A teacher responds to the rankings by the NCTQ:
Ok. I have a degree in accounting. I was an accountant for 15 years. I switched to teaching in 2008 and was thoroughly shocked that teaching was so different than I imagined and also that it was so difficult. When I was an accountant, I remembered thinking that getting off at 4pm sounded like a dream since I worked until 6pm as a general rule. However, on the first day of being an instructional assistant I looked up at the clock at 3pm and wondered how it could only be 3pm. I was exhausted. Teachers have no down time. I was lucky to get to use the restroom let alone have a real lunch. Since then, I have acknowledged that I am just “on” from 7:30am until 4:00pm. There isn’t any leisurely talk at the coffee pot, or walk around the building to wake up, or even personal phone calls to set an appointment. There isn’t any “zoning out” at your desk like so many other professionals do. It is exhausting. I love working with the kids and teaching gives me so much more than I ever thought that it would, but it is VERY different than the non-teaching public will understand. My first year was a wake-up call. I wouldn’t go through that again for anything and I went through Indiana University (one of the schools that made decent marks in this sham of a study).
Diane Ravitch's blog 
My first year teaching was very similar to what was described above.
What I found very disconcerting was the relationship between many of the administrators and we teachers.
The management structure, in my opinion and experience, is set up with opportunities for management shenanigans.
Why?
Money, or salaries and pension disparity.
What else?
The solution is to invert the management structure of our public schools and put teachers in charge of implementing the curriculum.
And watch the real reform take flight.
Yes, yes, yes. Putting teachers in charge–that is PRECISELY what needs to be done. And indeed, that would result in real reform, in a great flowering of innovation in pedagogy and curricula. Empowering teachers to work collaboratively to make their own decisions about standards, methods, materials, and assessment is PRECISELY the alternative that we should be embracing.
You mean having administrators be in service to the teachers who should be in service to the students and parents?
We were headed that way before NCLB but the late 90s and early 00s brought on a bunch of “administrator as leader like a CEO” talk out of which came the whole NCLB type top down control thinking garbage under which we now struggle.
Heaven forbid one would let the line workers have a say!
And now, in the new evaluation models, we are reduced to a number on a rubric. When will the politicians and administrators figure it out? The top down model is not working. Only when we work from the bottom up, from the students up to the teachers and then up to anyone else who cares will we ever create an educational system that is truly successful.
Thank you for your essay, accountant-turned-teacher. Thank you for pointing out what legislators and, to a large degree, the public, don’t seem to understand.
It continually irks me to hear that District X only hires “the best and the brightest,” yet doesn’t trust TB&TB to actually teach. Or make decisions about teaching and students. Or leave campus for lunch. Or to have a clue about what our kids really need.
No. According to the district in which I work, we must NOT be “the best and the brightest.”
I thoroughly disagree.
Teaching is inherently labor intensive and you always have to be on your mark, much like being on live television; if you’re not there and saying your lines fluently, the show is dead and compromised and your sponsors pull out.
The second you lose a child’s interest and he/she becomes disengaged, learning and teaching are compromised. Still, there is no such thing as a perfect execution of teaching and learning, but we teachers in front a a class of 22 to 26 children, always maximize our delivery of instruction.
This is why public education is an exhausting and promising career. Yet, with the new junk science reforms, budget starving, and union corruptions in place, teachers have gone from being very hard working intellectuals with dignity to disposable humans slated to fail at superhuman, herculean, and unreasonable performance tasks.
We should be judged by our pedagogy and professionalism, perhaps even for how well we go above and beyond our contracts.
We should NEVER be judged by a test score, standardized or local. We should not be judged by a number.
NEVER! It’s pure junk, toxic, invalid, unreilable and politicized “science” at play here.
22 to 26 students?!?! We have 32 (elementary) to 36 (secondary)
It’s unfortunate that you have so many students, but please don’t dismiss another educator’s story because yours may be worse. Tell your own.
That is an injustice. I’n sorry you face that. You and your students deserve much better. There’s no excuse for it.
Nancy,
Educator just did tell his/her own story. I didn’t read his/her comment as dismissing Robert’s comments but adding to them.
Robert,
“NEVER! It’s pure junk, toxic, invalid, unreilable and politicized “science” at play here.”
Exactly! And as shown by Wilson in “Educational Standards and the Problem of Error” found at: http://epaa.asu.edu/ojs/article/view/577/700 the whole process of developing educational standards and standardized testing is so fraught with error that the process is devoid of any meaningful thing to say about the teaching and learning process. One really should read and understand this most important of all educational policy analyses of the last 50 years. What follows is a brief summary.
Brief outline of Wilson’s “Educational Standards and the Problem of Error” and some comments of mine. (updated 6/24/13 per Wilson email)
1. A quality cannot be quantified. Quantity is a sub-category of quality. It is illogical to judge/assess a whole category by only a part (sub-category) of the whole. The assessment is, by definition, lacking in the sense that “assessments are always of multidimensional qualities. To quantify them as one dimensional quantities (numbers or grades) is to perpetuate a fundamental logical error” (per Wilson). The teaching and learning process falls in the logical realm of aesthetics/qualities of human interactions. In attempting to quantify educational standards and standardized testing we are lacking much information about said interactions.
2. A major epistemological mistake is that we attach, with great importance, the “score” of the student, not only onto the student but also, by extension, the teacher, school and district. Any description of a testing event is only a description of an interaction, that of the student and the testing device at a given time and place. The only correct logical thing that we can attempt to do is to describe that interaction (how accurately or not is a whole other story). That description cannot, by logical thought, be “assigned/attached” to the student as it cannot be a description of the student but the interaction. And this error is probably one of the most egregious “errors” that occur with standardized testing (and even the “grading” of students by a teacher).
3. Wilson identifies four “frames of reference” each with distinct assumptions (epistemological basis) about the assessment process from which the “assessor” views the interactions of the teaching and learning process: the Judge (think college professor who “knows” the students capabilities and grades them accordingly), the General Frame-think standardized testing that claims to have a “scientific” basis, the Specific Frame-think of learning by objective like computer based learning, getting a correct answer before moving on to the next screen, and the Responsive Frame-think of an apprenticeship in a trade or a medical residency program where the learner interacts with the “teacher” with constant feedback. Each category has its own sources of error and more error in the process is caused when the assessor confuses and conflates the categories.
4. Wilson elucidates the notion of “error”: “Error is predicated on a notion of perfection; to allocate error is to imply what is without error; to know error it is necessary to determine what is true. And what is true is determined by what we define as true, theoretically by the assumptions of our epistemology, practically by the events and non-events, the discourses and silences, the world of surfaces and their interactions and interpretations; in short, the practices that permeate the field. . . Error is the uncertainty dimension of the statement; error is the band within which chaos reigns, in which anything can happen. Error comprises all of those eventful circumstances which make the assessment statement less than perfectly precise, the measure less than perfectly accurate, the rank order less than perfectly stable, the standard and its measurement less than absolute, and the communication of its truth less than impeccable.”
