Bruce Baker has watched the evolution of the effort to create that magical metric that will identify the best and worst teachers so they may be evaluated, rewarded, warned, and/or fired. He concludes that the great “value-added and growth score train wreck is here.”
Despite the billions that Arne Duncan has thrown into them, and despite the hundreds of millions that Bill Gates has targeted on a few selected districts, they are still shockingly unreliable. Baker writes:
A really, really, important point to realize is that the models that are actually being developed, estimated and potentially used by states and local public school districts for such purposes as determining which teachers get tenure, or determining teacher bonuses or salaries, who gets fired… or even which teacher preparation institutions get to keep their accreditation?…. those models increasingly appear to be complete junk!
He analyzes the research and experience of several districts and states.
Did it occur to anyone that none of the high-performing school systems in the world are doing this disservice to their teachers?
If we continue to use junk science to rate teachers, who will want to teach?
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Who will want to be a teacher? Minimum wage, desperate people. That’s who they want to teach other people’s children. Not their own children, mind you.
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50% of evaluation based on end of course test is so demotivating and humiliating that definitely getting out of teaching asap. Two years of bad test scores means suspension and potential loss of license. Seventy hour work weeks, failing technology,rotating cast of half my class load with various medical conditions that impede cognitive function. Adaptable,hard working, using differentiated learning and hands on learning/multimodal approaches does not mean jack now. Teachers are not able to control the tests, cannot develop multiple means for students to demonstrate mastery. So half my well meaning students will christmas tree their end of course test and my own family will suffer the consequences when I lose my job. Bleaker future than the past five with consistent pay cuts and benefits cut. Furloughs are a yearly experience now. I am very well educated and a top graduate in my field and hold multiple degrees so the stereotype of the poorly educated teacher without options or abilities does not fit. It doesnt fit for the majority of teachers I know.
But if I stay in teaching now, I will be an idiot.
This evaluation system is the last straw. I cajoled pta parents to put pressure on our district to stop this eval system. There are several well respected anchor teachers who are now making tracks to change fields. What a waste. New administration is in love with drill and kill, parents are blinded by smoke and mirrors of test scores as a metric of anything.
Thank you for letting me vent. I am planning on how nice it will be to have sundays off, no longer haul 25lbs of paperwork home, have money in the bank in a different career. No profession gets treated collectively so poorly these days.
I will miss the students but I will not miss being treated like an ignorant fool by thisevaluation nightmare.
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When evaluated in NC…You must have evidence…..
Teachers…..what you do is simple..
You make sure you have a flash drive with all of everything that you do..or videos…samples….and you make sure when the people who have not taught in 20 years or so are evaluating you…you make them look at this evidence..
If not..they will automatically give you a 2 and say that there is no way they have time to see your evidence at achieving so and so..
Do it….Keep good records of every single thing you do…….EVIDENCE that you are doing more than what is expected of you….Everything Counts
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If it’s anything like our system here in Florida it won’t matter how much evidence you collect, although I agree that is a good practice anyway, because the majority of your rating is based upon test scores.
That’s part of Race to the Top federal law — at least half of a teacher’s evaluation must be based upon test scores and teachers can’t protect themselves from that in any legal fashion. That’s boilerplate ALEC VAM law and it was specifically written to prevent principals and teachers from being able to protect themselves from the basic feature of getting rid of anyone and everyone who doesn’t magically produce high test scores regardless of the children they teach.
I informed my principal last week that I now request that any and all observations of me and my class by outsiders be videotaped for my own protection because I have seen repeatedly how poorly trained observers come in, spend a few minutes, and then write down false data that says I don’t have things posted that ARE clearly posted or that I didn’t say or ask certain things that I clearly did say and ask.
I figure that at least I will have some kind of evidence then if I ever need or am able to sue the district for destroying my career because I choose to work with poor ELL and SPED students. It won’t change or protect me from the VAM test score percentage but I’m not going without a fight and making it as uncomfortable and difficult as possible for the reformers and their minions.
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Yes. Evidence is needed to defend yourself. We are all guilty of being educators.
