Sue Altman of the new and unaccredited EduShyster Academy notes the irony that Microsoft has finally abandoned its stack ranking system but the schools are stuck with it, thanks to the Gates Foundation and its best buddy Arne Duncan.
What is stack ranking?
“Now, after hiring a new HR person, Microsoft is getting rid of the stack rankings—and good riddance. But thanks in no small part to Microsoft founder Bill Gates, our schools are still ruled by an education reform-mindset that’s informed by the same wrong-headed ideas that Microsoft just rejected.
“The belief that punishment motivates people to work better
“The belief that competition is better than collaboration in an organization
“The idea that worth of employees can be measured by ranking them on narrow criteria and that teamwork, innovation, problem solving and communication don’t count towards that criteria”
Now that Microsoft has decided that its players should not compete with one another, can we boot those ideas out of the schools?
Diane Ravitch's blog 
On our school, which is rural/suburban and has never struggled in the Ohio testing system, the tension and stress is so thick one could “cut it with a knife”. They have effectively driven all of the experienced teachers out of the system, despite the fact that we have managed to have increasingly high VAM scores every year.
Collaboration among some grade levels is great because everyone has the other’s back. In our grade, 4th, collaboration is virtually impossible. We have one bully who backs the administration openly even though he secretly disagrees with them.
Life is miserable. The unhappiness factor is as high as possible. The principal is so unfair and hateful in her treatment of teachers. She uses the scoring rubric to find only negative observations which are always blown out of proportion. Almost every teacher is afraid of her and dreads for her to walk into the hallway.
We all feel negatively judged at every turn. No matter what we do, or how much we improve, or how much time we put in to our jobs, it simply does not matter.
They began using a system, Batelle’s, to track and rank us in 2011-12. So, the stress began to build even higher.
If our school district, which has been very successful in spite of the negativity is stressed out to the point of teacher burn out, I cannot even begin to imagine the stress of teachers in districts with many more students who struggle from poverty and horrendous home lives than our students.
This teacher evaluation and stack ranking undermines community, collaboration, and trust. The only thing that sustains our teachers is the fact that they care about the students and each other. The stress is awful but the teachers internalize it and don’t take it to the students. To casual observers, the atmosphere seems just fine, but the teachers are dying inside.
In an economy that continues to slap everyone in the face, teachers stay as long as they can endure. But this is no way to educate American students.
Isn’t it interesting how when there are issues this begins to look like it is a problem of public schools instead of a reaction to imposed evaluation schemes?
Of course, we are considered insubordinate if people in the community are aware via our comments.
deb, I am in one of those districts where we have a large number of poor and immigrant children who do not speak English. It is a living hell right now. A new superintendent, who was mentored by Paul Vallas, brought in a new Instructional Superintendent. Interestingly enough, both of them worked in failing districts prior to coming here that they failed to “turn around” yet both are convinced (and so far, the Board of Education and public are buying into it) that they will be our saviors.
They have taken over 17 schools in my district, all of which received D or F grades last year when Florida raised the cut scores on the FCAT so high that over 85% of schools’ grades dropped dramatically. The improvement plan is, like your school’s, based on fear, intimidation, and suspicion. The district hired a bunch of teachers from other states who wanted out of the classroom and made them into teams of inquisitors who visit monthly and do multiple walk-throughs and then issue a report. They are not friendly. They never smile. They do not engage in small talk. They are here for one reason only: to highlight negatives and intimidate teachers and principals.
After 4 months they have yet to make a single positive or encouraging comment in any school they terrorize. As you said, everything you do is suspect and wrong, and this leads to teachers doubting themselves and simply working at compliance in order to avoid further humiliation and depression. Unfortunately it does impact the children as well since they become worried and sick when these cold, menacing visitors walk into the classroom and stare at them unmercifully without smiling or interacting.
Why anyone would or could think this is a reasonable way to bring about change or improvement in a school setting is beyond me. Why any teacher would trade working directly with children in order to become informants and inquisitors over their former colleagues is beyond my comprehension.
We are becoming physically and mentally ill in large numbers from the constant fear and stress. This is the worst year of my 20+ year teaching career and I do not know how I will make it to June this year. I do know that I will be leaving this horrible work environment as soon as it is financially possible for me. I will join dozens and dozens of teachers who are taking early retirement in order to save their own health, families, and lives.
This certainly feels like an end game from our perspective and we believe we are being forced out in the most negative, hateful, sickening ways imaginable. I can hardly believe that this is happening in a school system in the United States of America.
Let’s also advocate that college classes stop using “curve grading” which also ranks students. Many colleges discourage faculty from “giving too many A grades”, even if the students earned those A grades.