In other word all the errors involved in the process render any conclusions invalid.
5. The test makers/psychometricians, through all sorts of mathematical machinations attempt to “prove” that these tests (based on standards) are valid-errorless or supposedly at least with minimal error [they aren’t]. Wilson turns the concept of validity on its head and focuses on just how invalid the machinations and the test and results are. He is an advocate for the test taker not the test maker. In doing so he identifies thirteen sources of “error”, any one of which renders the test making/giving/disseminating of results invalid. As a basic logical premise is that once something is shown to be invalid it is just that, invalid, and no amount of “fudging” by the psychometricians/test makers can alleviate that invalidity.
6. Having shown the invalidity, and therefore the unreliability, of the whole process Wilson concludes, rightly so, that any result/information gleaned from the process is “vain and illusory”. In other words start with an invalidity, end with an invalidity (except by sheer chance every once in a while, like a blind and anosmic squirrel who finds the occasional acorn, a result may be “true”) or to put in more mundane terms shit-in shit out.
7. And so what does this all mean? I’ll let Wilson have the second to last word: “So what does a test measure in our world? It measures what the person with the power to pay for the test says it measures. And the person who sets the test will name the test what the person who pays for the test wants the test to be named.”
In other words it measures “something” which supposedly is specified by the test maker but the whole process is so error ridden that any conclusions drawn are invalid. The test supposedly measures “’something’ and we can specify some of the ‘errors’ in that ‘something’ but still don’t know [precisely] what the ‘something’ is.” The whole process harms many students as the social rewards for some are not available to others who “don’t make the grade (sic)” Should American public education have the function of sorting and separating students so that some may receive greater benefits than others, especially considering that the sorting and separating devices, educational standards and standardized testing, are so flawed not only in concept but in execution?
My answer is NO!!!!!
One final note with Wilson channeling Foucault and his concept of subjectivization:
“So the mark [grade/test score] becomes part of the story about yourself and with sufficient repetitions becomes true: true because those who know, those in authority, say it is true; true because the society in which you live legitimates this authority; true because your cultural habitus makes it difficult for you to perceive, conceive and integrate those aspects of your experience that contradict the story; true because in acting out your story, which now includes the mark and its meaning, the social truth that created it is confirmed; true because if your mark is high you are consistently rewarded, so that your voice becomes a voice of authority in the power-knowledge discourses that reproduce the structure that helped to produce you; true because if your mark is low your voice becomes muted and confirms your lower position in the social hierarchy; true finally because that success or failure confirms that mark that implicitly predicted the now self evident consequences. And so the circle is complete.”
In other words students “internalize” what those “marks” (grades/test scores) mean, and since the vast majority of the students have not developed the mental skills to counteract what the “authorities” say, they accept as “natural and normal” that “story/description” of them. Although paradoxical in a sense, the “I’m an “A” student” is almost as harmful as “I’m an ‘F’ student” in hindering students becoming independent, critical and free thinkers. And having independent, critical and free thinkers is a threat to the current socio-economic structure of society.
Excellent Post!!
Think we could get this to Duncan and the Gates $$$$ people
I feel vindicated by posts like this. Thank you to both the writer and to Diane for posting.
I am a public school teacher. This year, I had to end my school year two weeks early for an unexpected surgery. The coordination and hours of work it took for me to make a smooth exit I cannot fully explain. My admin and teaching colleagues were wonderful and helped me with what was now a rushed schedule, including getting grading done on a semeter-long research paper for about 80 students. Plus I was not well at school. The kids were great; I explained in modified detail what they should expect for the end of their school year given I was leaving weeks early and missing for a number of doctor appointments in the meantime. It was important to mentally and psychologically transition my kids.
What I am about to write is not an issue faced in many other professions: I had to emphasize to the office and to my substitute that I could not run my classroom from my recovery bed. I could not plan assignments; I could not grade assignments, and I could not enter grades for assignments. I could be available by phone to clarify some loose ends with student grades, but that was it.
As it was, early during my recovery, I still had to complete the teacher evaluation nonsense information uploads to the state ed department.
So, thank you again for this post.
In their arrogance, corporate reformers really have no idea what teaching requires of teachers. If they did, I think they would readily understand why the teaching professsion generaly purges itself prior to many teachers’ five-year mark.
“Feeling gratitude and not expressing it is like wrapping a present and not giving it.” [William Arthur Ward]
Thank you for what you and other teachers do for so many but rarely say out loud.
🙂
KrazyTA, it is my pleasure. 🙂
Most of us could out-teach most any policy maker. I would LOVE to have a competition with Obama, Arne Duncan, most governors, and most state directors of education. Have each of us teach for three solid months, and see which classes come out with better engagement, more knowledge, higher self esteem, better bonding between teacher and students, and more robust parent outreach. . . . .
I am SERIOUSLY posting this as a bet to any MAJOR policy maker who wishes to compete with me in English language arts . . . .
We will have identical populations, identical teaching spaces, identical budgets. . . .
Please respond no later than August 5, 2013.
OMG, Robert, I would LOVE to see that!
Me too.
Good Idea. I’ll challenge them to teach Spanish for a semester with three Spanish 1 classes of 30 or more students, two Spanish 2 classes with 25 or more students and then a combined levels 3-4 class (in the same hour) with a half dozen students in each level.
OH, Wait! They don’t speak Spanish, well I guess I’ll have to wait for them to take the 35 or so credit hours of Spanish, along with another 12 or so related, history, geography, cultural classes along with the multitude of education courses and accompanying math, science etc. . . classes, pass the Praxis and university department Spanish test and satisfactorily complete an hour or so oral interview with the university foreign language department chair. Of course as part of their coursework they will go and live at least a semester abroad in a Spanish speaking country.
But then again, I’m just an old fart Spanish teacher, what the hell would I know what it takes to teach Spanish.
Ditto on music. I did all that but fill in music where you took Spanish.
And I borrowed money to do all that.
Thank goodness NC has left music alone in the schools, but there are days when I wonder if singing in bars (which I have done plenty of) made more sense for me because I didn’t have to borrow money to do that.
That is the part that most upsets me AND the reason I hold Universities very responsible in this reform era. They take our money (often borrowed) but are they fighting for our public school systems???
I’ll join this challenge.
Come and teach my delightful 6 year old first graders how to read, write, do math, do science, do social studies, how to sit and listen to others, how to discuss issues with others, how to find answers to thousands of questions, how to get along with others, how use a computer, how to take a test, how to select a just right book, how to stay engaged with your work, how to write about your work, and the list goes on and on.
Oh, and you’ll need to differentiate every single lesson because some of your 1st graders will come to you not knowing the alphabet while some will already be reading easy chapter books. Some will have IEP’s so you need to provide appropriate alternatives for them that meet their learning goals. Many will be English language learners so you need to make sure each and every lesson includes appropriate accommodations for that as well.
