned his executives against giving boards of schools the “misconception” that they are responsible for making big decisions about budget matters, school policies, hiring of the principal and dozens of other matters. … It is our school, our money, and our risk, not theirs“.
You might say that Dennis Bakke’s right-hand man is one Eric Hornberger. Hornberger serves as the Executive Director of the Mustard Seed Foundation. That’s all well and good, but Mustard Seed basically derives all of its contributions (~$3M per year) from the Bakkes who direct their initiatives from the board. There appear to be 4 employees of Mustard Seed in the US, based out of Falls Church, VA. Besides Hornberger, there are 2 other family members of the Bakkes working for Mustard Seed (see “how to give >> $28K without invoking the gift tax rules”).
Now Eric Hornberger lives in my district of Loudoun County and serves as the Chairman of the Loudoun County school board since 2011 when he was elected. He was a big fan of charters prior to election and has been a proponent of them since. In the last 18 months, we now have 2 charters with many promising more to come.
The Bakkes and Imagine Schools, Inc. have seen this day coming. They hired lobbyists in Richmond to push for charter school reforms. They actually canvassed Loudoun in 2010 to gauge interest in charter schools. They mentioned the need for additional buildings as one reason to utilize charters. I’m sure they had an even better deal than the one in Ohio planned for us. They even hired a member of the county Board of Supervisors while she was still on the Board to be their spokesman. How does that work?! I guess school board and county board have different roles. Lori Waters, of both Loudoun BOS and Imagine Schools, tries to explain why an Imagine Schools executive was implicated in a kickback deal in this article. Why, wonder which district Lori Waters served in? Could it be Eric Hornberger’s? You betcha. I’m positive Lori and Eric never discussed how they could pave the way for their mutual boss’ entry into Loudoun via charter schools!
So a friend of mine starts doing some digging after this little episode in which Hornberger doesn’t want me to speak to the school board about SGPs. It turns out he had never disclosed his relationship with the Bakkes and Imagine Schools while running or serving on the school board. My friend emails Valerie Strauss of WaPo and she returns the email within 10 minutes on a Saturday night. It eventually got passed down to another reporter and there were multiple 1-hr calls to parse the information. But for some reason, a story was never published. Val is not a big fan of mine so maybe that’s it, but in general, there is no love lost with Imagine and Val.
So, eventually, a board member is forced to acknowledge the issue on a chat forum of our local newspaper. He claims that “everyone” already knew of the relationship. Suddenly, the local union (LEA) folks go quiet for about 2 days. I think they were trying to decide how to react since they clearly had no clue their “partner” was actually confiding with the “devil”. You see, Hornberger has been a fan of increasing funding at every step. Maybe he believes in more funding. Maybe he wants bigger raises for his spouse (school employee who received ~13% raise over 3 years when folks claimed no raises were being given), or maybe he wants to pump up school funding to make charters more profitable. Or any combination thereof. In any case, it was clear that he had never disclosed his relationship to virtually anyone outside that board. Wouldn’t someone who has the “inside track” to a successful charter school visionary like Dennis Bakke want to advertise that during the campaign? Wouldn’t he want to disclose it to prevent any confusion from arising in the future? Apparently not.
I think he is required to disclose this “personal interest in a transaction” based on Virginia’s statutes. The example I give is the following. Imagine (pun intended) that you own a natural gas-powered school bus manufacturing company. You want to get the inside track for new bus purchases. If the bus company employees run for school board, they would have to recuse themselves on the bus votes. So you use a shell company (or foundation) to employ your affiliated politicians. You get 4 of your employees elected but don’t even disclose they work for you. You convince the board to mandate using natural gas-powered buses. When the rival bus manufacturer comes before the board for a contract, your employees reject that deal. When your own manufacturer comes before the board, your employees might recuse themselves but there is nobody left to contract with.since the district must use natural gas. It’s a fait accompli. That is why politicians with a personal interest in a transaction (serve an individual who stands to gain from the transaction) must disclose such conflicts.
Imagine Schools, Inc. is a for-profit enterprise. Imagine Schools Non-Profit, Inc. is a non-profit enterprise eligible to receive charters for schools. But regardless of whether Imagine Non-Profit gets the charter, the for-profit company can subcontract to run the charter school. As long as there are charters, Imagine is in business. Thus, it doesn’t matter if Eric Hornberger can get Imagine Schools Non-Profit into the county, getting charters allows Imagine Schools to expand their market into Loudoun. On the flip side, Imagine may want to prevent truly competitor charter schools from entering the county. A vote either for or against charters could lead to a direct foreseeable benefit to Imagine Schools.
Eric Hornberger has already voted on 3 charter schools, approving 2 and joining with others to reject a STEM-IT based school. He did not make a single disclosure nor recuse himself. In fact, just this past month, he was discussing the relevant “administrative fee” to charge a charter school for the support functions that the district provides. I can’t think of something more relevant to future charter schools’ profits than the G&A fee charged to them.
I decide to give a little “presser” of my own at the public comment section of our school board meetings as seen here (13:30 mark of this April 14 mtg). I like to make them dramatic to keep folks from falling asleep. Does Hornberger come clean and disclose his conflicts? Of course not. Not a single peep. What is surprising is that none of these people called him out. One even was a former Naval officer (it was a surface ship so maybe they have different standards). To this day, nobody will break ranks with Hornberger and ask for a little transparency.
I issued FOIA requests to ask for his conflict disclosures. Nothing related to charters. So finally last week, I decided to file a complaint against Hornberger asking for a declaratory judgment in Loudoun County Circuit Court. He has been tasked with answering these questions as well. You see, our Commonwealth Attorney won’t advise Hornberger to disclose. He won’t even investigate Hornberger using the documents I provided to him. I guess he’s too busy endorsing candidates for sheriff as the Commonwealth Attorney (say what?!!!!) to enforce conflict of interest laws.
Does Hornberger stand up tall and deny any wrongdoing? Not exactly. The school board’s normal attorneys show up to represent him and claim he has not been “served” legal papers. This is despite the sheriff pinning the complaint on his house on July 9 and him receiving the complaint in the mail on July 11. His attorneys even received it via fax on July 10 and obviously have it since they showed up to court on July 13. I guess “honor” for these guys means ducking/hiding to prevent getting served.
So now we’ll see if Virginia law have any teeth. Ignoring the law can have consequences. Failing to disclose conflicts and recuse yourself is punishable by a misdemeanor. We’ll see what happens but let’s just say nobody foresees Hornberger coming clean anytime soon.
Oops, meant sea stories but maybe they are just the same.
Wonder what grade Virginiasgp is in. Obviously he has been in acute withdrawn symptom from VAMpire transfusion–once he gets out of his Castlevania.
Withdrawal
Ken, if you are going to correct horrific writing you might as well correct it all….
withdrawal syndrome
I thought you were still sleeping. When did you wake up from the bed?
And here’s the response from Jeff Bryant, who says Layton made glaring mistakes in defending Duncan and his education cannibalism.
http://www.salon.com/2015/07/11/washington_post_writes_the_most_embarrassing_awful_profile_of_arne_duncan_ever_completely_misses_the_point/
VIrginiaSGP, you don’t seem to know that VAM and ‘proficient’ are inextricably linked in NY state law. VAM scores determine teacher proficiency, so your admonition not to use the words together belies unchartered imbecility, as they are equated legally, directly in statute.