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Do you need to check in as to whether or not a parent has opted out of having their child photographed?
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And hire a really good lawyer.
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Junk evaluation science, junk evaluations, junk curriculum, junk testing mandates, composite junk sent directly into the hearts and minds of once-happy-eager-learning children…it is called a JUNKYARD operated, in too many places, by junkyard dogs. Those who will elect to work in such places will be as described by Ms. Ende-Saxe, desperate minimum-wage slaves. In fact, they are there now and have no business in the company of learners disguised as “teacher” but they fit because they agree with the atmosphere being promulgated.
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Test scores do not measure what a child has learned or the knowledge and experiences that a teacher has given a child. In any school, people know who the effective and engaging teachers are. Value Added Models and data do not reflect this. Business and politics have taken away the joy of teaching and learning in exchange for test prep, assessments and developmentally inappropriate common core standards. Non educators, or those with minimal classroom experience running schools and education departments are destroying the future of our children. Principal used to mean Principal or master teacher, now in NYC it is a person who went through a leadership academy and learned to crunch numbers rather than teach and understand what it is to be in the classroom. It is sad to see that a career teacher is a dying breed. The people with the most experience are not the “worst” as the NYCDOE would like people to believe, they are the teachers to learn from. Newer teachers are coming into the profession data obsessed…and it is sad…when I hear kindergarten children say they hate school…something is very wrong…
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One correction – tenure(due process) no longer exists for teachers whose students get an inadequate score on VAM tests 2 consecutive years. In NYS they are automatically fired regardless of a principal’s evaluation, so acquiring tenure is meaningless in the current environment. The elimination of due process (tenure) in my opinion is the main purpose of the VAM tests.
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Same here in Florida — again this is boilerplate ALEC legislation and comes from Jeb Bush and his foundation. They recommend eliminating tenure first and then passing VAM laws so the teachers will have no recourse. In the past they allowed grandfathering of those already in the system but they’ve even eliminated that because they realized it interferes with their goal of getting rid of the most experienced and expensive and outspoken teachers.
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But… if that tenure is removed by a method that violates due process… you indeed have a claim and I suspect many will be brought. The claim pertains to the removal of tenure and challenges the basis of that removal (in part, the MGPs).
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As of today, two years after the laws were passed in Florida, there is no lawsuit being filed by the Florida Education Association that I am aware of or can find on their website.
The first ALEC law said that those of us who were tenured would be given a choice: accept the new evaluation system and give up tenure forever and have a chance at earning bonuses (based on test scores) or stay in the old system and be locked into whatever salary step we were on at the time for the rest of our employment/career.
The next year the legislature passed a law that says that ALL teachers are subject to VAM evaluation and after 2 years of low scores MUST be terminated and have their teaching credential revoked and they CANNOT be rehired to teach anywhere in the state, tenured or not.
All our old tenure did was guarantee us a contract for the next year if we did our job and eliminate the need for the 2 yearly observations that are mandatory for new teachers. Principals could and did still observe tenured teachers to help improve pedagogy but it was never a gotcha used to harass experienced teachers as it is now.
No newly hired teacher can earn tenure ever again — it doesn’t exist any more in Florida. Those of us who have tenure have no due process or recourse agains the VAM. There is a lawsuit against the state over using test scores from students that teachers don’t actually teach (outside of the mandatory 3-12 testing grades in reading, writing, math, and science) but the state is using every delaying tactic they can think of to prevent the case from moving forward.
Again, the FEA, NEA, AFT (we are members of both here in Florida) have said/done nothing that I can find information about anywhere in a public place.
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The UFT in NYC accepted the new VAM provisions so teachers are subject to firing with 2 consecutive poor VAM’s, obviously without recourse with union help. I guess some teachers may hire a lawyer but that would be another financial burden that I think many wouldn’t risk pursuing. The major teacher unions accepted donations from Gates hence their support for all these disastrous policies. Until automatic dues deductions which guaranty survival of the unions by the state/city governments are eliminated, teachers will never have the support they need to fight back against the destructive “reform” policies foisted onto public education. The union leadership will support those that guaranty survival while trying to give the appearance of fighting for its members.