You must collect, collate, interpret, and graph data with great regularity and be prepared to share that data along with lengthy, research-based, best-practices explanations of why each student is performing as they are in every subject area every day. You will make plans to accelerate, provide rigor and relevance, and real-world learning situations in every single lesson and be prepared to change tack whenever the data indicates slow down or drops.
Each and every lesson needs to meet the very diverse needs of all the children and keep them engaged and working. You have to also be a nurse to deal with their boo boos, a referee to handle their differences, a psychologist to figure out their motivations and actions, and a counselor to listen thoughtfully, with caring and empathy, and help them deal with their personal lives and the impact that has on their learning in a professional manner.
You will be required to take online attendance but never out loud and purposefully because that wastes learning time; like so many other requirements of primary teaching, it has to be multitasked. You need to assess each child’s needs frequently while making sure that the rest of the children are purposefully engaged in appropriate, authentic, and rigorous activities at all times. No coloring, Play-Dough, puzzles, painting, blocks, or any other activity not directly tied to a Common Core State Standard. Ever.
While teaching individuals and small groups separately, outside the scheduled class time for each subject, you will need to meet the requirements of RTI by providing 20 – 30 minutes additional instruction for any child that is not making adequate progress according to the stated learning goals but still cover the required minutes of instruction for every other subject area.
You must be prepared to meet with parents whenever they call or visit, preside over lunch and recess and make sure that every child uses the bathroom, gets sufficient hydration, and visits the nurse as needed. Some will be on daily medication. And while these children are moving around the campus you must ensure that they travel in pairs, at the least, to ensure their safety.
Daily communication with parents via written notes and phone calls are a Danielson rubric requirement so while you try to decipher the writing students did on their assignments you can talk on the speakerphone and enter data into the database tracking system before attending the meetings and professional development classes that are mandatory each week.
As per Danielson, you must think up and institute innovative programs and initiatives as well as keep impeccable records. You must self-initiate professional growth that is acceptable to your supervisors and seek additional professional education opportunities of your own initiative and then formally share and present what you have learned to colleagues, measuring the effectiveness of each new thing that you learn and do with data, graphs, presentations, and study cadres.
Your lesson plans must reflect every single thing listed above in writing and you will write plans for reading, foundational skills, conventions of standard English, knowledge of language acquisition, vocabulary acquisition and development, writing, science, social studies, and mathematics.
Each lesson must clearly differentiate for each child, include formative and summative assessments, questioning techniques, ESOL accommodations, ESE accommodations, essential questions for both the unit and lesson, gradual release, meaningful homework, all covered standards, materials required, activities in detail, and clearly stated SMART goals and objectives. An anticipation guide and rubric for each lesson is mandatory.
This is just Sunday afternoon and evening, of course. The real fun begins Monday morning, when you must be prepared at all times for unannounced visits, walk-throughs, interruptions, assemblies, guest speakers, picture taking, book fairs, health screenings, and parents showing up with cupcakes and juice boxes for birthdays.
When shall we begin?
Beautifully written! Thanks Chris – your description is right on!
OMG Chris, I’m tired just reading this. 🙂 and it is all so very true. Every legislator in every state should have to shadow teachers like you and then spend a week doing your job. Hah! They wouldn’t last a day. Then, maybe, maybe, they woould think twice before doing the things they are doing to our teachers and students. BTW, I am sure there are some things you left off the list.
That is fantastic! I’d like to think that covers everything but sadly it probably doesn’t.
Chris,
Your teaching job makes mine seem like a walk in the park! I’ve always said that the “angels” in the world are the primary grade teachers!
Good Lord!
What you say is absolutely so true!!
They have taken something so simple and made it so complex.
Teachers know how to keep students engaged.
Teachers know hot to spot weaknesses and reteach!
The veteran teachers wrote the book on this..helped the younger teachers and so on and so on.
Now you have the corporate ‘Stuck on Data” people that are following the $$$$ and destroying the educational system in America!
They are wrong…You are right..
I can get in on this challenge. I teach 6th grade science and run the at-risk program at my school. If any of these “decision makers” are able to engage my at risk students each day for the hour I have them, you can color me surprised. They would also, of course, need to maintain the rapport with the families who may or may not care what they think. Most importantly, they will need to make sure that the little guy who will be in my class next year has the support he needs and also the kick in the pants he needs to be successful while his dad is in prison and his mom is falling apart. Instill a sense of future in his life that is different from what he experiences daily. No problem, right?
Don’t lump all school administrations into the category of your particular experience. In my school district we are much more supportive of our teachers than the situation you describe. Yes, teaching is difficult and physically and mentally challenging, but it is also rewarding. I do my best to support my teachers. We meet weekly at PLC by grade level and monthly at building level to give voice to their needs and work together to solve problems and plan for the future goals of our school. Many teachers want to be left alone to teach, but we can no longer afford to be an island in our schools. That goes for both teachers and administrators. We have to support each other in a collaborative and collegial atmosphere or we will drown in the mandates that are imposed from the EdDeformers from their pulpits. If your school is not collaborative, then I recommend you become a part of the change you want to see. But remember, it is easy to point a finger. It takes time and effort to engage in change dynamics.
As for new teachers, I can only say that I suspect we all have stories of our first 2 or 3 years of teaching. As long as you grow each year and build your “toolbox” , I suspect it will get better and be more rewarding each year. Find a mentor and keep a positive attitude. Don’t get dragged down by the negative voices of those who are unhappy. As long as you can look back on each year and feel that you have touched a life then you will be able to move forward in a positive direction. The children are our future.
Sorry, posted this in wrong spot. It is meant in response to Brutus.
Sorry, “Bridget,” I respectfully disagree with your reply.
Bridget, I wish you were my principal, really.
It seems as if the recently minted crew of administrators in my system have been instructed not to make such personal comments as, “How was your weekend?” or “How is your child?” or even, “How are things going?”.
No interest is expressed in us as people, no desire to find out about us. If I ask an innocoous question or make an empathetic comment, woe unto me. It has become pervasive to be treated this way in our school and in our system.
Why on earth would aanyone want to live this way?
Ms., I’m not sure why an administration would take this path, but I hope you and your coworkers are able to support each other by establishing an environment among yourselves and with your own students that supports caring relationships, even though your administration doesn’t participate. Research (and my own experience) shows that positive relationships are important in our profession, especially if you work with middle schoolers. We all have a choice to put a smile on our face (or not), and to collaborate with our peers (or not). Even though we have scheduled grade level meetings at our school, some teacher groups meet on their own time, as needed, for additional collaboration time. Sometimes we need to set an example for each other, when there is no existing support system. The best advice I can give is the same advice I received my first year in the classroom in 1986. A friend recommendd that I take time to laugh with my students occasionally. Best advice ever! I’ve since learned to take time to laugh with my coworkers too! Be the change you want to see… Good Luck.
Beautifully said, Bridget. We all have to find ways to continue to put the students and their learning first IN SPITE OF the deforms, and collaborative work from teachers empowered by their administrators to do that work is key.
We should be doing with with or without deforms. . .
