I have to take my hat off to Jersey Jazzman. He has endless patience to read the tendentious “studies” produced by corporate reformers with the intent of proving that poverty doesn’t matter.
Here he takes on another one, asserting that “quality” teachers trump everything.
There is a simple way to prove the proposition. Why not take the entire staff of New Jersey’s highest performing public school and switch them with the staff of the state’s worst “dropout factory”?
Don’t take into consideration that the high-performing school has smaller classes, better resources, a full curriculum, etc., just switch the teachers.
There is lots more that goes into the differences but at least we could test the simplistic claim that high test scores and low test scores are solely the result of differences between teachers..
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I thought TFA proved that anyone with a college degree was “quality”. Can’t these guys get their story straight?
This is exactly what I have been saying for several years now. Let us take the teachers from the best Brentwood school and put them into the inner city and take the inner city teachers and put them in at Brentwood and see what happens. Want to guess on the outcome? There is a fair way of evaluation. Then let us really evaluate administrators. Want to see how many go to jail just on breaking child abuse laws concerning reporting in the proper time to the proper authority and interfering with investigations. In California both are misdemeanor criminal violations punishable by up to 6 months in jail and/or a $1,000 fine. Much of the high staff at LAUSD would be in jail right now and not have their jobs in education ever again. Nothing would make me happier.
Thx Diane. To be clear: my beef is far more with B4K than with Fryer and Katz. Research can rise or fall on its own merit through the process of peer-review. B4K’s analysis, however, is answerable only to the billionaires who produce it.
I think that the result would be that the worst school would stay about the same or drop and the best school would drop, though not significantly and not anywhere near the level that the worst school started at. Teaching at the worst school and teaching at the best school are not the same thing. Both groups would face a challenge and have to somewhat radically change their methods.
Been there..Done that.
1. The worst students at the Best School are the Best Students in the Worst School
2. The Teacher’s scores from the Worst School who taught the worst students at the Best school exceeded the Teacher’s scores from the Best school who taught the worst students from the Best School
3. The teacher from the Best School who taught the best students from the worst school quit after a month.
4. The Teacher from the Worst School went back to the Worst school after realizing that this teacher was much needed and more appreciated at the Worst School
5. Most any teacher -99%- can teach at the Best School and have good test scores.
6. The VERY BEST teachers can teach at either of the schools.
7. There are some that can only teach at the Best Schools and not last even a month at the worst schools.
I consider myself a good teacher. I have had consistently high evaluations throughout my career, yet I wonder how long I would last in an inner-city school. And what do we do to these teachers who are willing to work with some of our neediest and most challenging students under the most dire conditions? We pillory them and hold them accountable for our society’s failures. It’s time to hold our government responsible for the number of children living in poverty in the United States. No pay raises if that percentage does not go down. If no progress is made in a few years, they should resign their offices so we could elect a government that truly gives a damn about its youngest citizens.
When I was getting my degree in Educational Administration in the early 1980s, I recall one of my professors, at that time, mentioning exactly the same type of study. I have to go on ERIC and find it. I remember that the professor stated that teachers from a middle class suburban school was switched with inner city teachers for a year. What was the result? No significant change. The middle class kids still did well on a test of achievement after one year and the inner city kids still did poorly.
Please get back to us with a citation, as I’m sure a lot of us would like to read that study.
Exactly what happens
A teacher taught in the worst school-lowest-scores
Sent to the best-Best-Scores…better than the other teachers who had been teaching at the Best School with what they called the worst students (which would have been the best students at the worst school)
Got It!
I have to say I’ve been interested to read Jersey Jazzman’s post on this matter, and I do find them interesting and important. However, I think we should be careful about which conclusions to draw. Yes, SES, poverty, neighborhood, child variables, etc. matter, but what conclusions are we drawing from this?