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APPR evaluations do not over-ride tenure protection her in NY. The school district still has to file a 3020A.
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You’ve each given me a nice, future additional blog post… sadly… on the unions being complicit in this disaster… and out of political preference to “play along,” avoiding their responsibility to protect due process rights of teachers (from the very policies they endorsed).
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Is APPR VAM? not what I heard from several sources. Failure on VAM 2 consecutive = loss of job is what I’ve heard.
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We did not give away our tenure protection.
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APPR is 40% VAM (based on a local and a state pre/post tests) and 60% formal/informal observations using Marzano or Danielson scoring rubric.
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Test scores do not measure what a child has learned or the knowledge and experiences that a teacher has given a child. In any school, people know who the effective and engaging teachers are. Value Added Models and data do not reflect this. Business and politics have taken away the joy of teaching and learning in exchange for test prep, assessments and developmentally inappropriate common core standards. Non educators, or those with minimal classroom experience running schools and education departments are destroying the future of our children. Principal used to mean Principal or master teacher, now in NYC it is a person who went through a leadership academy and learned to crunch numbers rather than teach and understand what it is to be in the classroom. It is sad to see that a career teacher is a dying breed. The people with the most experience are not the “worst” as the NYCDOE would like people to believe, they are the teachers to learn from. Newer teachers are coming into the profession data obsessed…and it is sad…when I hear kindergarten children say they hate school…something is very wrong…
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Sorry for my previous anecdote. My purpose is to say that in my personal experience with implementation of the insertion of a rubric driven, inapplicable evaluation system performed by an administrator whose goal is to get rid of experienced, expensive, skeptical teachers gives reason to fear the future for teachers approaching retirement.
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Here in Rhode Island, Gist’s Department of Education recently got egg on its face when the teacher evaluation scores from last year were published in the aggregate. Last year was the first year that Gist’s “rigorous” teacher evaluation system was implemented. RIDE (the RI Department of Education), the media, and others had been insinuating that RI was suffering from a high percentage of Ineffective teachers, and this system was supposed to identify them.
The results? 0.5% of RI teachers were found to be Ineffective. 95% were Effective or Highly Effective.
Fast forward to a couple of weeks after this bomb was dropped. Yesterday we were told about a new way of implementing the evaluation system called the “Targeted Evaluation Cycle”. Essentially, teachers who scored a 3 or higher on their evaluations will be evaluation differently over the next three years. This was presented as a great gift to us, as these “targeted” evaluations will focus on fewer components and therefore be “easier” on us.
The Devil in the details is this — for half of the “targeted” evaluation, the components that will be considered will ONLY be the ones that an individual teacher scored LOWEST on in their “comprehensive” evaluation.
That means that if I scored 4, 4, 4, and 2 on the four components Standard 2, for the next three years I will be evaluated ONLY on the fourth component of Standard 2 (the one I scored a 2 on).
What a gift!
Even better, it is unclear if this is happening in every RI district. So far I have learned that Pawtucket and Central Falls — two of the poorest districts in the state — will be using Targeted Evaluation Cycles. If Providence is also using them, that will be the trifecta of poor districts in RI. If districts other than these three are NOT using TEC, then it is easy to see where this leads — the three poorest districts end up with lower average teacher ratings because the teachers in those districts are not allowed to use their strengths in their evaluations, only their weaknesses.
Of course the media will manage to neglect to mention this.
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Again, this is very similar to what happened in Florida. When the majority of teachers received a good VAM score the first year the reformy response wasn’t to congratulate the teachers — it was to change the system because it MUST be flawed if it says that teachers are doing a good job.
I was convinced this chicanery would wake up the majority of teachers to the fact that this is a no win system and we will never again be able to rely on our experience and professionalism. Instead it just increased the denials and the disbelief that our overlords don’t have our best interests at heart. Now, after 2 years of relentless attack they are finally realizing that this is not going away like so many past fads and we are in real and present danger.
