One of our readers got his score from the state education department. He is in a state of shock and rage:
Today I’m angry, disgusted, demoralized,and frustrated. I am also firmly resolved to fight back against the tsunami of junk ideology that all good educators face these days.
I received my ‘growth score’ today from the New York State Education Department.
I know, I really shouldn’t care what my score is. I know 100% of my students tested at or above grade level in Math and English Language Arts. I know my class’ scores were near or at the very top of my district’s scores. I know my district is also at or nearly at the top of the region’s and states’ scores. I know I work my heart out and push my students to excel. My students always, ALWAYS succeed.
Yet according to the NYSED my growth score is so so. I’m rated effective with a growth score of 14 out of 20. Keep in mind, my student’s mean scale in math is 708.4 and ELA it is 678. I’m confident both scores are well above that state mean.
So why did I get a mediocre growth score?
The state’s explanation of it’s calculation should be a eye opener for all of us. Check out this junk math.
Click to access Teachers_Guide_to_Interpreting_Your_Growth_Score.pdf
Here it is in a nutshell..
They compare your students with similar students and measure how your students do to these similar students. You are then graded based on how much better your students did or how much ‘poorer’ your students did than these other students. They look for the gap between your students and the representative group of similar students.
Here the flaw…
If the representative sample of student all do well, your ratings will be negatively affected, because your growth is based on only how much better your students did than the group. In other words they look for a gap between your students and the group.
We all know that this year scores went up for everyone.. so as they rise, individual teachers get lower ratings, because the gap doesn’t increase. Sounds nuts doesn’t it? Goes against all the jargon about closing the gap.
It gets worse if you happen to have some high performing students in your class as well. Not much room for growth if you’re near the top, and your group is near the top. It’s a teacher’s advantage then to not take those high performing kids, It will hurt their growth scores.
My students did great, it’s a shame that NYS thinks they did so, so. Perhaps, if my students understood pineapples and hare races a little better, they could have correctly answered just 1 more question in that 6 hour marathon of testing correct, and all would be well.
We have a choice, we could start practicing saying, “welcome to Walmart”, for our next career or fight back. What say you?
http://rlratto.wordpress.com/2012/09/05/growth-scores-a-formula-for-failure/
Diane Ravitch's blog 
It’s now time for our nation’s teachers to take a stand and educate the public on how they are being scammed.
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Education should not be a micro-managed, zero sum competition of social Darwinism. This is not a game. This is not a “Race.” Those who would structure it so reveal something very sad and disturbing about themselves.
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It is so encouraging that a few people are beginning to see the bigger picture.
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Not walmart, never walmart
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As I’d said somewhere else, Walmart wouldn’t hire a former public school teacher. The Waltons don’t like public schools.
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It’s insane. I was once chastised in an email (cc’d to several teachers and administrators in the district) about my class’s low math scores. The previous years I was lauded for high test scores. Hmm…I was and am the same teacher, reflecting on my student’s strengths and weaknesses and then adjusting my teaching accordingly. Am I now no longer worthy of the profession. Or could it be that my students needed more time to learn the concepts? Have we forgotten the developmental component in our Race to the Top? This year half of my second grade class came in as six year-olds. The classroom next door has mostly seven year-olds. I guess I should brace myself for another humbling email…
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I totally agree and have been saying that the growth score is useless, other than to unjustly assault teachers, enrage parents against their community schools and teachers, and close schools.
I have compared this ever changing bar to a target that is moving and I am required to hit the mark wearing a blindfold.
We are using the growth model in Indiana too. Very few teachers will labeled effective, no matter how high their scores are. Most teachers will receive a so-so rating. I would like a math person to comment if it is fair to base our final rating on an average of our students’ scores and then average together the math and LA portion. I think that all that averaging of average scores will push more teachers toward the middle of the bell curve. Am I right?
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I’m not a math person, but it depends a little bit with whether you are using a mean or a median score. A mean score is affected by extreme scores, a median is not. There are a lot of variables that may affect your scores; using an average is a crude attempt to control for these factors.
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In 2008, my after school students from Johnson MS, one of the lowest performing schools in Washington, DC defeated students from over 180 different school systems to win the Apangea Math March Madness National Championships. The National Championship trophy is in the school’s trophy case. In 2011, I was terminated for being an ineffective teacher. I received a low evaluation from a first year assistant principal who had never taught school and a low evaluation from the other first year middle school assistant principal, a former PE teacher who admitted that he was not good at pedagogy. By the way, I was a social studies teacher, not a math teacher. And you wonder why the teachers in Chicago are on strike?
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DCPS has cleaned out/fired/purged and/or retired a lot of veteran teachers and those with institutional memory. In DCPS your’re only as good as last years test scores, if that. Holmes is correct in his assessment of Johnson and DCPS. Too many inexperienced Principals and APs are running around wrecking havoc. Many came out of the New Leaders for New Schools (now just New Leaders) and many have been hired from charters around the country. Things went downhill when OSSE changed the certification requirements for Principals. In the past you needed several years of teaching experience (at one time it was a minimum 5-7 years of teaching) and a Masters in Educational Leadership or Administration. Now all you have to do is pass the SLLA and get a Masters in anything and you can be a Principal. The experience requirement has been watered down so that you only need two years of school-based experience. So that opens up the gig to an after-school teacher or coordinator or the attendance clerk/counselor.(no disparagement meant for those positions-but you see the point)
Theis something eerie thing about that PDF you have linked. The format and typography looks very similar to DCPS and their IMPACT evaluation and explanation.
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Is the NYSED using the same Marzano math they are using in Florida?
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I too am shocked at the way that the students were rated. I had many of my lower achieving students raise their raw score significantly, but they received a lower scale score which showed that they dropped. Also a student score could change from a 704 to a 703 and it would reflect on the teacher as a score drop. Perhaps the 704 isn’t even a score for the current year. It is more than a flawed system.
I feel so sorry for the young teachers that have to rated on one test that is poorly written and doesn’t have enough questions to even significantly evaluate students.
Interesting note— I have two new students from other districts. They both came in with High 3s on Math, and that are clearly below grade level. So another question that must be asked is, “How are these students being tested? What are the testing conditions? Who is grading their Part IIs?”
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