Thanks Robert. When I see posts here complaining about administration I understand the frustration. But I have a rule here at our school that you are welcome to come to the table with an issue you have, as long as you also have some possible solutions or open to discussion with the team about how to fix the problem. But if you just want to complain and are not willing to be a part of a solution, then “b*t**h” sessions on the lounge just make things worse. Pointing fingers at others serves no good purpose. We have to be supportive of those in the classroom foremost, but collaboration outside of the classroom is now imperative.
Those who have never walked the shoes of a teacher have no idea what is required to stand in front of a group of students daily and instill in them a love of learning. But those who have never walked the shoes of an administrator likewise should not judge. We can not afford to have an “us against them” attitude within our schools. We must stand together for our profession. Administrators must get out of their offices and establish relationships with teachers, while teachers must take on the new role of school leaders not only in their classrooms, but also within their schools.
It is a paradigm shift that is crucial to the future of our profession. If we don’t want outsiders coming in and telling us how to “fix” our schools, then we must take ownership of improving learning and instructional practices for our own. There are many barriers, poverty being the biggest one, but we must teach the students we have and work together continue to overcome whatever hurdles we face.
Brutus and others may disagree with my thoughts, but I don’t hear many people people talking about concrete solutions to our problems. Talking about a problem is only a start. We must also talk about solutions and actions. Oops! I just fell off of my soapbox, again! 🙂
It’s GREAT, Bridget, that you understand the frustration. Teachers are getting very, very tired of having ill-informed nitwits micromanaging their work and of the opportunity cost of all the time being stolen from them and from their students by administrative demands.
A principal or AP cannot solve things completely alone. He/she is only ONE person. There must abe a two way flow and partnership between administration and teachers, the latter also assuming leadership roles.
If an administrator is good, there will be real genuine empathy and a real partnership between teacher and administrator exhausting all the solutions and readjusting expectations for a problem. If an administrator does not have any acumen, he/she will simply pawn off all problems onto the back of the teacher. If a teacher has little acument, he/she will only finger point and lack any empathy towards administration. This makes for a toxic and coutnerproductive working environment, and the students are among the biggest stakeholders.
One of the WORST mindsets is to allow this reform movement to pit administrator against teacher and vice versa.
Remember: principals stand to lose as much, now that their performance is joined at the hope with that of the teachers.
I have always said that part of the mandated coursework in teacher education and certification is a minimum number of credits in administrative disciplines and school financing. This is one reform that MUST take place in order for both parties to work more effectively with one another.
I am fortunate. I have a new principal who is DYNAMITE. She taught in the classroom for 27 years (you read that right), so she gets teaching and partners well with her staff. NO room for mind games, only honesty for what is working well and what can be improved and how.
It takes a courageous and sophisticated and honest individual to become and maintain themselves as a principal nowadays. . . . it does likewise to become a teacher.
I meant “joined at the hip” . . . . I wish wordpress would allow edits.
Bridget,
Perhaps you are the one in a thousand administrators who actually is humble enough to realize that administrators should be in service TO THE TEACHERS and not the other way around. If so I commend you.
But when I read: “But I have a rule here at our school that you are welcome to come to the table with an issue you have, as long as you also have some possible solutions or open to discussion with the team about how to fix the problem. But if you just want to complain and are not willing to be a part of a solution, then “b*t**h” sessions on the lounge just make things worse. Pointing fingers at others serves no good purpose. We have to be supportive of those in the classroom foremost, but collaboration outside of the classroom is now imperative.”
I have tried to be a part of the solution, you know chair of the school improvement team, department chair, etc. . . and have offered many solutions over the years with all being shot down before they came out of my head, if you know what I mean. And you know what it got me, being labelled as a “rebel” with wild eyed solutions that have not basis in “reality” when it is actually the administrators who usually have little basis in reality for their schemes and who have little mental capabilities to resist those schemes that are pushed down onto them.
What you are saying in that paragraph is “go along to get along” or if you’re not part of the solution you’re part of the problem and since it is the administrators who decides those things guess who is guaranteed to lose-the teacher. Horse shit, I can bitch with the best and I can come up with solutions ten times better than most administrators (whose lack of experience not only in education but in the world outside of the school house walls is appalling). And when my suggestions have been looked at an administrator steals the credit anyway.
Administrators should serve at the will of the faculty and staff not the backwards way it is now.
Sorry Duane, not taking your bait. Heard it all before. I’ll keep doing what I do and you keep doing your own thing. 🙂
I, too , have an administrator that does more than the “walkthrough”…although he does that, too. We have a PLC building and he makes sure to protect our collaboration time. Not only that, but he collaborates with us when issues arise. He never dictates from his office, but he takes the time to receive input from teachers and other staff. I may not agree with all of his decisions, but I am confident that he makes them with integrity. Not all administrators are buying the corporate reform agenda and I am fortunate to work in such a place.
We need to hear more from those schools who are getting “right”. We always hear about the bad stuff. Maybe it’s time for us to talk more about the good stuff thats happening. Let’s start a new agenda that builds us up instead of playing the reformers game of tearing us down. Let’s play offense instead of defense for a change.
Ditto!!!!
Bridgette
You have fallen for this $$$$$man bull-lock, stock, and barrell.
Not all have done so..
Teachers gain zilch from your so called PLC meetings..Zilch.
They laugh about it when out the door..then do what they know they should do…
Maker plans that will engage students and the results is that students do learn.
How old are you?
Sadly, most of the public seems to think that the job is what they see, i.e. spend several hours a day instructing children. What they DON’T see is the other 40% of the job that is largely done before and after the contracted work day. Schools and teaching have changed incredibly in the past 20 or so years. Would be a real eye-opener if we could have every parent, and every administrator, and every politician shadow a teacher for just one full day, including the before and after hours work time, of course.
There is NO such thing as a 9 am to 3 pm job in teaching. That is a myth.
We come in before hours, se stay hours after the last bus is called, and we take home hours of work each night and on weekends. . . .
I wish SOMEONE could do an emnpricial study on this, just measuring and number crunching real teacher hours.
And let me add that for such outside contractual hours, there is no raise, no comp time, no bonus, no caddillac put into our healthcare coverage. . . just the sheer rewards of having provided excellence with the increased likelihood that student responses to learning were greatly enhanced and student outcomes were actualized and improved, showing gorgeous growth.
That is the teacher’s prize.
After going full tilt all day, at 3pm teachers tutor for an hour or so, go to meetings (after meeting after meeting), call parents, grade, enter grades, call more parents, analyze data, and gather materials and set up labs for the next day. Then we grade more and plan lessons. And we love it if we have reasonable class sizes and a modest degree of input into what goes on in the classroom. But “reform” has increased the class sizes and removed most teacher input.
Yes!
Yes again!
When I started teaching in 1964, it was a profession generally shunned by men. Most women thought they had to choose to be teachers, nurses or secretaries. Districts were desperate for teachers and almost anyone could get a job in the “inner-city.” Women (mostly) accepted these positions.