On this blog in a comment I read that North Carolina teachers are planning a statewide walkout on November 4. If this is true I applaud them and I have been asking/urging my colleagues that we do the same here. It would stunning if the NEA and AFT actually lead us into a nationwide walkout in protest of these egregious attacks against our profession but of course they have been bought off by Gates and actually support this travesty.
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So do you automatically get a 4 in the other categories? I had to ask as I search for some semblance of sanity in all of this.
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No, Alice — the other categories are simply disregarded. The ONLY category looked at for those two sections of a teacher’s evaluation (about half the evaluation) is the one they were WORST at when they received their comprehensive evaluation.
They are literally disregarding strengths completely. The only thing that counts is what you were weakest at in the comprehensive evaluation.
Our principal explained that if he were a basketball player and his “jump shot” were poor, that’s what he would choose to focus on for improvement. I pointed out that this is evaluation, not improvement, and asked if he were a coach and had to cut a player from his team, would he look ONLY at the areas in which each player were WORST at in order to make his decision? In response he offered a non sequitur about how 75% of our students at the local community college need remedial coursework and mentioned that he was only the messenger.
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As far as I’m concerned there shouldn’t be any talk about these evaluations which only serves to legitimize them. It’s junk science and that should be the only response along with a strike threat if they continue with these.
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A strike or walkout or a sick-out would be a show of solidarity but unfortunately it was our own union (NYST) that sold us out on the APPR component of RTTT.
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I teach in a school that, according to our new VAM system that will be in place next year, has not ONE effective teacher. Not one in the whole building! Could it be that seperate administrators have unknowingly hired a whole staff of ineffective teachers (some of who were considered highly effective in other schools in our district before transferring). Or could it be that we are 99% FRL with 87% ELL (many of whom speak no English) and a high population of special needs students. It is schools like mine that will suffer, not because the staff in the building but because of what VAM’s don’t measure! Things that cannot be counted on a rubric.
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I’m in solidarity with you Amber. Here in my district in Florida that’s exactly what happened — all but 2 of the Title I schools with high poverty, free and reduced lunch, minority populations, English language learners, and special education student populations received “F” grades last year and all but 2 are now under state control.
The two that “made” the grade have shifting demographics in their neighborhoods (less poverty, less mobility, less FRL, less ELL, very few SPED and minority students, etc.). We are looking at a huge number of teachers in our generally poor district facing mandatory state termination and loss of credentials in 3 years if the test scores don’t go up dramatically all while the state will keep upping the cut score year after year.
What will they do when they are forced to fired a few thousand teachers? Who will they hire? There are not enough people in the population to fill the void they will create but no one seems to be considering that fact right now.
The state completed the beginning of the year evaluation of my school last week. After countless walk-throughs, observations, data collection and evaluation meetings, and review of several years worth of paperwork their recommendation to us was, I kid you not: MORE RIGOR. They said “Not enough rigor. More rigor is needed in lessons. Students need to be given more rigor.” That was it. Seriously. That is our “plan” to “improve” and “fix” the low test scores.
I wept, I laughed, I cursed and then I realized that the game is fixed and we are doomed. And the “experts” who now control us and are supposedly “helping” us have no clue. No clue at all.
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“What will they do when they are forced to fired a few thousand teachers? Who will they hire?”
Two options. One, they will convert your school to a charter and fill it with TFA kids (who are now “highly qualified teachers” according to law).
The other option is that the local DoE will express its stern benevolence. It will be decreed that the data reveals that you are all FAILURES, but in their benevolence the powers that be will do you undeserving teachers a BIG FAVOR and let you keep your jobs — “But there’s going to be some CHANGES around here…” Maybe a new contract that your union didn’t even get to look at, that must be signed by any undeserving failure teachers who want to keep their jobs. Remember, they could just let you go — this is a BIG FAVOR they are doing you!