Get this: The “school grading” system in Utah is on a curve. So even if every school was amazing, some schools will fail. It’s ridiculous.
Reblogged this on Roy F. McCampbell's Blog.
These ideas have long been rejected by companies in knowledge based fields. Microsoft is rather behind the curve in changing their policy.
I honestly think that is the reason why they are going against what has been proven to be true. They have no respect for traditional education or educational parameters. If it has been approved…it must be wrong in their eyes.
It’s a huge problem when Democrats and Republicans back identical policy. There’s no opposition or dissent, so we end up with completely unexamined theories being accepted as fact. Ed reformers use that fact that the two approaches to ed reform are virtually identical at this point to claim “truth!” because if it’s bipartisan, it must be true, but I would go the other way. if it’s bipartisan that means there are no powerful critics, and that is dangerous.
This stuff is being rubber-stamped. “Stack ranking” should have never been applied to public schools, and had there been political opposition, it would have been examined and rejected.
Has anyone looked at the fundamentals of the management theories that are being taught in the Broad Academy? Does anyone even know if Broadies are good MANAGERS, let alone good educators? Wouldn’t it be great if we had less lock-step agreement and more debate?
Hmmm, Microsoft employees found ways to “game” their evaluation process? Surely you jest! Of course, I’m only being sarcastic. I hear too often from edu-bashers that the evaluation process in private industry should be the norm for everyone (that is, boss can fire you at-will), and how cut-throat things are (as if that’s a good thing) in big business. I’ve called BS on this for a long time. Evaluation instruments in private industry are just as subjective and overly-gradiouse as in the public sector. And can we remember when Gates thought the biggest problem in education were the lack of quality performance appraisals? Yeah, that’s the biggest problem in education…evaluation instruments. What a dope.
Shows how lame Gates is. He has not a clue. He’s a salesman with no original ideas of his own. Believe on this one. I know how he made his money.
deb and Chris in Florida: thank you for all you have done and are doing.
😃
Stack ranking aka forced ranking aka rank-and-yank aka burn and churn. Remember this the next time someone glibly argues in favor of public schools adopting private business practices. English-to-English translation: business practices = worst business practices. That is to say, business practices that have proven catastrophic, toxic, impractical, stultifying, self-destructive and stunningly ineffective.
What does that look like in practice? From a Vanity Fair article from last year [quote follows]:
Eichenwald’s conversations reveal that a management system known as “stack ranking”—a program that forces every unit to declare a certain percentage of employees as top performers, good performers, average, and poor—effectively crippled Microsoft’s ability to innovate. “Every current and former Microsoft employee I interviewed—every one—cited stack ranking as the most destructive process inside of Microsoft, something that drove out untold numbers of employees.” Eichenwald writes. “If you were on a team of 10 people, you walked in the first day knowing that, no matter how good everyone was, 2 people were going to get a great review, 7 were going to get mediocre reviews, and 1 was going to get a terrible review,” says a former software developer. It leads to employees focusing on competition with each other rather than competing with other companies.”
Source: http://www.vanityfair.com/online/daily/2012/07/microsoft-downfall-emails-steve-ballmer
Of course, like John Deasy of LAUSD and his cage busting achievement gap crushing decisions about iPads, no reason to waste time on thoughtful, collaborative, sustainable decision making that values the insights and forward thinking of your subordinates—major mistakes can be made hastily, thoughtlessly, crudely. Efficiency of inefficiency! Full speed over the cliff!
From the same link provided above [quote follows]:
“According to Eichenwald, Microsoft had a prototype e-reader ready to go in 1998, but when the technology group presented it to Bill Gates he promptly gave it a thumbs-down , saying it wasn’t right for Microsoft. “He didn’t like the user interface, because it didn’t look like Windows,” a programmer involved in the project recalls.
If stack ranking is so great, why don’t they employ it at the schools the children of the leading charterites/privatizers go to?
Only one answer makes sense: because they know better than to mandate for the teachers of THEIR OWN CHILDREN what they mandate for the teachers of OTHER PEOPLE’S CHILDREN.
😡
My dad retired in 1980 after 40 years of working at Union Carbide. Why? Because he was forced to evaluate his group of men into quartiles, similar to the stack ranking idea. He had spent years getting the employees that he wanted in all positions, doing exactly what he expected with skill. He didn’t consider ant of them to be underperforming! He felt as if was betraying them to evaluate in such a manner! Why wouldn’t all employers want ALL of their employees to be performing at top capacity? It is insane to force this upon any workforce. Rather than do this, he retired