Your personal opinion that it’s negligible that thousands of kids are guessing answers to make the crucial difference between a 1 and 2 exposes the foolhardy musings from a shuttered mind, because school closures, jobs and millions of dollars in high stakes decisions hinge on it. This is why the decision to attach high stakes to test scores was a monumentally regrettable blunder that can only be explained in the context of destroying public schools to set the stage for charters and privatization at the behest of dark money donors (like Eli Broad who just held a Hamptons fund raisier for our governor last night).
Your explanation of the way children eliminate some questions to earn “partial credit” and up their scores is revealing, because it shows you endorse the “gotcha” methodology that says a young learner MIGHT not be penalized if he eliminates A and B, but still has to guess between C and D, making luck the ultimate determining factor and making outcomes that much more arbitrary and capricious. If they eliminate enough wrong answers, some should eventually go their way, right? Because you are relying on the odds of probability, an admission that your methods are rooted as much in luck and chance as they are detecting learning, with no intention to measure student knowledge with certainty.
Multiple choice should never be used for high stakes tests, period. Answers can be guessed and no one really knows how the kid got there. This is common sense, you are shoehorning here, flailing about in vain to justify a flawed measurement.
Your insistence that you are measuring “similar kids” shows little understanding of inner city schools, where the disparate, specific educational needs of individual kids elude categorization. Laughably, the three buckets of poverty, ELL and IEP you claim catch every consequential nuance of what goes on in school, does not nearly describe the factors at play in increasing or impeding learning in the ‘hood.
If you think VAM can account for all the variances in real life that affect whether a kid does or doesn’t fill out the bubbles correctly, you should expand your scientific methods of observation and get some actual inner city experience, understanding the motivation, or lack of motivation from living, breathing children. If you did, you would open up dozens more categories like “undergoing sexual abuse” or “incarceration in family” or “belittled every day by drunken uncle”.
To invoke “science” in VAM but ignoring all these factors that affect participation is the scoundrelous folly of a limited, compartmentalized mind. If you wanted to be efficient about it, you could just have a big catch-all category called “doesn’t give a shit about school in the era of standardized testing” and then you could disaggregate all the data and report it to your superiors to identify schools in need of teacher replacement, only to find there are no applicants for those schools because test-based evaluation systems made the student body toxic to applicants.
Focusing on guessing is no mistake – you make a grievous mistake by revealing that you believed these kids were trying to get the maximum score, or trying to be “good guessers”. Had you ever come to the “field” to see the “subjects”, you’d see how many troubled kids were not even reading exam questions, rather were merely filling in dots in order to have one in each row. Because you don’t have a category for “not actually reading questions” to cross-tabulate against ELL, IEPs and poverty, your data is unusable in determining anything about the teacher. In fact, you cannot even discern whether a teacher is horrible, or they simply could not convince the student to expend effort come testing time.
So we cannot progress in this conversation, because once this data is mixed with the data from kids that do try, it skews everything else down the line. In my school, over 90% score 1s. If you are trying to say that it all goes in the wash, kids randomly filling bubbles with pencil marks on a piece of paper with kids legitimately trying to demonstrate what their instructors taught, then you’d be identifying yourself as nothing other than a buffoon. Your system cannot tell who guessed when, or whether a kid learned from a teacher vs. a private tutor or parent.
You can’t tell whether there is cheating going on unless there are erasures or whistleblowers. You don’t know whether schools offer prizes of treats to goad children along, but teachers know. You don’t know when kids miss large swaths of the school year, or come to school stoned, or if they are eating junk food every morning. But teachers know because we see it every day.
So you can enumerate ways to detect when kids are guessing, based on recognizable patterns? So can any simpleton, but what do you do with that information? When is it a subjective judgment call? Have these policies been vetted by the appropriate officials? No one knows, we are in Wonkaland. Then you tell us that great variances cause scores to be dropped! So knowing this, a kid can take a year off by making Christmas tree patterns with no penalty? And then, a kid who has a psychological breakthrough, starts taking the tests for real and raises her score dramatically has it tossed out with no credit given to the teacher? What you’re doing is explaining in excruciating fine grain detail exactly why VAM is a sham, confirming everything we already knew.
It’s unadulterated charlatanism to say VAM measures practitioner effectiveness and the politicians know it, they are just trying to put the screws on teachers. But they need some clipboard-toting true believer to sign off on the scientific mumbo-jumbo, spouting buzzwords and discrediting studies on cue, and they do pay handsomely.
If a kid is not even trying in school, NOTHING is being measured – they need counseling, social emotional coaching and family intervention, perhaps clinicians, a change of setting or a home visit by social services or law enforcement. Not a data analyst trying to extrapolate meaning from dots on a paper in order to rank their ELA and math teachers on a score of 1 to 20. You do the opposite of what the IRS does, because they never “audit” individual kids needs after detecting abnormalities, they only sanction the schools and teacher for failing to achieve a certain score.
If you understood disturbed children, you’d know that non-participation on a test is exactly the red flag they are putting out to try to get attention paid to their true obstacles, whether it’s beatings, or depression or unevaluated disabilities. The support never comes, we only go deeper toward inclusion and standardization because the politicians hear test-fabrication experts saying VAM actually works.
It’s quaint that you think we need MORE testing, this time adaptive testing, to determine whether a kid is functioning at grade level. A teacher can do this in 15 minutes by taking a writing sample of doing a guided task – IF the kid is trying.
It’s also funny that you think they will adapt anything to prevent kids from getting too frustrated. You’ve missed the boat by years. They got frustrated long ago, but they did not adjust the material to meet their needs, they doubled down, raising the functioning level dramatically in the transition to Common Core, making the failure rate soar overnight. Somewhere in your mind you recognized the right thing to do, without realizing teachers are prevented from doing it. We are forced to teach at the tested level depending on age, not the functioning level. This resulted in 75% failure for the entire state, just as planned and announced beforehand.
We also are measured on an inadequate number of scores. NY set records for test refusals with some districts saw 50% opt outs and some schools saw 80%. The state announced they don’t give a crap and out of spite, will be assigning scores to every teacher with at least 16 tests attributable to them. So because VAM was designed for 95% participation ad they got less than that statewide, they should be revising the formulas. But they don’t, proving VAM was always a political weapon, not a measuring tool.
They used math scores in evaluations of art and gym teachers, showing that VAM was never about calculating anything real and they know it. And we all do too. The biting irony is that VAM is such a failure, it couldn’t identify NY’s worst teachers, it instead identified a random, arbitrary set of teachers, forcing the governor to try to double the percentage of evaluations based on test scores just to get some teachers in line for dismissal.
Federal funding is only 4%, there have already been districts who refuse RTTT money in exchange for freedom from it’s mandates. Opt-out is growing as we speak, because the government is not remedying these problems. Next year, the inner city parents will be involved, and it will be election season as well. Thank you for acknowledging “some legitimate questions”. But the only thing they readers to understand about VAMs is that Arne Duncan backed away after being challenged repeatedly to defend the algorithms, then we find the Senate is about to gut the requirement to use them, and the Sheri Lederman lawsuit will be ripping the hood off APPR, beginning in just a few weeks.
I can point out horrible teachers after 2-3 weeks on the job with them, so can any decent principal. Superintendents also want to cull bad teachers, but say it’s a matter of legislation, because Albany legislators won’t do anything unless they get something in return. THAT’S what’s preventing NY from improving the teacher work force, but principals and superintendents meanwhile have to spend inordinate amounts of their time protecting good teachers from the turgid, stultifying uselessness of VAM, now renegotiating implementation for the fifth year in a row because it was such a disaster here the governor called it baloney, members of the Board of Regents were fired, and the Commissioner of Education was replaced.Meanwhile nobody cares that another generation of kids will grow up hating school as they just renewed a 5 year contract for privatized testing.