Now all that has changed. Women now have the same job options as men. The young women are now physicians, lawyers and business people. When I think of all the children of my neighbors, friends and relatives, I do not see even one young person (man or woman) who is preparing to be a teacher.
Because of the bad economy, it is not yet evident what the real consequence of this present “reform” movement is, but everyone will know within a few years when few, if any, talented young people choose teaching as a career.
As for the accountant, I hope this person gets a CPA and returns to that job. The best way to strengthen the teaching profession is to help create a huge shortage.
I’m on the fence about the NCTQ report. I’ve heard tons of negative feedback through Diane’s blog saying that it’s flawed, but I honestly have not seen a lot of hard criticism of it beyond saying they gathered too little information from the prep programs.
I’m willing to go as far as to say that the report is probably not a useful tool in its current form, because it could stand to have used more information. But saying that, is it not reasonable to say that this could become a valuable tool in the future with more collaboration between the NCTQ’s researchers and the prep programs?
As for this complaint, I fail to see what any of it has to do with the report. I want to hear what’s wrong with the document, not what fellow teachers’ experiences are like; I already know the day-to-day, and that is not relevant to the question of whether teacher preparation programs actually do what they’re supposed to do in getting teacher candidates ready to run a classroom. The NCTQ’s report, though flawed, is trying to answer that question, and it’s a good one to answer.
I can’t say if the rankings can say anything useful about what programs are good, but I can say that based on the minimum standards they set up, which aren’t even very difficult standards by my reckoning, that they can tell what programs are bad.
If I’m mistaken, then please help me see where the problem lies, because I’m not seeing it.
Do you think that restaurant quality can be assessed by reading their menus but never actually visiting the restaurants or eating their food?
If the answer is yes, you should like the NCTQ evaluation of Ed prep programs.
I think that’s a poor metaphor.
If I’m a vegetarian, or I have dietary restrictions, then a restaurant’s menu is an excellent way to decide if it is worth my time to visit that restaurant. I can’t speak to the quality of the restaurant until I’ve dined there, but I can say whether or not it meets my basic dietary needs.
I don’t think the NCTQ report is useful for saying what programs are good. I do think it’s useful, based on the methodology as I understand it, for deciding what programs are meeting a teacher candidate’s basic educational needs. That information should be easily found in catalogs and syllabuses!
I am not disputing the fact that the NCTQ would need to invest a great deal more time and effort into researching the overall quality of individual programs, and I hope that if they continue to publish the report and refine it that they will be able to eventually do that. Of course, if we as professionals reject it out of hand as having absolutely no merit, then it will never grow into a credible resource for people who are seriously considering how to pursue a career in teaching. That may be for the best in the long run, but I would still like to see a stronger case for why the NCTQ report is not worth our time.
jkjones,
If you think that the NCTQ report is of any value (and if you have read the many shortcomings of the report which makes it an opinion piece and nothing resembling proper research) and still believe it has value please contact me as I have some beautiful ocean front property over at Lake of the Ozarks in central Missouri that you can by very cheaply. Hurry and call 555-121-1234 and speak with an operator now before the lots are all gone (and before global warming makes them even more desirable due to the ocean rising enough to actually make them ocean front).
And..on a similar note..
Do you think one can learn to swim by reading the manual
or
Drive a car by making a 100 on the test?
There are already many legitimate accrediting agencies, in place for many years, that have worked hand-in-hand with state governments to produce a credentialing and licensing process for teachers that are vetted, research-based, timely, and monitored closely.
The NCTQ is an astroturf organization set up with the express purpose of discrediting the teaching profession in order to pave the way for neoliberal school reform schemes that are unpopular, unproven, and unsuccessful.
NCTQ is a juggernaut of the Fordham Foundation, the Center for American Progress,the Heritage Foundation,the American Enterprise Institute, Teach for America, and many neoconservative and neoliberal think tanks and business entities/venture philanthropists, all of whom have a long, colorful history of opposing public education, unionization, and scholars who don’t share their political views.
They support Friedman-esque,free market, profit-based solutions to problems that don’t exist but were rather created by them out of thin air.
Nothing they produce is trustworthy or helpful to anyone but themselves and no institution with the slightest credibility should lend that credibility to them by cooperating with their bogus research creation.
I hate to be obstinate, but you’re attacking their reputation and not their work. I’m happy to consider what the NCTQ’s underlying motivations may be, but I want to know what about this report makes it untrustworthy besides the fact that it’s research was not as in-depth as it should have been. I acknowledge that point; the research could have covered a great deal more than it did, but does that make it completely unreliable for the limited use that I’ve suggested, which is to establish if a teacher prep program meets the bare minimum of what teacher candidates should expect to be taught in order to be prepared to run a classroom?
I don’t see any suggestion in the report that the NCTQ is looking to vilify teachers. I see them setting up standards that I think are reasonable and pointing out programs that do not meet those standards. If the standards are flawed, please explain to me why. If they aren’t, why can we not try to refine this tool to make it better serve teachers and teacher candidates?
HU,
You state that “and that is a recognition that capitalism is what permits the masses to live lives that are not nasty, brutish, and short.” A perfect example of one of those supposedly “fundamental” ideas that is not an agreed upon “document” or basis of society. One can easily claim that unfettered, unrestricted and not regulated capitalism is as much a cause of too much human misery (capitalism was around before the industrial revolution) throughout time. So no, capitalism isn’t one of the fundamental bases of our society.
And “To speak of a “free” public education is to completely distort the reality.” You bring in an “Aunt Sally” argument here as I don’t know of any public education supporters who argue that public education is free. Sorry try again.
And “What the phrase means in reality is “taxation of all without representation in how the money is spent.” (Tell me about the self-dealing of local school boards!) Sounds a little different put that way, doesn’t it?” NO, it doesn’t. The local school board is the closest one can get to a “democratic” institution as the decisions are supposed to be made up front and out in the open. Now just because there have been many times that that hasn’t occurred doesn’t mean we need to throw the baby our with the bathwater. Or as G. Norquist would have “drown the baby in the bathwater.”
And “. . . because 1)the recovery is stagnant, 2)the testing mania has been accepted by the public school estabilshment, and 3)many teachers—I don’t know what percentage—simply are not truly educated in basic skills such as reading and math and in the fundamental necessity of capitalist organization of our economy. The service business for which they work is thus not delivering value and does not understand it’s position in the world.” Agree with #1, #2 unfortunately is true for many, especially those who make the most off their positions, the administrators and too many teachers, although there are “many” of us who have been fighting this gig since we first heard the words “data driven decision making”. #3 just isn’t true!
You have attempted to answer “What are those ‘essential principles?’” with a defense of capitalism as the driving force in producing “good” for society and I would argue that unfettered capitalism as it is practiced today is just as guilty of producing the “bad” results that we see today. So I don’t see “capitalism” as one of those foundational principles. What else is foundational?
You can argue that capitalism produces more bad than good, but you don’t behave that way. Every buying decision you make is democracy in action. That’s a lot closer to democracy than elections dominated by teacher unions. I just don’t think you see what you are looking at.
