A new report from the state auditor general shows how charters and cyber charters are overpaid, while the public system–which most children attend–get the short end of the stick.
“PA cybercharters avg cost of $10,145 was $3,500 more than national average of $6,500.
“PA charters spent avg $13,411 per student, about $3K more than national average of $10K.
“Fixing PA’s Charter School Formula Could Save $365 Million a Year in Taxpayer Money.”
In this video of 23 minutes, you will get a synopsis of why value-added modeling doesn’t work.
The video is a preview of a collection of research papers that will be available online in a few months, and published in 2014 by Teachers College Press in 2014.
The more we learn about the real consequences of VAM, the more we understand that it has perverse consequences.
We know already that it puts too much emphasis on test scores, and we saw what that produced in Atlanta, DC, El Paso, and other districts.
We know it narrows the curriculum, as only the tested subjects count.
We know it encourages teaching to the test.
We know that it is unstable and unreliable.
We know that good teachers may get low ratings because they teach kids who have high needs.
We know that the composition of the class has a greater effect on the teacher’s rating than the teacher’s “quality.”
We know that the test scores are affected by many factors, not just what the teacher does.
When the papers are available, I will post a link.
I usually agree with Matt Di Carlo. He is one smart guy.
But not always.
That’s okay. Friends can disagree and still be friends (I proved that by blogging with Deborah Meier for five years).
I think that value-added methods of using test scores to rate teacher quality are “junk science.”
Now, granted, I am but a historian, not a social scientist, but I do read lots of social science. I noted that the National Academy of Education and AERA held a briefing on Capitol Hill and issued a joint statement warning about the pitfalls of VAM. Here is a salient point from their report: “With respect to value-added measures of student achievement tied to individual teachers, current research suggests that high-stakes, individual-level decisions, or comparisons across highly dissimilar schools or student populations, should be avoided.”
Edmund Gordon, one of our nation’s most eminent psychologists, recently led a commission to study assessment practices. He concluded that the overemphasis and misuse of standardized testing to hold students, teachers, and schools accountable is not only ineffective but “immoral.”
I would say that “immoral” is an even stronger condemnation than “junk science.”
Campbell’s Law suggests that the use of high-stakes testing degrades education. Threatening to fire teachers if their students’ scores don’t go up does not produce better education. It produces worse education. It promotes narrowing of the curriculum. It promotes cheating. It encourages teachers and schools to avoid the neediest students.
Teaching is so much more than test scores. To think that teachers may be defined significantly by the rise or fall of the test scores of their students requires a belief in the intrinsic value of standardized tests that I do not share. We may learn something from wide assessments with no-stakes, like NAEP. But using these flawed instruments to fire teachers and close schools is–in my judgment–wrong. They were not designed for those purposes. And the first rule of psychometrics is that tests should be used only for the purpose for which they were designed.
All things considered, the term “junk science” seems appropriate, as does Dr. Gordon’s phrase: ineffective and immoral.
One reason parents flee public schools, if they can afford it, is to escape the dead hand of testing that now strangles learning. The sooner we can put testing in its place as a diagnostic tool for teachers to assess what they have taught (not as a Pearson-designed 14-hour ordeal), the sooner we will restore the rightful purposes of education and the dignity of the teaching profession.
My, how things change in only one year.
Last year, Governor Jindal rushed through his legislation to strip teachers of tenure, base 40% of their evaluation on test scores, make all teachers at-will employees, subject to dismissal with one bad rating, and everything else that Jindal and White could dream up to make it hard on teachers.
When challenged in court, the law was declared unconstitutional because it covered too many subjects.
So the governor returned to the Legislature seeking to revive his punitive evaluation system. The Legislature voted unanimously to delay its punitive effects, despite the protestations of Jindal and White. They wanted to start the firings ASAP. The legislators said wait.
Maybe they started wondering who would want to teach in the state’s schools.
Or they noticed Jindal’s sagging poll numbers.
Carol Corbett Burris has been one of the leaders of the battle against the Néw York State educator evaluation system, which was developed after the state won a Race to the Top grant of $700 million. Burris helped created the principals’ rebellion against test-based evaluations of teachers and principals.
She also was recently selected by her peers as New York’s Principal of the Year. She is principal of South Side High School in Rockville Center.
Here Carol explains why she is disappointed by Teachers College’s decision to honor the Chancellor of the Board of Regents, whose policies Carol and her colleagues oppose.
I quoted TC’s press release earlier today, in which it saluted Merryl Tisch for her leadership in tying teacher evaluation to test scores. It applauded more for her support for judging education schools by the test scores of the students of their graduates. To ice the cake, the press release heralded Tisch’s willingness to permit museums and other non-traditional institutions to grant masters’ degrees. Odd that TC would like that.
But I mention the press release because I have heard that the press office is revising it to remove any reference to the state’s zealous devotion to standardized testing. It may have disappeared by now.