By the way, I added insults this time to show you what you are doing to others. I could have made these points without them, but wanted you to bristle, noticing your arm hair rising so you could experience that chemical release in your physiology that introduces emotion clouding what should be dispassionate analysis of discourse. The added element of denigration which you have displayed towards me and others many times above impairs one’s ability to work collegially towards positive outcomes.
I hoped you’ll see it as undesirable, and unnecessary and adjust accordingly, because others have commented and you are on the brink of throwing away your posting privileges, which you at other times seem to want to retain. This has been a test, to measure your ability to improve this peculiar, flawed aspect of your commenting. If you continue to imbue your posts with aspersions and microaggressions, it will reflect back onto your teachers and they will be contacted and put on intervention plans.
amerigus, so you are saying that I insulted others in the beginning? Let me remind you of a remark from one history teacher on here who said (aimed at me) that “you can’t fix stupid”? I do not deny that I have used sharp elbows when others ascribe all problems to tests and officials who are dedicating their lives to helping children. But for you to claim that you all are so nice and rational is preposterous
I’ll write a more detailed answer tonight. Clearly you have no stats/probability background. You simply don’t understand how physics, hedge funds, the gaming industry, or anything else related to probability works. You would throw away all of the sports analysis (WAR, PER, QBR, etc.) with your anecdotes as well. But those have been proven to measure effectiveness in sports stars and helped GMs with little to no playing experience build winning teams. They call it Moneyball for a reason. Ever heard the term “alpha” used in finance circles? I doubt it, but it measure the amount of excess return (think VAM) that a fund generates. These are not foreign to other fields. It’s just that most teachers have such limited experiences outside teaching, they are not familiar with them.
Your most damning indictment was of superintendents and principals. You claim they can identify bad teachers within a few weeks. But they are clearly doing NOTHING about them. They are sentencing kids (both affluent and disadvantaged alike) to the classrooms of ineffective teachers. Why? Maybe they can’t stomach telling those teachers they are not effective. Maybe they just don’t care whether kids are educated. Maybe it would make themselves look bad to have 4% ineffective teachers. Who knows. But you admit that there are bad teachers in your school, but you don’t seem to care that it exists
I’ve asked this question in other forums so let me ask you. Let’s say that I had data to prove that 4% of the kids were being sexually assaulted. Folks would say they don’t believe it. Then I asked them to look at the data. And they simply refused. Of course, I have no data about sexual assault. But unless you believe having a completely ineffective teacher who will destroy your chances at a successful career later on is insignificant, you are duty bound to review that data. My district won’t even download the VAM/SGP data. Unless and until teachers, administrators and politicians actually fairly evaluate and remove ineffective teachers, your whines are just that: whines from a disinterested teacher class.
Pretend instead that these kids are going to be judged in the courtroom for prison time. Would you still say that ignoring bad judges is not an issue? You simply have no ethical ground to stand on until you begin fighting for those kids and an honest evaluation system. I’ll address the other points tonight when I have more time.
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Virginiasgp,
There is good data and bad data. The data from flawed standardized tests is not good data. Good data looks at mega-trends. But when applied to a single individual–be it teacher or student–the margin of error invalidates the assumptions one can make. That’s why the overwhelming majority of psychometricians (not economists) say that VAM cannot be used to judge individual teachers. The results are unreliable, unstable, and invalid.
Diane, ok, so now we have narrowed the scope of our disagreement. You appear to be just arguing that its the statistical imprecision that causes you concern. I agree that there must be enough valid scores to accurately evaluate teachers (16 seems way too low). But note that even if we have some false positives (or both Type 1 and Type 2 errors), there are ways to use VAMs in a constructive way:
1. Compare the VAMs to the observations. They almost universally rank teaches in the same order. It’s just that observations hardly ever rank the bottom performers as ineffective based on peer pressure. If the VAMs identify 5% as being at the extreme end of a tail and it’s confirmed by the observations, who are we really kidding?
2. Give the worse performers professional development first a la Montgomery County’s PAR program. Ideally, we want to retain and retrain these ineffective teachers. Most new teachers will not be at the high end of the scale anyways (first couple of years).
3. Move them to non-core classes. While I would like all teachers to be effective, it doesn’t do that much harm to have an ineffective history teacher. Not great but doesn’t lower your future earning potential significantly.
I think much of the effects are completely irrelevant to the subject matter. In other words, all of these VAMs measure the effectiveness of a generic teacher much like a salesman. Sales folks always like to claim they can sell anything to anybody. Many teachers are similar in that they can inspire kids to pay attention and give effort. That is a critical factor regardless of the subject, test or VAM algorithm. Do you disagree that these VAMs are often measuring inspiration as much as they are communication of the knowledge/skills? Is that not a worthwhile goal?
If you are just concerned about the inflexible application of VAMs within an evaluation, would you agree that they could be used to identify the bottom 10% which could be further trained and/or moved/dismissed based on observations?
Virginiasgp,
I oppose VAM. It is junk science. It destroys good and mediocre teachers alike. It is statistically unsound and philosophically idiotic.
Please name one country besides the US that uses VAM to evaluate teachers.
How is it relevant if other countries use VAMs?
As you recall, virtually everyone agrees that VAMs and observations are, for the most part, consistent in their rankings of teachers. The only thing that separates them is the will to rank teachers as ineffective. In observations, human emotions prevent principals from caring enough about their students to actually rate an ineffective teacher honestly. Instead, they are swayed by their friendship/bond with a fellow educator and rate them just high enough to be proficient. For this reason, I issue my harshest rulings on the truly effective principals/teachers. It is they who know more than anyone that a sizable chunk of teachers are ineffective and destroy students’ future opportunities. And yet they simply look the other way. That is truly disgraceful.
Why doesn’t Korea, Japan, Singapore, and Finland use VAM?
I cannot comment intelligently on the rationale for the policies of South Korea, Japan, Singapore or Finland. But I can tell you they are much more selective in their teacher programs that we are. That results in better teachers overall (note that the most effective teacher could have received a low SAT score so I’m not suggesting it’s the end-all metric. Just like Tom Brady was selected in the sixth round, it’s results that count).
But that’s a great segway into my number one policy that will improve our schools: private sector equivalent pay. There is all this talk about how other nations give their teachers more respect and better pay (even though we spend more actual $$ per pupil on education). But do they really. You see, most Americans are basically financially illiterate. They can’t compare various interest rate programs or conduct an accurate analysis of rent vs buying because they don’t understand that mortgages include de facto savings payments to yourself (the equity portion just transfers money from your bank account into your house account). So nobody ever stops to do the analysis. I do with Ben Bernanke gained more traction in fixing this illiteracy.
Whereas most nations fold in their pension plans so they are either explicit or available to all, the US hides its pension payments to public sector workers and almost no private sector workers receive pensions any longer. Thus, the 3% 401k match that private sector workers receive (and some teachers as well) is no match for the 20% pension contribution that districts make. Whereas SS is just a legalize Ponzi scheme because there is no “there” there, pensions are required by law to be funded. That’s why you always hear on the news about the “underfunding” of state X’s pensions. Eventually, they must be funded or changed in the law. Even the federal workers’ pensions are legal obligations unlike SS.
So riddle me this, Diane Ravitch. Will you support publishing two pay scales? The first will remain as-is and only include the nominal salaries of teachers. The second will not only include the salaries but also the equivalent pension contribution made on behalf of that teacher? In Virginia, that amounts to 18.2% and leads to starting salaries of teachers in Loudoun county of $57-64K/yr for 200-day workyears.