We’d have to define “educated” before we could successfully survey working teachers. I only have anecdotal evidence from seeing successful public school teachers strike out completely at my former high end private school.
That you yourself don’t see the importance of capitalism suggests to me that even you need more history, philosophy, economics than you command. Try von Mises, LIBERTY AND PROPERTY.
The “research” that the NCTQ published was not research at all. It was not scientific, it was not peer reviewed, and it is not reliable.The standards they used are of their own devising, not supported by valid, accepted research, and they are not generally accepted by academia no matter how well they spin them in their report or how appealing they make them sound.
The organization formed by making the case that the body of existing research was false, that the organizations that have been in existence for decades were not reliable, trustworthy, or honest and therefore NCTQ would step in to fill that void, unasked for and unaided by existing academic bodies with long histories and published research.
Th NCTQ was part of a nationwide movement born out of conservative political circles that decided that if they couldn’t influence existing organizations and force them into following their belief systems and trajectories then they would set up alternative organizations as rivals and convince the public that they were legitimate alternatives, whether they are or not.
There are alternatives to the AMA, APA, ACLU, etc. etc. that are set up to release alternative viewpoints to whatever these organizations put out. That’s fine and very democratic but these organizations are not grassroots responses to national problems as they claim.
Some are little more than an office space that share the same board of directors, the same employees, the same funding, the same advertising and promotion, and the same founding philosophies unless and until they can increase their corporate funding. They did not arise from academia or public interest or spontaneous problem solving. They were created expressly to promote a certain worldview and politico-social outcome by any means necessary. They don’t play by the rules — they create their own rules.
The goal is not to have you engage with their ideas — the goal is to eliminate the competition and ensure their own success. If you think otherwise then I have to disagree strongly with you.
The burden then was on them (NCTQ) to prove their assertions through their own research. They have failed to do so. Instead they have published political screeds disguised as research that just happens to fit in quite nicely with the philosophy of their funders and founders.
Once an organization shows itself to be unreliable and that their research is suspect then that organization is subject to high scrutiny and a healthy dose of skepticism. They began with threats and insults, they publish false reports of bogus research, and they double down and refuse to engage with any critics of their work. Why would anyone choose to engage their ideas under these circumstances?
If you are truly interested in teacher quality and teacher training research then you need to look into the work of Linda Darling-Hammond who is an internationally respected and revered expert on those subjects. Her critique of the NCTQ report was posted by Diane on this blog.
I’ve read over Darling-Hammond’s critique before, and I read it over again to make sure I didn’t miss anything, but I am still failing to see the reason why the report is considered to be poor research.
I understand that other academic and professional organizations are doing research regarding outcomes of teacher preparation programs. That’s wonderful; I hope to see that research get plenty of publicity when it’s finished.
I don’t think the NCTQ report is useful as a tool for evaluating outcomes of programs. The authors indicate that they would like to be able to expand that function of the report in the future, but they acknowledge that it’s difficult to do with the current level of research they’ve done.
The standards, though devised by NCTQ, appear to my eyes to be reasonable as a minimum for what to expect from a teacher education program. Yes, the academic standards are based on teaching to the Common Core, but that is the current reality for most schools in the country, and teacher candidates should know what it entails. The professional skills standards relate to things like classroom management, assessment, lesson planning and the like; those are things that teachers must be able to do when they get in a classroom. Please, tell me specifically what the flaw is in these standards. Where is their rationale wrong?
I agree with your point that an organization with a poor reputation must be subjected to high scrutiny; anyone claiming to be doing scientific research deserves to have the same level of scrutiny applied to their work. My complaint is simply that I have seen a great deal of backlash against NCTQ’s Teacher Prep report on this blog in the past few weeks, but I’m still waiting for a substantial explanation for why, from a methodological standpoint, this report should not be considered as even a partially useful contribution to our body of knowledge.
I really hate the way I’m coming across, because I don’t want to pick any fights. I’m trying to parse out the problem here, and I strongly believe that when we are discussing research that purports to be scientific that we examine the quality of the research first, and then decide what its meaning might be afterwards. Maybe I missed that part of the discussion somewhere, but I’ve gone back and looked at earlier posts on this topic, and I’m not seeing it. Darling-Hammond’s critiques regarding the limitations of the research are valid ones, but they are not enough to persuade me that the research is so flawed as to be useless. If there’s another study that’s been performed by a different organization that has objectively more comprehensive data on the topic of teacher preparation, then yes, this study is a waste of time; we have a better resource. I’m not aware of any such resource, though that could very likely be my own ignorance.
I am interested in seeing discussion about how teacher quality can be improved. From my admittedly limited knowledge base, the NCTQ report looks like it lays out some reasonable foundations for minimum expectations from teacher preparation programs. I think that’s something that should be built on, but if it’s not, then I want to know why the foundation is made of sand instead of stone.
Here are some of the methodological critiques of the NCTQ report:
From Eduventures, a private research company that specializes in educational research and advising with a slew of actual researchers as analysts:
http://www.eduventures.com/2013/06/a-review-and-critique-of-the-national-council-on-teacher-quality-nctq-methodology-to-rate-schools-of-education/
From Michigan State University, with a slew of links to other academic critiques of the report:
http://edwp.educ.msu.edu/dean/2013/the-skinny-on-the-nctq-teacher-prep-review/
From Dr. Ed Fuller, a very detailed critique of the flawed methodology:
http://fullerlook.wordpress.com/2013/06/17/nctq-ranking-of-teacher-prep-programs-gets-an-f/
There are 33,600 hits on a Google search of “methodological critiques of NCTQ report”. You can do the rest of the research and reading yourself if you are truly interested.
And just as a fun coda, here is a critique from Paul Peterson, of Education Next, one of the reformiest of the reformers:
http://educationnext.org/do-the-nctq-rankings-identify-schools-of-education-that-produce-graduates-who-are-effective-in-the-classroom/
I’ll end this final reply with a quote from the Eduventures critique that explains why the NCTQ, a government think tank, not a research organization, is not to be believed:
“The majority of NCTQ’s standards are not evidence-based, and appear to reflect the specific viewpoint of NCTQ. In its Guide to Ratings Methodologies, NCTQ frequently couches its rationale with nuances such as “While there is no research basis for this….”, or “While there is no research evidence…” Rather than providing evidence, the rationale NCTQ provides for many standards appears to be opinion-based, and, in some cases, the rationale includes broad generalizations that many experts would recognize as untrue. . . . Eduventures agrees that SOEs should be held accountable for preparing high quality teachers. However, accountability should be grounded in research high quality, and include outcomes. We do not see evidence that NCTQ has worked to correct these methodological flaws prior to its launch of its national study in partnership with US News & World Report.”