We are not saying that poor children cannot learn, but we are saying that sometimes factors outside of a teacher’s control affect children’s learning. I teach in a small town and I have seen a lot in my almost 30 years of experience teaching: children whose parents were in prison, dead, or absent, parents who were hostile to schools and did not support our efforts, children who get no supervision with homework, children whose parents buy groceries at a convenience store because they don’t have a car, children who swipe clothes from the lost and found bin because they have few clothes to wear, kids who don’t have winter coats/hats/gloves on bone- chilling days, children who witness violence in the home, children who must cook supper for themselves because their parent is passed out on the couch, etc. And this is at the elementary level. I have high
expectations for all my students, but some of them are just not mentally there for learning. How do we reach them? How do we save them?
For these unfortunate students who have no home-life, the only thing the Powers that Be are concerned about is a TEST SCORE. The students now feel helpless as they do not even have any of the above which you so eloquently stated and now they have no caring adults in the Testing Hierarchy.
The Testers are told to COVER ALL OF THE MATERIAL before the TEST…They do not give a hoot as to whether the poverty-stricken students have a computer to do the extra research to learn the enormous quantity of material..THEY DO NOT CARE!!!! NOT ANYMORE..They only care about a SCORE.
We must find a way to stop this madness..It is already spiraling out of control..Very close to hitting Rock Bottom..
AND FOR WHAT.. We sacrifice these young people’s lives for the SAKE OF A SCORE..THEY HAVE NO HOPE UNTIL THOSE OF US WHO KNOW THE ROPES AND ARE COMPLETELY AWARE OF WHAT IS GOING ON STEP UP TO THE PLATE AND LET THE WORLD KNOW ABOUT THIS NEEDLESS GLUMP OF TESTING!
Lehrer, I agree with the fact that there are other variables outside teacher performance, but again – what conclusions are we drawing? Why is that relevant? Are we saying that it’s pointless to focus on teacher quality if we want to improve education?
We have always focused on teacher quality: methods classes and student teaching weeds out those people who should not become teachers. After that, those hired are offered probationary contracts. It is then the job of administrators to help struggling teachers. If those teachers do not improve, they are then removed. I am saying that we need to look beyond just improving teacher quality if we really cared about student achievement in this country. But we won’t, because we’d rather lambaste teachers, declare that schools have failed, and turn them over to profit-making rheeformers.
neanderthal100 who are are you saying doesn’t care? Can you point to any quotes or articles where it says that any specific person or organization doesn’t care about anything other than test scores, resources students may not have, etc.? I’m concerned that you think that all folks who agree with tests ONLY want tests and nothing else. Where are you getting this from?
Lehrer, I definitely agree that we should look beyond teacher quality, but I think the conversation now with some folks is that teacher quality is as good as we need it to be, which is simply not true. In terms of what you mentioned, my experience has been that things like student teaching and administrative action do not do much to remove teachers who aren’t performing. Sometimes they do, but I don’t think we are where we need to be.
That being said, I think we’ve found common ground that we should absolutely do what we can to address other barriers to learning. However, I’m not sure that the average educator is able to fix poverty or other home/neighborhood conditions.
“However, I’m not sure that the average educator is able to fix poverty or other home/neighborhood conditions.”
Agreed, but neither should a teacher be forced out of a job simply because he/she teaches on the other side of the tracks.
I agree with you there. I do believe teacher evaluation is important, but I don’t think the technology is advanced enough to use test scores yet in that process.
This is just a red herring. It’s been over 45 years since the “War on Poverty” started, which first aimed the focus on “fixing” poor school children, beginning in Head Start, rather than requiring that highly profitable corporations pay their employees a livable wage. We have had decade after decade after decade of subsequent education “reforms” imposed by politicians and big business, aimed at “fixing” schools and “fixing” teachers, and now aimed at replacing schools and career teachers entirely.
We should not still be having a conversation about IF poverty is the cause of the achievement gap. Whether it’s causal or just a very high correlation does not matter when it’s so evident that this is a global issue: “International tests show achievement gaps in all countries” http://www.epi.org/blog/international-tests-achievement-gaps-gains-american-students/
This is a problem that does not just exist in America; all nations have an achievement gap between lower and higher income students, and countries such as England have been researching it, too: http://www.jrf.org.uk/work/workarea/education-and-poverty
Continuing to raise questions about the causes and effects of school failure among low income students is just a diversionary tactic. This is a planned distraction. It’s a strategy for avoiding having to deal with the root cause of poverty, which is simply not enough jobs with livable wages.