Won’t you support a policy that will attract large numbers of capable candidates into teaching and yet is practically free?! What possible reason could you oppose publishing private sector equivalent salaries and posting them in the career assistance office of every major engineering university in the nation?
Why should we hide what teachers really earn? No other employer in their right mind would try to tell prospective applicants that they will earn less than what the applicant will really earn.
Virginiasgp,
Can you name any other nation that uses VAM?
Tennessee has been using VAM for 20 years. It is smack dab in the middle of states, nowhere near the too.
Can you name a state or district where VAM has succeeded?
Diane, the fact that you say Tennessee is “not at the top” shows a fundamental misunderstanding of VAMs. You cannot make that statement and truly understand VAMs are about growth compared to similar kids. Not possible.
Maybe after many, many years studying STEM, you can come back and we can have a rational discussion. Or as SomeDAM Poet to explain it to you.
Results for VAM? Where?
Can you name any other nation that uses it? Outer Mongolia maybe?
You continue to ignore the simple fact that the tests that produce VAM scores were never designed to measure teacher effectiveness.
Wrong tool for the wrong job. Why wrong job? Because even a test with a high degree of instructional sensitivity would still only examine a very tiny slice of what makes a truly effective teacher. Putting your misplaced faith in VAM requires a number of false assumptions. Assumption one – all students arrive with pre-requiste skills. Assumption two – all students are trying their best. Here in NY, our governor has publicly stated that the tests are “meaningless” for students and that their scores will not count for or against them. Assumption three – the tests themselves are valid and subjective scoring is reliable. And let’s not overlook the fact that the majority of teachers do NOT teach “tested” subjects. How would you want to have been evaluated by the performance of the crew of an air craft carrier?
Your “money-ball” comment reveals just how little you understand classroom dynamics and the adolescent psychology. You may have been an effective submarine officer, but just like when you’re at “never-exceed-depth” (MOD) on your old job, in this new role as amatuer education activist – you are in way over your head.
And you still haven;t answered the two very simple questions posed by the owner of this blog.
I can only guess that you have done thye research but are unwilling to supply the answers because they take the wind out of your VAM sails. (Just trying to keep it nautical for you).
1) ZERO countries, other than the US, use VAM to evaluate teachers.
2) ZERO evidence that supports the successful use of VAM to identify and dismiss truly incompetent/harmful teachers
NY Teacher, ok this post was especially egregious.
1. You cite certain assumptions: “Assumption one – all students arrive with pre-requiste skills. Assumption two – all students are trying their best.” Note that I emphatically do NOT make those assumptions. Here are some of the things that tests/VAMs measure:
– ability to communicate concepts vs just facts
– ability to maintain class discipline
– ability to connect with students
– ability to inspire students
– deep understanding of the material
We always hear from teachers that teaching is about much more than “teaching to the test”. We ALL agree. Each of these skills above are revealed on the test. For example, consider the coach who has undisciplined talent on his team. If he cannot connect with those players and get them to pull in the same direction, to give effort in practice, and to individually improve themselves, will he ultimately be successful? No. Let’s assume we have a teacher who is not that strong in her discipline. But she can connect with students and get them to pay attention, study and give effort on the tests. Her VAMs will be through the roof. In fact, I claim that is much of what Chetty and the Head Start outcome data show. Inspiration of a single teacher carries weight throughout their lives. Is it fair that teachers who can convey concepts to perfectly behaved, conscientious students won’t be successful with other students and receive low VAMs? I say yes because the goal is effectiveness, not being a prototypical teacher. If that means we need to hire all 20-somethings who can engage young kids, so be it.
2. I do not support giving VAMs to teachers who did not teach a tested subject. Period. And I don’t support giving VAMs when there is insufficient data to provide a reliable score (I don’t believe 16 scores is enough). I will speak up on these issues but it doesn’t dissuade me from believing in reliable VAM calculations.
As for which countries use VAMs, does it really matter? Nearly all of those countries have a selective teaching program that recruits high aptitude teachers. We do not. If we did, we would have more capable teachers overall, especially in STEM.
As for which schools use VAMs effectively, the VAMs are just starting to be used. Michelle Rhee dismissed hundreds of ineffective teachers from DC. One might argue that DC has retention problems but so would any school district in which so many students are disadvantaged and the administration does not always support teachers on discipline issues. But why don’t we look at Dallas’ new model. It relies on VAMs to determine if teachers are promoted, but it also considers a lot of other factors including observations, the leadership of those teachers, and whether they are serving as mentors to other teachers. Dallas also doesn’t primarily look to fire teachers but rather promote the most effective. This is just like any other profession in which you have to demonstrate a reason for getting promoted. In most districts, every year you get a step increase regardless of how effective you are.
This is superb! Too bad this will fall on deaf ears. People that have no experience working with children raised in dysfunction will never understand. The troubled inner city school environments that are the workplace of so many hard working teachers could not be imagined by those who travel in strictly privileged circles. Apathy, depression, non-compliance, outright defiance, mob behaviors, and chemically altered personalities are the challenges that teachers must contend with on a daily basis. And outsiders like Virginiaspg think they can legislate solutions and then want to weed out teachers that can’t magically over-ride the dysfunction and disabilities that rule their classrooms.
NY Teacher, your dismissive tone is telling. Charles Murray likes to talk about how the upper middle class only interact with the top 10% of society. I generally agree. However, I was raised in SC which is very integrated. Our schools had busing beginning in 4th-5th grade and I had wide exposure to all types throughout my K-12 experience. Most of my friends were via sports teams. I would drive them to/from practice since most didn’t have cars or their parents couldn’t give them a ride. I would often play pickup games on the weekends in gyms in which I was the only white kid there. So I don’t really need a lecture from you on how I don’t understand the problems that many kids experience, ok?
I am not one that expects miracles. As I’ve mentioned before, getting a kid from the 9th to the 15th percentile would be a miracle. I was a big fan of my athletic director. He was strongly religious and led the Fellowship of Christian Athletes in our schools. They were able to reach so many kids in a society in which virtually everyone is religious. The AD would insist on kids attending class and working hard. If their teachers said they didn’t give effort, then they could not play. The AD and the coaches had a tremendous effect on so many kids. On a side note, Rock Hill, SC is rather known for producing first round NFL picks. The 2014 #1 pick (Jadaveon Clowney) grew up there.
Maybe we need more inspirational figures in these classrooms than conventional teachers. Maybe we need more male teachers from various ethnic backgrounds to connect with the kids. In the end, when kids give effort, it shows up on these tests. Ultimately, you could be the perfect teacher for conscientious kids and the absolute wrong teacher for these schools. We want effective teachers, not the ones who formally rate well.
If a coach doesn’t generate results, he gets fired/moved. Don’t we want the same from our teachers? We can move the ineffective ones to other surroundings to see if they can teach conscientious kids. But let’s put teachers who will be effective in these schools too.
If a coach has a team of kids who are lazy slackers, why would his win-loss record reflect on him?
The coach is partly paid to motivate “lazy slackers”. If we know that our teachers can’t motivate “lazy slackers”, then maybe those teachers should not be at a disadvantaged school? Any teacher than can motivate them will have phenomenal VAMs.
Virginiasgp,
When will you give me the name of another nation that uses VAM to evaluate teachers?
Diane, please tell me that you are not hanging your hat on the fact that other nations might not use VAMs.