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I went through this kind of torture back in 2006. We got a new principal. She was hateful to everyone, esp people who didn’t think she was wonderful. I was up for my 5 year evaluation, had switched grade levels, and began teaching all subjects at her insistence. I had not taught reading for 11 years since I was a math-science teacher. The perspective on reading had shifted and I was learning the new jargon and doing well. However, when my day for observation arrived, I didn’t know what she was looking for and I asked her . I did exactly what she asked me to do…against my better judgment. She brutalized my score and marked me down for things she knew nothing about … And she said she needed more evidence…I was mad, mortified, stunned, hurt, and angry. My second observation was in February. It was a math lesson. My score on that was 63/63. I thought that was going to be averaged with the previous score…but NO…she gave me this conditional unsatisfactory evaluation for the year, put me on re-evaluation the next year, undermined my entire career, broke my confidence, and just about destroyed my life. It happened to every person who she hadn’t hired in some form or other. We rebelled, went to the superintendent, and after a long fight, we got our evaluations overturned. I wrote a 7 page response to her lack of evidence, delineating everything I had done before her becoming principal and during the year. She said she hadn’t had any evidence. Why? Because she never asked, never sought it, never indicated that she was curious. Why? Because I didn’t run to her with every problem and reveal my need for her “advice”. I had been doing a fine job prior to her arrival…and hadn’t ever had a bad evaluation. In ant case, it was overturned and I didn’t have to be evaluated until 5 years later. At that time, my “evidence” spoke for itself. She KNEW what I was doing and I made sure if it. She wrecked my health by creating so much stress. I miss my students, but I can never return to that building until she is OUT of there. Oh, and by the way my student test scores were great all along. Even evidence isn’t always enough.
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We are allowed to collect our own evidence (actually, we are required to collect it — principals have no time or inclination to do so) and keep a portfolio. Of course the principal can override the evidence and ignore it if they choose. We have several who do this; my current principal does not, thank goodness. That is the beauty (from a reform standpoint) of using the Danielson rubric as a checklist which she weekly claims it is not supposed to be used as a checklist (all while she cashes the checks).
There is ALWAYS something on that checklist that is ethereal or subjective enough that a vindictive principal or district/state observer can highlight as lacking or missing and a teacher has no recourse. There is no way to win in this system and teachers who think there is are sadly mistaken. If loopholes are found they will be closed by legislation faster than you can take attendance, rest assured.
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Correct. There is no way to avoid subjective evaluations because they can omit what they please. “I didn’t see it.” That is the excuse. However, as far as I have seen, the way around it is to get on the “good side” of the evaluator, provide strokes (even if undeserved) to game the system. Of course, some will say that the test data IS the objective answer to all of this. Yet, the test data is so flawed that it is lacking in veracity, too.
At our school, even with the great student test scores for every teacher’s class, the “golden boy” received the most praise, the “pass” on p.d., the “last word” on every issue that came up, making collaboration impossible. Yet, he conducted his class much as some of the charter schools described on this blog. He had an iron fist. He was cruel to kids in the beginning of the year. He had complete breakdowns when he couldn’t “break” a kid. He taught in a way that was not unlike the Stockholm Syndrome. Did he get good test results? Yes. Did he treat students in a way that I would have accepted for my own children to be treated? No.
Repost: I meant to post this HERE instead of attached to another post: “Sorry for my previous anecdote. My purpose is to say that in my personal experience with implementation of the insertion of a rubric driven, inapplicable evaluation system performed by an administrator whose goal is to get rid of experienced, expensive, skeptical teachers gives reason to fear the future for teachers approaching retirement.”
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In Indiana, that is already happening. Fewer students are going into the “teaching profession”. Why would any intelligent person do so AND the drop out rate of those who do is appalling. Those who really care about children can find other ways of educating children in community work instead of the mind numbing strictures which shackle their work by the “reform” movement.