It’s a pretense for diverting attention away from the increasingly inequitable distribution of wealth in countries like America, so that while everyone is busy looking the other way, questioning whether poverty is the culprit, blaming schools and scape-goating teachers, the elites can continue to bankroll the privatization of public education, while labeling their investment “reform” when it’s really a business plan.
Poverty is the issue, in EVERY country. So forget all the bogus “research” that billionaires can purchase to support the diversion.
Instead of taking all those hundreds of millions of dollars from corporations to “reform” education, it’s time to hold them accountable for perpetuating poverty and require that companies like Walmart, and all the other highly profitable corporations that are culpable, pay their employees a living wage, because “Low-Wage Workers Employed Mostly By Large, Highly Profitable Corporations” http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/07/19/low-wage-workers-_n_1687271.html and “more Walmart employees on Medicaid, food stamps than other companies” http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2012/dec/06/alan-grayson/alan-grayson-says-more-walmart-employees-medicaid-/
And they can well-afford equitable pay rates for their employees, instead of giving them brochures about how to apply for Food Stamps, etc: “Walmart heirs own more wealth than bottom 40 percent of Americans” http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2012/jul/31/bernie-s/sanders-says-walmart-heirs-own-more-wealth-bottom-/
This is corporate welfare and Americans should not stand for it, “Hidden Taxpayer Costs” (scroll down to see state by state) http://www.goodjobsfirst.org/corporate-subsidy-watch/hidden-taxpayer-costs
Wal-Mart is not alone and this is just the tip of the iceberg:
“Top Corporate Tax Dodgers” http://www.sanders.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/102512%20-%20JobDestroyers3.pdf
These are the conversations the billionaires investing in privatizing education want to avoid, so we MUST have THOSE talks and take action now, instead of falling for their red herring technique for another 45 years.
How Rich Moochers Hurt America: http://www.salon.com/2013/03/22/how_rich_moochers_ruin_america/
The richest 1% of the country “possesses more money than the poorest 80% combined. A major driver of this inequality is pay disparity, with CEOs in Fortune 500 companies now making 380 times as much money as the average worker.”
Sign petition to tell CONGRESS: CAP CEO PAY AT 50X SALARY OF THE AVERAGE WORKER: http://org.credoaction.com/petitions/congress-cap-ceo-pay-at-50x-salary-of-the-average-worker
We have been or a period of time technically a “FASCIST” country. Corporations run the place and buy and sell it on the cheap no matter what the public thinks. Just think 20’s Italy, then Austria, they started in 1919, and then Germany. Austria still is fascist and the plan that made it what it is is the plan in place now. Go read “Hapsburgs to Hitler” by Gulick printed in 1948 by both the Oxford and Berkeley Press. The last thing for total takeover is to destroy the unions. They are doing a good job with the help of the union leaders who are interested only in their “Golden Parachute” from the corporate masters.
Sounds plausible. Allowing for controls and variables, this would be an interesting “experiment”.
You might want to actually read the study. It certainly not say good teachers can overcome all problems. It describes a series of studies that looked at changing neighborhoods and changing schools (note, schools, not just teachers). It found that moving young people from one neighborhood to another, wealthier neighborhood does ” more to reduce mental and physical health inequalities.”
It found that “investments in school quality are more effective in decreasing
persistent economic and educational inequalities and for reducing
risky behaviors.”
School quality was not, in this study, just about teachers.
The report is found here: http://scholar.harvard.edu/files/lkatz/files/fryerkatz_manuscript_finalappendix.pdf
Teaching is an art of the highest order. Everyone is an individual. All have different needs even if at the same level. Teachers intereact with many students in just one day and must understand each one each day. Outsiders, want to take that on. How about you Mr. Broad and Mr. Gates? Think you could deal with that in your fantasy world?
These two St. Louis area students swapped schools for a day–one school is urban, the other suburban. Each wrote an article about their experiences, which was published in the St. Louis Post Dispatch. So well said: http://www.stltoday.com/news/kirkwood-and-vashon-a-tale-of-two-schools/collection_881e99a0-9be2-53a5-8e21-04e527484cc2.html