Please tell me that despite other nations using aptitude scores to select their teachers when RAND has shown that many of our teachers come from the bottom 1/3 of the SAT ranks, you are not suggesting that unless and until other nations use VAMs that we cannot either.
Please tell me that despite there existing a high correlation between VAMs and observations in teacher evaluations and therefore virtually every principal who conducts observations is inadvertantly validating these VAMs, that you are not basing your entire resistance to VAMs on what other nations decide to do.
Please tell me that is not your only excuse for not using VAMs
Because if you could handle the truth, you would know that using VAMs will save disadvantaged kids’ careers. That while you don’t like to talk about it at cocktail parties, you know deep down that a non-trivial percentage of our teachers are ineffective and could easily be replaced if we simply published private sector equivalent pay to recruit more and better STEM teachers. While yes, there may be occasions that some teachers are erroneously and initially scored incorrectly, schools were not created to employ teachers. Schools were created to effectively educate students. Teachers are not entitled to an error-free system when that very system puts them at tremendous risk of being saddled with an ineffective education for the rest of their lives.
P.s. Readers, sorry for the effects, but this gets at the heart of this discussion. To whom do we owe allegiance? Kids or teachers? And are we not in fact discussing “saving lives”?
Virginiasgp, VAM is junk science. You and Arne are its biggest cheerleaders.
Why are we the only nation to have mAde this miraculous discovery?
Why is no one rushing to copy us?
THE FINANCIAL CRISIS? Given your warped revisionist perspective on the crash of October 2008, you are never to be trusted with anything concerning the lives of young Americans. The whistleblowers have come forward by now and we know Wall Street was intentionally creating time bombs and betting against it’s own products in secret. They have in many cases already admitted culpability, paid fines and settlements.
The mortgage backed securities debacle was only the straw that broke the camel’s back, a full year after major magazines ran “When Will The Housing Market Crash?” on the cover. So wrong, wrong, and wrong. After the pump-and-dump dominoes started falling, it was credit default swaps and multi-billion dollar derivatives calls that wiped out investors, with as much as 30% of ma and pa’s net worth disappearing as the large Wall St sharks got out before anyone else could.
What was paid back was bailout funds, not these broad market losses. But even the fact that we had to make these loans and saw tax revenues drop cost billions in productivity, reversed growth and led to global chaos, with ripple effects reaching every US city and town as teachers, cops, nurses and firemen were laid off in 2009.
The very first bailout under Bush exceeded the total of every underwater home in the “housing” crisis, so this was obviously never about sub-prime mortgages, it was about the much larger casino-style gambling bets made on the instruments that the toxic liars loans were hopelessly intwined into. These figures added more than a few zeros, making collateralized debt obligation calls on the money of unsuspecting investors and pensioners (thanks to the repeal of Glass Steagall).
You should check your ‘sharp elbows’, because people do know what they’re talking about as you hide your head in the sand. You are consistently not acknowledging the evil of greed and the crystal clear impact of pay-for-play on government policy, showing your stripes better than anything you are typing.
The same can NOT be said of test scores. Score histories are pointless unless the student had the same teacher every year, otherwise it’s an uncontrolled variable, where a good teacher could follow a bad teacher or mediocre teacher without any accounting, thrust into a formula with three other overlapping qualifiers and dozens of significant but unaddressed, ignored factors.
You are clinging to nothing in defense of VAM showing the effect of a teacher on test scores accurately enough to base real world decisions on it. Because the first teacher fired due to this in any state will pursue a lawsuit where guys like you will be forced to admit these predications, estimates and assumptions were modeled after sports betting or hedge fund operations where the object is to guess right as much as possible not inform or enrich teaching and learning in a classroom.
Even now, a teacher who received an ineffective rating on one part of her evaluation is chomping at the bit to present all this in a NY State courtroom for the first time in August. Because it’s a waste of tax dollars to use test scores to make assumptions about classroom practice.
If you are not purposely trying to tie Diane and others in knots and actually believe what are saying, then you are failing to adequately explain your position or persuade anyone of it’s validity. Let’s use this as an example. You say:
“If the research in the ASA paper is not independent from the score histories (in other words, the papers they cite were confounding gains with achievement, thus very little difference occurred between measured score gains, thus the measurement error added a lot of random noise/variance), then their reported variance of 1-14% greatly underestimate what is properly attributed to teachers. All of these statistical analyses try to determine orthogonal relationships (ones that are perpendicular or truly independent of one another). If the assumptions are mistaken, then the analysis suffers.”
So I get the difference between gains and aggregate achievement numbers, but it makes no difference if the bubbled in answers cannot show genuine effort versus guesses made in pure apathy. It makes no difference is there is no scientifically valid way to connect the student knowledge to the teacher’s presence.
This is like saying let’s build the best ocean liner we can, but then instead of putting it in water, we’ll drop it into a desert. There’s no foundational starting point if you are dealing with multiple choice and opening the assessment to guessing and luck. There’s no analytical honesty if you’re not disaggregating dissident kids with compliant students, and there’s ultimately no useful output unless teachers and parents buy in in at every step of the way. Epic fail. So instead, you go start to talk about Obama’s bailout of GM and CRA? I’m not getting distracted.
Schools are not baseball teams, I’m sorry, you cannot apply the same thinking. Baseball has overwhelming demand to fill positions but teaching has acute shortages, particularly in inner city schools and in certain subject areas. Teaching is not a sport, with a single set of prescribed activities, where we pick certain stats and compare them to others, playing the same game by the same rules every day. But your analogy also falls flat in the use of umpires calling balls and strikes, fair and foul balls, outs and hits. Classrooms do not have anything akin to independent monitors officiating every single action as it unfolds.
It’s a major failing to keep comparing schools to businesses, games and all these other enterprises. Education is supposed to be allow the individual child to grow and become aware of the world and functional in academic skills, not win a game or get a score or earn a medal. So the skill set of a teacher is beyond the ability of centralized planners to contain in any one monolithic evaluation scheme, and it shows, as NCLB has failed every year, in every incarnation attempted to date, necessitating yet another rewrite.
What has proven to work (with you, me and Diane as shining examples) is local accountability via a simple hierarchy of democratically elected school board officials holding superintendents answerable to local parents and taxpayers. In turn, they hire principals who they think will make them look good so they can retain their jobs. Then, principals hire teachers, finding the best available talent they can, to make them look good so they can retain their jobs ad keep their superior happy.
Where this model lacks, is in the densely populated, impoverished urban areas where parents aren’t doing their bit to socialize or supervise kids. This shifts the burden to the school faculty, or whatever social service agencies are still around after the financial collapse and years of subsequent cuts. Once misbehavior infects a school, the flight of top notch teachers is no accident, but it hardly matters who is on the room if the kids aren’t ready, willing and able to learn, it wouldn’t matter anyway.
Linked inextricably to resistant student populations in impoverished districts, a shortage of teachers is the prolonged failure of NCLB and high stakes testing to stimulate or engage learning. Then there are union vs. BOE issues where pendulum swings have seen too much power concentrated in either side depending on the time and place discussed. Today, unions are on their heels, weakened and making deep concessions, going back to the Wall Street crisis which forced debilitating cuts to staff budgets. But many teachers retiring today have sweetheart packages, significantly better than the benefits today’s teachers will ever see. This is why we need both sides at the table, fighting for their causes on equal footing, because it can either way depending on electoral outcomes.