You have to either accept the opinions of these experts or not but I know of nothing else I can do to convince you that the NCTQ Report is nothing more than a piece of political propaganda designed to produce a specific outcome and that outcome is not to improve teacher education and preparation. I guarantee it.
jkjones,
“Yes, the academic standards are based on teaching to the Common Core, but that is the current reality for most schools in the country,. . . ”
NO, that isn’t “current reality”. It may be current “surreality” or current “irreality” but certainly not “reality”.
HU posted earlier something to the effect of “that’s the way it is” and my response to him was: Well, “that’s the way slavery is”, “that’s the way segregation is”, “that’s the way we do things in German controlled Vichy France”.
Sorry that type of argument just doesn’t cut it.
Actually, I agree. That’s not a legitimate argument. I never should have posted it. Thank you for the correction. Compromise is desirable where it doesn’t entail sacrifice of essential principles.
HU (and all others),
“Compromise is desirable where it doesn’t entail sacrifice of essential principles.”
And therein lies the heart of social/political/educational travails. What are those “essential principles”? How can we identify, much less agree on, them?
It seems for our country the only things to look/rely upon are the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. But then again we have many different interpretations of both of those, eh!!
I think there is one other element which is fundamental to American freedom and prosperity besides the Constitution and is, in fact, inseparable from it, and that is a recognition that capitalism is what permits the masses to live lives that are not nasty, brutish, and short. Prior to the industrial, capitalist revolution, only the elites had a true “human” life. For the rest it was little better than cattle in pens.
Where public education has failed the country in our own times is in not embracing that truth. In reality, nothing is free. To speak of a “free” public education is to completely distort the reality. The reason the privatizers continue to progress is that they do recognize the principle of the mass market and choice. In contemporary capitalism the customers are the producers. Consumer spending is the foundation of the market. For pubic education to pretend that it is not a service business and that somehow it has some higher moral claim to a monopoly is so deeply counter intuitive, that people just don’t support that rhetoric or view of things with behavior.
The three charters of which I personally know have satisfied parents. Maybe it shouldn’t be so, but it IS so. In adopting the rhetoric of “free public education for all” the public school establishment simply ignores common sense. What the phrase means in reality is “taxation of all without representation in how the money is spent.” (Tell me about the self-dealing of local school boards!) Sounds a little different put that way, doesn’t it? The privatization movement is clumsy and downright corrupt at a number of points, but defending “monopoly” and “taxation without taxpayer say” is just so fundamentally unAmerican, I can’t help think of the privatization movement is a correction.
The fundamental message of the public school establishment is “Union monopoly of education.” It just doesn’t fly any more. In not using accurate descriptions of what they really are seeking, the public school establishment loses credibility. Of course, if they did describe what they want accurately, they’d lose credibility too. The public school establishment is the true reactionary force in the education debate. Granted NCLB is foolish (impossible), RTTT bribery, and CCSC untested and unproven, but Diane’s effort to return to the good old days when prosperity funded the public schools better, when excessive testing did not usurp teaching time, and when anyone going into a public school classroom was more or less actually an educated person, will not return because 1)the recovery is stagnant, 2)the testing mania has been accepted by the public school estabilshment, and 3)many teachers—I don’t know what percentage—simply are not truly educated in basic skills such as reading and math and in the fundamental necessity of capitalist organization of our economy. The service business for which they work is thus not delivering value and does not understand it’s position in the world.
Yes. At some point it was frowned upon to be sitting at your desk and some teachers took the chair away from the desk to look like they were following this model. There is some idea that the teachers should be always “pushing” instruction and not sit back and explore what is actually going on in the collective. As we push, we fail to see the gestalt of the group environment and therefore predict the process what would be best for the class, i.e. what would be the best time and way to transition. Remember teaching is all about the wise use of time and space. When we lose that with “in”struction all of the time, we have unhappy students and teachers and loss of creativity. This is why it takes at least 5-7 years to be a good teachers and 50% drop out in that time without reaching that pinnacle and satisfaction.
Considering the report reviewed programs that don’t even exist, I guess it is ultimately your choice whether you put any value in the results, or not. Individuals have different levels of standards for how we make judgements. Or maybe it depends on why you are making the judgement in the first place…
Bridget,
i liked what you had to say on the Larry Cuban blog as well.
If a school, teachers, students and parents do well it is the result of good administrators. If it is having problems the problem is usually bad administrators. The Fish Rots from the Head is what it always is. Working at the Old Skunk Works under Kelly Johnson was a dream with the best in the world without ego problems just do what everyone says is impossible and nothing but the best and we all work together. That is abnormal in almost all worlds. That is why they were able to do the impossible. I worked on about the hottest part of the plane. I was lucky to be initially trained by the best. When teacher first start that is what mentor teachers are supposed to be about is helping them do the best and get their toolkit together of strategies that work best. I would think if you are a lifetime teacher you would see some parts of the approach change as the students change through time. However, as Ike was told in 1920 by his commanding officer in Panama, “Ike the weapons of war have changed a lot in the last 2,000 years but one thing has not and that is human nature.”
Duane Swacker: this reminds me of the accountabully defense of basing VAManiacal teachers evals first and foremost on high-stakes standardized testing. When pushed to the limit of their ethical endurance, they will admit that standardized tests are extremely constrained in what they can measure, are inherently imprecise even in measuring the very narrow sliver of things they do measure, and fail to ‘adequately control’ for a host of things outside the influence of teaching staff and schools.
But it’s a useful tool! Just give us more time! We’ll get it right—the next time!
I remind the readers of this blog that Banesh Hoffman published a still-relevant takedown of standardized testing in 1962, THE TYRANNY OF TESTING—that’s over half a century ago now. [I previously wrote 1964; my bad, I was referring to the second, 1964 edition.] Things haven’t gotten any better. Just google “pineapple” and “hare” and “Daniel Pinkwater.” And standardized testing as we know it had been around for many years before Hoffman’s incisive critique [which, BTW, essentially eviscerated high stakes testing on its own grounds].
The NCTQ report is not even as carefully worked up as many high-stakes standardized tests. The fact [yes, a fact!] that it praised a non-existent program is indicative of more than merely a flaw or two. **See the polite but devastating comment by Aaron Pallas at: http://eyeoned.org/content/the-trouble-with-nctqs-ratings-of-teacher-prep-programs_478/**
NCTQ’s report is not even a work in progress. There’s no polite way to say this: it’s a political hack job. Diane’s pointed remark that “Do you think that restaurant quality can be assessed by reading their menus but never actually visiting the restaurants or eating their food?” is spot on if, indeed, you think that self-consciously stated rationales and self-promoting advertising is a fragile foundation on which to base one’s actions.
Here’s a shocker: people lie outright, they lie by omission, and they make things up. For example, I have known vegetarians with good palates and good will who have informed me [usually with more sadness and disappointment than anger] that there are restaurants with so-called “vegetarian” offerings that were cooked in the same vessels as those that were used to cook meat, or more egregious still, that meat products were used to help make “vegetarian” dishes. Hence, in the real—not Rheeal—world, the only way to find out if a restaurant is what it claims to be is to go to all the trouble and time and expense of [drum roll, please]
PUTTING THEM TO THE TEST!