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Our Public School System and the Edmund Fitzgerald have one thing in common, but hopefully that is all they have in common! We now have a National Public School System called Common Core which was implemented without any research showing it is going to work or any Pilot testing done to even give us an idea of how it may turn out in regard to student success or improvement in outcomes. This is what they have in common as the naval architect, Raymond Ramsey, a member of the design team for the Edmond Fitzgerald stated later. “The Fitzgerald’s long ship design was developed without the benefit of Research, Development, Test, and Evaluation Principals” and he indicated that the Fitzgerald was NOT seaworthy at the time the ship sank to the bottom of one of the Great Lakes! Is this the Goal behind the Common Core, to sink the Public School System so we privatize ALL schools for Greater Corporate Profits. Let us hope this is not the second thing the schools have in common with the Edmond Fitzgerald! Anyway,
I thought this all started with TIMMS and comparing how we are doing with
Finland, Singapore, or Germany? Do any of you know how many tests are given to students in countries like Finland or Germany? I talked with some students and teachers from those countries and found out. Finish students do not take a single standardized test. I wonder how they evaluate their teachers? Germany limits the number of tests each semester to three for high school students. These tests include classroom tests and any type of “standardized” test, so if a teacher gives three unit tests a semester, the maximum has been reached and no “standardized” test could be given. The students and teachers said most of their work is judged by their class participation, both oral and written. They also indicated they get graphing calculators issued with their math textbooks and are expected to use them when needed including during a Test. When are we going to start to do what these successful countries do for our students?
Do you honestly think our educational problem is the curriculum and standards are not rigorous enough for our current students?Please go to your local school and talk with the teachers or read some of the students comments on facebook. If you live in an area of higher socioeconomic means, then your school is performing above average due to many factors such as parent support for learning and checking to see that their children are completing their homework or immediatley getting the help they need. Parents of students who attend “good” schools do not want endless tests that are meaningless to their childrens future and a huge waist of resources that should be used to improve the school learning environment by purchasing needed technology and up to date instructional materials. Maybe the new standards could be helpful, but teachers have a shorter, more limited amount of time to cover more curriculum than before due to earlier testing periods and more testing. Futhermore, how are students held accountable for doing their best on these tests? Is the test result used to help calculate the students grade or do they need a proficient score to earn a diploma or get accepted for college or … If the test has no student accountability component why would they even care about doing well. I would focus on preparing for my immediate class grade to improve my GPA and SAT exams or preparing for a big game or musical performance. I could use this test as a way of getting back at a teacher who is asking me to do more than I want to do because I have other interests. Are only math, science, and English teachers being judged by these tests or is there a test to judge a PE teacher or Art/Music teacher or Elective teachers? I wonder how long it will be before we find no one willing to interview for a math teaching position at a low performing school. I do not see how spending ALL this money on testing is changing anything except creating a National Curriculum and telling low performing schools that they continue to be low performing schools and they need to replace their teachers with better ones. It seems like I have been hearing this same argument for the past 50 years. Yes, I am a senior citizen who cares about real changes that will improve educational opportunities for the students who need an environment that is conducive to learning. Why are we spending money we do not have on schools that are already achieving and trying to have a one size fits all system because this is not why Americans create so many new things and come up with so many new ideas. If we are trying compete with Finland and Singapore, then we need to make serious structural systemic changes to our schools and do what they do or do not do in their schools. NO more football programs or other sports in our high schools and most electives would also have to be eliminated. I am a Finlander, but we live in a much different country in America and we have very different values. When the well-educated parents of public school children start to understand that a large part of schooling has changed from learning and developing critical thinking to preparing students to do well on a test that most people never have time to analyze and use as a resource to improve the educational experience for children, then they will either place their children in a school where real learning is the priority or they will get involved in changing our new system of schooling. I cannot call this system a system for learning because time and testing are not and should never be factors in a learning environment that promotes creativity and critical thinking (testing without student accountability is meaningless). These two goals are what made America great and created jobs, and they do not happen in a specific amount of time because each of us is unique and we do things at different rates. And futhermore, testing has never been shown to improve either of these factors unless the tests are used to diagnose student deficiencies in their prerequisite knowledge needed to expand their understanding using this knowledge. Even then, most school systems do not give teachers adequate time to analyze the testing data so it an exercise in wasting valuable learning time. Critical thinking and creativity are factors that need to be encouraged and nurtured from Pre-K on. To flourish, they need a stress free environment so students can open up their thoughts and dream up new ideas. It seems ironic that many of the people who were allowed to be raised in this type of environment, open, creative, and stress free, are the same people who are now paying for and pushing for a more controlled and structured environment, but not for their own children? What about Bill Gates and Mark Zutterburg? Are these the experts on College Readiness? Really! So we want college students who drop out after a year or two? Really!!!