Yes, there are bad teachers – I estimate them at 1 in 30 in the schools I’ve worked in over the last decade. Not nearly the crisis hyped by anti-union alarmists, but there should be mechanisms to get them help or scuttle them, and no good teacher would argue this, because good teachers have to work twice as hard when there is a bad teacher on staff. Unions that protect bad teachers only make the larger teacher force look bad, but unions, like government bodies, often have leadership that does not represent the rank and file (see yesterday’s premature endorsement of Hillary).
In this debate, it’s blind centralization that is the enemy, where the attempt to bring formulas to scale always results in unintended (read bad) consequences. Instead we should trust the local professionals and stakeholders to look after their interests and reject the methods used by industry or gambling operations to systematize or franchise out all aspects of education so that low-skill workers can take over.
Schools are NOT industries, after all. So what other industries do is meaningless in an institution where every single kid has particular, unique needs that deserve attention. Yes, we want everyone to read and write and do math and function, and get jobs and contribute to society. But mandating that all 8 year olds have to do A, B and C is anti-scientific because kids all develop at different paces. And this has little to do with teachers. Teachers have to provide learning opportunities every period of every day, that’s our job. But outcome-based expectations attached to consequences are the purview of greedy industries, not nurturing school environments. Sometimes less is more in getting kids out of their shells, or sometimes unorthodox solutions are needed. Sometimes a kid will go 3, 4 or 5 years before something clicks in their life and they decide to make some progress.
Even in baseball, the metrics you end up with are only predictive, and can be wrong any given plate appearance, everytime the ball goes into play. We can’t look at teachers like baseball players where there are only a few different choices to make dependent on a limited set of situations. In a classroom there are a few hundred thousand different decisions to make, if not millions. So we agree – there will never be a consistent methodology of evaluating teacher effectiveness, just like there will never be two snowflakes the same, trying to measure the unmeasurable is a waste of time and tax dollars.
Teachers are NOT avoiding accountability, we are fiercely driven, we have all kinds of OCD, meticulous organization and eat, drink and sleep our jobs. We put in extra hours, we spend our own cash, we literally jump in front of bullets for our kids. We want to work with quality colleagues and we are only held back by these idiotic reform practices. In fact, my personal record keeping methodology is so complete in tracking student progress and data that I present workshops about it at professional development conferences. And there are plenty of teachers whose personal practices are proven over time to make the students and families giving their highest recommendations year after year.
For the third time, the problem is that schools have limited choices when good applicants are few and far between. The profession is in free fall because those who have been in the classroom during the NCLB see the bizarro formulas complicating the job. Look at the shame-and-blame happening to teaching programs, with new tests introduced before the material was covered.
Corporate style reform does NOT attract the best talent, the innovators, the charismatic free spirits and the creative, autonomous thinkers – it repels this kind of talent. When I spoke about ball teams looking for the best and abandoning the slow, the weak, the non hackers, it was to point out how HST works to forge KIDS into these models, competing against each other, but that’s not how it works. The science on childhood development is clear, you cannot quantify, predict or place expectations on cognitive development, nor physical, nor emotional.
We SHOULD try to attract and retain the best teachers, particularly in the inner city, in high needs, high stress school environments, those that would be the most effective on connecting to that population, discerning their individual keys and entry points and overcoming the home-based obstacles that prevent them from learning. The greatest bar to attracting and retaining these teachers is VAM, a system that purports to deduce the effectiveness of teachers based on the number of correct circular markings by students on sheets of paper, considering an extremely limited set of factors and using low-quality or even garbage data going in to the formula. Then, years into implementation, VAM can’t recognize the failure of the system after seeing wholesale volatility, record opt outs, mis-alignment with other measurements, and leading authorities at the highest levels blow holes in efficacy claims.
I don’t know you, Virginia, but I can say for sure that you should drop everything and go teach in an inner city school where over 90% of kids get a 1. There are thousands of them in every region. Go in there and make a difference, doing whatever it takes to reach those kids. And then report back and tell us why you could or couldn’t move them to 2s. Then you’ll see how high stakes tests do or don’t accurately represent what’s going on in Detroit, the Bronx, LA, DC, Baltimore and all over the nation.
Short of that, you are a guy with an opinion in an ivory tower, discounting a large body of research and a preponderance of boots on the ground all saying the same thing. It takes a special kind of commitment to hold on to something built on the fraudulent assumption that all kids whose scores are used are willing participants who are reflecting teaching practice. Go out to a low-scoring classroom and see what the teachers deal with so you can talk from first hand experience.
amerigus, wow, you really outdid yourself. How can one person be so wrong.
1. Read the Big Short and the other books on the crisis. John Paulson saw the degree to which the market was over-valued early on. It wasn’t until 2006 or even 2007 that most of the institutions really realized what was going on. They only turned at the end. It was far too late at that point.
2. The real problem was over-investment. I moved into a new community in 2004. Many of my coworkers were flipping houses when they had no business doing so. One guy had a deal with a builder to buy all of the spec (they made a model house early on to show interested buyers) homes and lease them back to the builder. Once the community was built out, he could sell the homes for a big profit since the later houses sell for more. He had at least 4 going on at the same time and only had to put about $10K down on each. In fact, I recall listening to the radio in 2006 when they said 50% of all houses built the previous year were for investment purposes or to be used as second homes. I knew that was trouble but wasn’t willing (and unable) to short that market. Unless you could be positive that the market would turn quickly, it was risky to bet either way. You can’t blame the banks when it was the middle class who was causing the problem.
3. If you really want to look at fraud, all of the no-doc loanees were the ones who violated the law. I thought it was a joke the first time I heard about no-docs. But it was in the context of a new business owner. They had revenues and wanted to buy a house. Without years of substantiated income (they previously had high-paying jobs), it would be difficult for them to show reliable income. But given their assets and income in the new business, they were a good bet. While I thought it odd, I could understand why banks might be willing to loan to them. Then, enter the real estate broker. He tells interested home buyers to shift money between accounts and get bank statements from each making it look like there is more $$ than there was. And of course, they implicitly encourage them to lie on the loan docs. If a loan officer has a policy to accept certain no-doc loans, then they can’t claim that certain individuals are committing fraud unless they have good proof. And Freddie and Fannie were giving out low-money-down loans too. When the feds were giving relief, they initially had almost no takers. Why? Because folks had to sign papers, under penalty of perjury, about their income/assets/conditions of entering the original loans. It’s very telling that folks would forgo huge relief simply because they don’t want to sign a document.
4. Most of that money was pawned off on other countries. There were foreign banks, investments groups from Iceland, you name it that was buying that paper. When it crashed, the losses were spread out all over. You might say that we benefited as a country from so many investing in our housing market. Recall that many industries relied on housing from furniture to construction to home improvement, etc. Our economy never would have grown so fast in the 2000’s if not for the housing market. Any time there is an imbalance, it must adjust and that’s what the housing crisis was. Thus, you shouldn’t compare the fall from the (false) top that never would have existed without the bubble.
5. There are other ways to handle bubbles. The 2000 stock crash was clearly a bubble. It wasn’t “caused” by greedy investment banks, but rather greedy middle class citizens who were investing in Pets.com. Since it really only hurt the middle class who could handle it, there was not as much blame. In China, they will adjust the required down payment for a home to restrict credit. Second homes could require 75%+ down payments. There are other means to stabilize the market but our authorities are limited in their powers.