But how you can judge the Most EduExcellent Cagebusting Giants of our time, the Spinmeisters of Innovation and their Trustworthy Accountabully Underlings, when they’re the ones who are supposed to judge us. It’s all a one-way street, you see, and Duane, of all people, thinking that if they can judge us, we can judge them in return.
Haven’t you read how it goes down in NYC? Holy Metrics and NCTQ reports are for the little people… [with no apologies to Leona Helmsley]
And as for the unconvinced commenter, I suggest leaning on the advice of Marx: “A child of five would understand this. Send someone to fetch a child of five.”
Sorry. That was Groucho, not Karl.
My bad.
Although perhaps it would have been helpful to have pondered this tribute to the aforesaid Marx that can be found [or not] in fine print in the “Research Methodology” section of the NCTQ Report: “Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong remedies.”
🙂
I mangled the URL for the comment by Aaron Pallas:
http://eyeoned.org/content/the-trouble-with-nctqs-ratings-of-teacher-prep-programs_478/
My apologies to all. I’ll try to remember this misstep and follow the advice that Michelle “No Regrets” Rhee rejected: “Any man can make mistakes, but only an idiot persists in his error.” [Marcus Tullius Cicero]
🙂
KTA,
I’ll have to read Hoffman’s work. Thanks for the info!
Duane
“It’s all a one-way street, you see, and Duane, of all people, thinking that if they can judge us, we can judge them in return.”
Yep, I never did learn in my oh so Catholic upbringing and schooling that we’re to never judge those who are supposedly above us (with supposedly being the key word!)
Personally I prefer a “Four Way Street”, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3nkPSryWpFo
Krazy TA,
Thank you for the reference to Banesh Hoffman. Great paper!
The problem with the commenter’s viewpoint is simply that most of us are laboring under the impression that the report should be backed by some science saying the questions were focused, the research thorough, that it followed tried and trued methods (not that there’s anything wrong with innovation – but there’s very little of it to be found in social research – there’s only so much measurable phenomena).
The problem the commenter poses is phrased as minimally as possible (without my trying to be dismissive of their point). Is there SOME use for this information? The question the commenter SHOULD be asking is what any good researcher would ask (and please do trust me – my profession is grounded in research and I work as an educator) – that question is – Did the research that was presented, measure what it was intended to measure?
Given that there are notable widespread discrepancies in what they measured and how they measured it (programs that didn’t exist et. al) and that they defended indefensible results with assurances of follow-up, one must conclude that their report does not serve a practical purpose – it serves a political one and if there’s a question of bias in academic research it is EXTREMELY serious and there must be measures taken to counter-act it and assure that the researcher is able to reach the “truth” and not a pre-determined result – that is real world research.
What NCTQ presents, serves as ammo for those who would take aim at our nation’s teacher education programs since it goes into no depth whatsoever as to evaluating them. Even on the points raised such as “do they teach students how to teach to the common core” is specious at best as many colleges are revising those courses AS WE SPEAK since no one – and I mean no one – is fully prepared to say what the impact of the common core is or how it is best implemented.
The reason for the “slow” change is because educational colleges actually care about what they teach if they’re reputable, and will not just shove something down their students’ throats because it’s the latest fad if they do not see the benefits to children. True, teachers it seems will now need to learn to work in the real world with the Common Core – but those shifts should be gradual and to work in the theoretical world of the academic classroom and teach students based solely on a theory of how the CC works (of which NO ONE is qualifid to answer) they are also ill advised to speculate as to what it is best to teach students as to how to apply sound pedagogy to it.
To answer the commenter’s original low standards of whether there’s some use for students as to whether this will meet their basic needs in evaluating whether a college will offer them what they need?
When the information is frankly wrong. When the methodology used doesn’t seem to care as to looking as to what goes on in the program. When the methodology claims results that make such a good sound-byte such as this is a “Failing” school of education – those are gross problems that no sound research study should have. This study has no practical use for the lay person except to serve as a sound byte as to how horrible schools are for those who would not spend the time to analyze the results.
Is there one credible researcher not from NCTQ or from a reformist education mindset that defends their methodology? Those are the types of people who are subject to bias and whose opinion I’d expect to hear. Is there a researcher with solid educational research credentials who has the respect if not the agreement of their colleagues who would defend a) what this report tries to measure b) does it measure it appropriately and c) does their conclusion match what was reported with controls to remove bias.
This report does not accomplish its goals, nor does it even offer up basic reliable information for someone that might want to use it for some mysterious “other” purpose of judging the basic offerings of a college.
M,
“Did the research that was presented, measure what it was intended to measure?”
Does all “good” research have to “measure” something?
Duane
Not all research needs to measure as there are such things as comparative analysis. However, and this applies to the NCTQ study, the second you try to rank over a thousand institutions, you are inherently seeking to measure at least something and in this case, several different things that compete for an overall “score”. In the type of research that they’ve purported to do and the results they’ve promised, absolutely it’s appropriate to ask them if what they measured was accurately measured.
In a broader research context, the question is a little simpler though the meaning is the same even if you’re arguing a point of view with research (and therefore not necessarily measuring something) – did your research correspond to the questions that were asked, and does the result follow logically from the information. Now, in terms of academic research, something like that, while possibly adding to the conversation, would not be taken as academic research because without trying to somehow quantify qualitative data without assigning points of comparison for which they are to be judged against, then there is a bias towards the researcher and whatever result they want.
In that sense – research DOES need to attempt to quantify things because otherwise there’s simply too much room for a personal bias – even qualitative data can be looked at against a strict rubric by a trained observer who preferably has no direct connection to the researcher (such as being aware of what they’re evaluating or why ideally and simply trying to apply the criteria).
M,
So basically you’re saying that for research to be considered “academic research” it has to be quantitative??? What then about ethnological studies, anthropological studies, etc. . . ?
And more germaine to education, what about Wilson’s study of the validity (actually of the invalidity) of educational standards and standardized testing “Educational Standards and the Problem of Error” found at: http://epaa.asu.edu/ojs/article/view/577/700 ?? Is it research? Is it a “study”? Does it make any difference what we call it? Is the study itself “valid”? If not, why not?
Should research that is not “academic” be dismissed outright?
“. . . even qualitative data can be looked at against a strict rubric by a trained observer who preferably has no direct connection to the researcher (such as being aware of what they’re evaluating or why ideally and simply trying to apply the criteria)”
Is this not an attempt to “scientize” an area of life and living, human interactions such as the teaching and learning process? Is everything amenable to being “scientized”?
I would argue no to the last question.
Duane
I know we always hear the bad stuff in schools and never the good stuff.Teachers get paid very little and work very long hours.They spend their paychecks on school supplies.I believe all teachers should have standards and should be tested every so often on their teaching capability.
Brigitte Grisanti
Add some arts integration – more fun for the kids and the teachers and your student outcomes will soar! Note: I love the reply above: “The solution is to invert the management structure of our public schools and put teachers in charge of implementing the curriculum.” How true!