Thank you for reading and pray for your grandchildren’s future. I know We have been praying for ours way before our friends in Utah asked us to pray and if praying is not your thing, then get actively involved in some other way. Maybe we should all start by READING the new common core standards and MORE IMPORTANTLY LOOK AT THE NEW TESTING QUESTIONS starting in grade 3 and see how many of the 11th grade questions you can answer. This may be an eye opener? REMEMBER, the tests will drive the curriculum and what is and is not taught and how it is taught. The tests will determine the level of difficulty and the amount of time available to teach and learn all concepts and not the students rate for understanding of the curriculum. This means if the student is a “late starter or late bloomer”, then you would be better to place them in a Private School that does not expect ALL students to learn at the exact same pace. Please God Bless America now more than ever or whatever your belief system, someone better be looking out for our children and grandchildren’s future.
http://search.yahoo.com/mobile/s?rewrite=72&.tsrc=apple&first=1&p=common+core+opponents&pintl=en&pcarrier=AT%26T&pmcc=310&pmnc=410&fr=onesearch
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MarkTwainfive, the purpose of current data based evaluation is to find and fire “bad” teachers. This is the grand plan of non-educators Duncan and Gates. It has failed everywhere. No other nation does this.
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Ron Poirier: your second option [comment of 12:27 PM] is the emerging pattern on the rug.
Think of the “education reform” crowd as being engaged in a concerted effort to change the thinking and fundamental expectations of the vast majority of people in this country.
In the two-tiered education system they are fighting to establish, the Centres of EduExcellence for OTHER PEOPLE’S CHILDREN will teach docility, obedience and low-level skills. The vast majority of the employees of these consumer establishments [you get to choose from among the training schools they offer] will enjoy the same experience as their customers: a MacJob that emphasizes docility, obedience and low-level skills, with pay and benefits and public respect equal to their lowly position. And consumers and purveyors of the eduproducts offered by these franchises will be given only tidbits of real learning since they won’t need them in their future careers [hence little or no need for school nurses or libraries or counselors or TAs and other useless luxuries]. Above every one of these charming institutions will be placed a plaque that says: “Burn and Churn—We Take You In, We Spit You Out.”
Now as for the “education reformers”—in the genuine centers of educational enrichment that THEIR OWN CHILDREN are attending now and will attend in the future, science and sports, fine arts and math, education abroad programs and rigorous math courses are just a sampling of what they will have on hand as students interact with long-term faculty [with real degrees!] in classes with low student-to-teacher ratios. I could go on and on [just look at the link below] but their plaques will have variants [since they will be allowed to individualize instruction and self-identification] of the following: “Love, Cherish, Inspire—We Have Lit The Love of Learning in the Children of the People Who Matter.”
Link: http://www.harpethhall.org/podium/default.aspx?t=151749
Only problem is that an awful lot of people have to “buy in” to that notion for it to work. Put plainly, it means taking a quote from Frederick Douglass and figuring out how to prevent the kind of self-awareness he was encouraging: “I didn’t know I was a slave until I found out I couldn’t do the things I wanted. ”
This blog and others like it understood what Frederick Douglass was getting at. And when the edubullies use the sneer & smear of “shrill” and “strident” to describe their critics, just remember what the great abolitionist, William Lloyd Garrison, said:
“With reasonable men, I will reason; with humane men I will plead; but to tyrants I will give no quarter, nor waste arguments where they will certainly be lost.”
🙂
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“If we continue to use junk science to rate teachers, who will want to teach?”
If I may modify the question: If we continue to use junk science (using educational standards, standardized testing and the use of grades) to rate students, who will want to learn?
Oh, I know, “grades” are so embedded in our cultural habitus that it is blasphemous to suggest the discontinuation of them. Maybe we all be ranked forever and ever AMEN!
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