Btw, the following statement shows your total ignorance as it is completely false:
“The very first bailout under Bush exceeded the total of every underwater home in the “housing” crisis, so this was obviously never about sub-prime mortgages”
On to test scores
You make the claim that “Score histories are pointless unless the student had the same teacher every year, otherwise it’s an uncontrolled variable, where a good teacher could follow a bad teacher or mediocre teacher without any accounting”
In the formula 3.2 on page 25 of this paper, what the heck do you think the theta terms are!!!! Those are teachers effects.They state it quite clearly:
“A teacher effect, θt(ij),,is added for each year and these effects remain in the model undiminished at the future test administrations, which is why the model for the score at time t includes terms for all previous teachers”
Now, look, we understand you have no clue what these papers are saying. You are not a STEM major. I would hope that your reading comprehension skills are sufficient for you to understand that your statements are ungrounded. While folks can disagree about which model is more relevant/accurate (as Poet and I may), you should just really not enter into the conversation until you become more versed on the models.
That NY teacher suing her district is funny. Her defense…. “my students performed well thus I must be a good teacher”. That is laughable. If we took the LeBron James’ of the academic world, how could they not score well regardless of who their teacher was. I don’t know enough to say whether she was good or bad without reviewing the facts, but a defense of “my students scored well” is as ridiculous as saying that a teacher was bad simply because her students did not “pass” the exam despite being years behind at the beginning of the year.
This post is already way too long but let me give you an example of why our schools have serious issues. I live in an affluent neighborhood (my townhouse is at the low end but overall it’s affluent). A couple years back they needed to split the elementary school since we had outgrown it. Parents fought to stay in the neighborhood school for convenience but also because they perceived it was better. It had higher overall SOL scores. I tried to find more information and was finally able to determine that the other school was just as good, if not better. Once you looked at apples to apples (non-ESL, non-FRL students), they performed just as well. They just happened to have slightly more ESL and FRL students so their averages appeared lower. The parents didn’t understand that, but even then I was trying to obtain the VAMs. My school board rep lied to me about their existence then (and thus this was the genesis of my suit). When I finally learned of SGPs in Sep-2014 and received them in Feb-2015, I looked at my school. It has very high SOL averages because of the affluence. But out of 1100+ schools in Virginia, it ranks 900th!!! That is not good. And it is confirmed by my experience in which my daughter basically had “study hall” in first grade because they taught her nothing. This it not a problem for just the inner city schools. Many elementary teachers choose these grades because they were “never good” at math. That shows its ugly head in later years. You are kidding yourself if you think these issues are not universal. I understand why you want to kid yourself, but we are under no such illusions.
amerigus
Thank you. Hopefully some other amateur education activist read your response and did not completely dismiss and disrespect your valuable experience and professional viewpoints.
The real tell here is that virginiasgp will never take all of his passion and energy and put it to work teaching in an inner city classroom.
There are countless schools that would welcome his technical expertise; and a short commute int DC could find him teaching elementary math – possibly a math coach. Instead he wastes his efforts on meaningless, ivory tower nonsense. Arm chair quarterbacking, back seat driving at its worst – its as if he never played football or drove a car.
HEDGE FUNDS? MONEYBALL? GAMING? You are cementing everything bad about VAM, admitting it is a hodgepodge of formulas used by the money-grubbing criminals that wrecked the global economy, stealing from the the taxpayer and honest investor in a sham they called “dogshit” in private emails.
Their formulas for derivatives and mortgage back securities were intentionally designed to be too complex for anyone to vet, using algorithms only their architects had the key to. But it’s glad we are recognizing the scope of the global, monumental rip off tactics being employed here, thanks for hurtling headlong right into that.
Then we have the betting operations, traditionally run by the mob, but now run by casino magnates whose primary goal is to generate as much moolah as possible while trampling the lives of everyone who touches them.
Caring for school kids is a bit different. Even a sports team that just wants to win games have entirely different motives than schools. They look for the best and abandon the slow, the weak, the non hackers. So admitting these methods are linked, you have shown VAM to be wrong for education, wrong for society and wrong for taxpayers.
And I thought this guy was a hoot. He’s beginning to sound dangerous. That special kind of danger when there is a perfect storm of arrogance, ignorance, and power,
amerigus, first, you have no idea what you are talking about with respect to the financial crisis. That was all based on one flawed assumption: that home prices would never all fall in a synchronized way. Prior to the housing crisis, home prices had never fallen significantly since the banking reforms of the 1930’s Yet, they fell by 25-33% in large chunks of the country. Many very prominent researchers were onboard with this notion.
However, I will say that I never bought in to the notion of “indepedence” (statistical term denoting that each market is separate). If the markets were truly “independent”, then the models would be solid. I suggest that they tie the home prices to more tangible values like rebuilding costs. When my home price greatly exceeded the rebuilding cost in 2005 (from speaking to the home insurance company when I asked to increase the coverage of my homeowner’s insurance), I knew things were way out of whack (just like many others). I simply didn’t have the courage to bet against the market. And there were not many ways to bet against housing anyway. When you do allow bets against a position (such as a short), then these bubbles are much less likely to occur.
The same could be said for the score gains on tests. SomeDAM Poet and I have a running discussion about how much of score gains are due to teachers (I owe him a response today). But inherent in that discussion is whether score histories affect score gains. If the research in the ASA paper is not independent from the score histories (in other words, the papers they cite were confounding gains with achievement, thus very little difference occurred between measured score gains, thus the measurement error added a lot of random noise/variance), then their reported variance of 1-14% greatly underestimate what is properly attributed to teachers. All of these statistical analyses try to determine orthogonal relationships (ones that are perpendicular or truly independent of one another). If the assumptions are mistaken, then the analysis suffers. I’ll discuss Poet’s comments in more detail later as we are likely on some common ground.
As for the financial crisis, here are 2 points that you miss:
– the collateralized market (turn mortgages into securities) was responsible for greatly lowering home interest rates. This means that every existing homeowner benefited tremendously even if they never bought/sold a home during the crisis.
– even the bad actors such as AIG have repaid ALL of their loans/debts to the government. The US actually made money on the banks and insurance companies. What they did NOT make money on was the bailout of the auto industry and the subsidized loans given to households (artificially reduced interest rates)
Look, every other industry has used data to optimize its performance. Virtually all baseball analysis begins with “wins above replacement” (WAR) as the best means to evaluate players. Otherwise, you would sit here and argue that we can never compare one hitter’s at-bats to another since they have different ballparks, temperatures at game times, pitchers, etc., etc., etc. You will never provide a consistent methodology of evaluating teacher effectiveness, be it via observations, surveys or tests, because your whole goal is to prevent them from being accountable. You believe everybody should just say all teachers are good. Most are good and many are great. But your inability to be objective belies your true intentions. Your “money quote” is the following:
“They look for the best and abandon the slow, the weak, the non hackers”
Why shouldn’t we do that with teachers since the very lives of disadvantaged youth depend on us providing the best teachers to all?
Virginiasgp,
Is it a burden to be a know-it-all?
Haven’t seen a thread like this in a long time. This dude is exasperating.
I wonder if his head can fit through a standard doorway? That would be quite burdensome.
Not really. You see some of my K-12 teachers taught me to be “curious”. I think that was an invaluable trait. What say you? I would think you should praise my public school teachers.
If you care to branch off into immigration, ACA, SS/Medicare or other public policy discussions, just let me know. But education is one of the simplest. And might I add, one of the most important. See Hanushek’s studies for the overall effects. His $40T estimate is similar to the future liabilities of Medicare/Social Security (see table 1 on page 3 of the complete report). Not trivial to say the least.
For those who might get the wrong idea, I have always said that the researchers conducting the ground-breaking studies are so far above me, I can barely see them on the horizon. I liken myself to a second-string college sports player. I’m just fortunate that most of the opt-out folks I deal with are akin to Little Leaguers.
Virginiasgp, I know Eric Hanushek quite well. He is famous for his frequent court testimony that money doesn’t make a difference. He usually loses. He is also one of the major sources of the nutty idea that schools will improve by repeatedly firing the lowest 5% of teachers, based on student test scores. We had a debate on Andy Rotherham’s site, Eduwonk.
You still didn’t answer my question: Please name another country that uses VAM to evaluate and fire teachers.
Why don’t you join us on July 31 in Richmond. I think the other side will need some help. You will make it more of a fair contest.
Or maybe since Virginia doesn’t have “unions” (or so they say despite their internal postings), you don’t care if Virginia teachers’ scores are released?
Virginiasgp,
Please name one other nation that uses VAM to evaluate teachers.
Here are some of the things that tests/VAMs measure:
– ability to communicate concepts vs just facts
– ability to maintain class discipline
– ability to connect with students
– ability to inspire students
– deep understanding of the material
Wow! VAM is more magical than I thought. I’m going to plant my evaluation in the backyard, climb the beanstalk that sprouts into the clouds and bring home the golden
unicorn which I will ride to work next school year.
Can you substantiate those absurd claims with some sample test items? I have administered standardized math and ELA tests since the beginning of NCLB and into the Common Core madness. I have seen ZERO evidence that these tests could possible measure any one item from your list.
So let me get this straight NY Teacher. We have a student who, by your own words, doesn’t give a flying flip about school. His prior test scores reveal his interest, or lack thereof. Then, he sits in a classroom of a teacher with whom he connects. Maybe the teacher is an ex-sports player and he’s interested in playing college ball. Maybe the teacher tells of far flung travels around the world and that piques his interest. Maybe he tells of war stories while serving in the US Marines and the kid wants to serve his country and protect his family.
During the next standardized test, the kid is not proficient. He’s nowhere close. But he tries to answer each one to the best of his ability. He paid attention in class much more than he ever has before. He talks to the teacher about enlisting in the military and the teacher explains that the military will not accept anyone without a strong academic record (not your military of old). His scores improve. Greatly. There is still a long way to go but that influence will remain with the kid for years to come.
How could that kid’s score NOT possibly show those exact traits? Please explain it to me from omnipotent point of view.
The problem is, said teacher could have all those important influences (Inspirational. motivational, etc.) and when said student asks the very common question, “Does this test count?” and said teacher gives the honest reply. “I wish it did, but sadly our own governor has called these tests meaningless.” Now said student, not being anybodies fool, spends 15 minutes (out of 90 allotted) bubbling in random answers and then takes a 75 minute nap. Now said teacher gets zero credit for all those positive influences and gets hammered for failing to show growth. The real problem with your example is that a typical 8th grade math teacher might have 125 to 150 students per day and those types of relationships are few and far between.
Oh, and you forgot assumption #3 – the most important one of all.
None of these tests have been validated nor have they been proven reliable. And if you were to ask a psychometrician if these tests have been designed to measure classroom management skills, ability to establish meaningful relationships, deep meaning, important concepts, critical thinking, and ability to inspire, they would laugh you out of the room. You may think they do, but they don’t even do a passable job of measuring basic skills.
Such a persuasive argument, NY Teacher. I guess that is why from football teams to military platoons to band students, teams almost inevitably give the following answer when asked why they were willing to exceed their perceived limitations: “Because I did not want to let my teammate/coach down”!
But alas, I guess none of your so-called “dedicated” teachers are ever able to establish such relationships. Maybe they just don’t have that charisma.
Let me tell you a story. I got interested in education policy because of one Professor Duckworth from UPenn. She had shaken down (I’m sorry, convinced them not only to fund her effort but thank her for the opportunity to allow them to fund her effort – well, anybody that knows her personality can attest to this) some Intel founders to fund a summer school project in Cambridge called Summerbridge. Over the course of our summer breaks in college, we taught middle school students (the most interesting of the grades) and I taught math.
Well, I had noticed that one of the students was a class clown. His jokes were often funny but he didn’t always perform so well in class. His attention-seeking was obviously part of the problem and I had little success in redirecting him back on task. So one day I simply asked him to leave the class. He did. And then I proceeded to tear into the rest of the class while he was in the hallway. I asked them if they were the student’s friend. They all said they liked him. I asked them if they thought his antics were helping him learn the material. They all agreed the antics hurt. I asked them if it was too much to ask for them to ignore their friend’s antics so that rather than being entertained, they would actually help him focus and learn the material. They all agreed that is what a real friend would do.
The student returned to class. The next time he made a joke, nobody laughed. I didn’t have too many problems like that the rest of the summer. Now, great teachers can tell 100’s of these stories. And as I recall from high school, I will admit that many teenage boys don’t really respect adult women. I know you say that’s awful, but maybe that’s what allows nations to protect their freedom in wars. In any case, we need teachers that the students respect and want to emulate. Maybe that’s not “fair” to all the teachers who are trying their best, but that is the truth.
In the end, you either perform and get tangible results, or we need to find a different position for you. It’s really that simple.
Still waiting for a single test item that at least pretend to asses deep understanding, critical thinking, or an important concept.
Ok, you have 5 minutes to complete this problem. No cheating. $20 (to the charity of your choice) that there is no way in heck you make it.
– http://www.cnn.com/2015/04/15/living/feat-cheryl-birthday-math-problem-goes-viral/
What is another nation that uses VAM?
Or here is another one. Note that my 3rd grader can answer this correctly so don’t feel so bad if you don’t have a clue (not saying my 3rd grader is better/worse than anybody else but she understands the principles behind our number system). Note that the product of these numbers is greater than the number of atoms in the universe…. by a factor greater than the number of atoms in the universe. So I don’t think a calculator will help you much. Go figure.
What is in the hundred billions place (12 digit from right) when you multiply the following:
1 x 2 x 3 x 4 x …. x 97 x 98 x 99?
A. 5
B. 8
C. 0
D. 2
E. 1
You see, all those folks saying CC is a waste don’t fundamentally understand the concepts we are trying to teach. I never used a calculator in all my tests and I can pretty much assure you that I’ve had more math than almost anyone on here (well, maybe not Poet since physics majors have a LOT of math). If you teach a kid concepts, they won’t have to memorize anything. And the tests are a breeze because you can rederive anything you need. Note that the SAT tests (when paper/pencil) had all the formulas in the front. They were applied thinking tests.
Virginiasgp,
What other nation uses VAM?
NY Teacher, why don’t you get all your opt-out activists to come give me their best shot so I don’t have to keep repeating myself on these blogs. I’ve posted these problems on WaPo so obviously you haven’t been reading over there.
Given that I’ve taught 100’s of teachers what VAMs actually mean on these blogs, maybe you can give an honorary teaching degree. What do you say? Teaching teachers about VAMs is a MIRACLE!
If we used your submarine protocol as it relates to teaching you would have to be immediately removed from the blogs for teaching mis-information and sent for required remediation. However since all the efforts here to set you straight have been in vain we won’t waste any more of our time trying to help your ignorant, arrogant self. Time for me to hit the pool.
Enjoying that 200 per day workyear I see, NY Teacher. Note that to calculate your annual rate of earnings relative to the private sector, you can take your salary and add in your pension contributions (do you even know what that is). Then, take that whole number and multiple it by 1.175.
Voila!!! That’s a pretty big number I bet! But if you retire early like one Carol Burris, that pension contribution vastly underestimates the value of the long-term pension payouts. But that’s advanced pre-algebra so I’ll save it for another day.