Carol Burris writes:
“As a proud TC grad, I am saddened. It appears to be one more more betrayal of the progressive ideals on which the college was founded. The fact that the press release hails her work in evaluating teachers by test scores (opposed by most TC scholars) and data that ties schools of education to public school results, confounds me. What does TC stand for? I guess in the future we can expect TC student teachers to be placed in Scarsdale so that the school gets good ratings. Which of the following statements make her worthy of the award?
–M Tisch saying that if educators are not prepared for CCSS they are –”living under a rock”
http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2013/03/27/26newyork_ep.h32.html
–M Tisch saying in NYT that now that teachers are evaluated under APPR, the public will not dislike them so much
–M Tisch donates 1 million, along with Bill Gates and charter schools, to fund the Fellows who have pushed the corporate agenda and test score evaluation policies.
http://www.cityandstateny.com/cash-flow/
I feel most sorry for the idealistic young teachers who worked hard for their degrees. They understand what is happening.”
The teacher who wrote this post reequired anonymity, for obvious reasons:
I am writing to tell you about a situation at my school — Shea High in Pawtucket, RI.
At the start of last year, both Shea and Tolman High (the only two non-charter public high schools in Pawtucket) were told that they had failed to make AYP as per NCLB and would have to undergo transformation. Note that since RI has accepted RttT, last year was the last possible year that this could have happened.
Despite high poverty, transience, ESL population, etc. the only AYP target that Shea had failed to meet was for graduation rate. It had remained stagnant at about 59% for three years, just barely failing to meet the target of 60%.
When the announcement was made last year that we were to undergo transformation, we were told that this would involve at the very least the removal of our principal (a fantastic, very bright, and driven man who had been principal for about ten years and whose leadership was one of the greatest reasons we had managed to make AYP in every other required category). As we had only failed to make AYP by a fraction of a percent, and we knew that a high transience rate contributed greatly to our low graduation rate, teachers and other stakeholders scrambled to locate students who had simply disappeared over the years.
At this point I should interject that under NCLB, RIDE [Rhode Island Department of Education] had been given some leeway in determining how many years a school had to make AYP before transformation was necessary. The decision to limit the number of years to three had been made AFTER our three year stagnation streak had begun. Think of that what you will.
I was one of those teachers scrambling to locate lost students in the hope of finding some who had actually graduated but had been labelled dropouts because the school system had lost track of them. Every student counted as we were only off by a fraction of a percent. I was able to find one, a boy from Ethiopia whose sister had taken an ESL class of mine. The family had moved from Rhode Island to North Dakota and he had graduated from high school there.
In the end, we were able to prove that our graduation rate had actually risen above 60% for one of the three years of stagnation. Unfortunately, RIDE refused to accept this new data, claiming that it was “too late” to take it into consideration (my first thought was to wonder if it would also have been considered “too late” to consider new data if we had been caught cheating, but I digress). Transformation would go ahead as planned. Our principal, Dr. Christopher Lord — an excellent, dedicated administrator with a great reputation in education circles around our small state — was out.
At a recent meeting with our transformation director, I learned that the baseline graduation rate used in our transformation plan was 67%. This seemed very strange to me, as our school was in transformation specifically because its graduation rate was below 60%. At first I had thought that the graduation rate for the third year of stagnation had been altered upwards due in part to the work teachers had done locating missing graduates, and I was livid.
When I asked at the meeting, our transformation director originally indicated that this was the case. However, after further research it seems that the transformation director (who was not in the system last year and could not have remembered the mad scramble for data I mentioned above) may not have fully understood my question.
After consulting several officials and reading the transformation document, I learned that the baseline was 67% because that was the most recent year data was available for — 2011, the year AFTER the three year stagnation. I also learned that the sudden “jump” in graduation rate was due to new methodologies being used downtown which resulted in a more accurate picture of who had actually graduated from high school.
I still have some serious issues with our transformation situation.
First, there is the fact that RIDE’s decision to limit the number of years schools had to raise their graduation rates to three years came sometime in the middle of our three year stagnation. I know that “fair” is a four-letter word, but something doesn’t smell right about this.
Second — why did Pawtucket decide to implement a new, more accurate system for determining graduation rate at the WORST possible time? One year earlier and we would have shown more than adequate growth and been off the hook; one year later and we would have had a much lower baseline graduation rate from which to determine a transformation target. Whoever made this call was either asleep at the wheel or not interested in seeing Shea and Tolman succeed at transformation.
Finally — given our baseline of 67% graduation rate, it was decided that our transformation target should be 78% by 2014-2015 and 80% by 2015-2016. To put this into context, the RI state average graduation rate is currently 77%, and this is almost sure to go down as we implement Gist’s plan to require all students to get a 2 or more on the NECAP in order to graduate. Even if the average graduation rate does NOT go down, it is possible that Shea — one of the poorest and most challenged high schools in the state — will raise its graduation rate to higher than the state average but still fail to hit its transformation target because it doesn’t beat the state average BY ENOUGH.
We have been told, over and over, that if we do not meet the transformation targets then it is likely that we will all be fired and only 50% of us will be hired back. I do not personally believe that Pawtucket or RIDE wants to do this, because if they had wanted to do it they could have done so last year when they chose instead to go with transformation. What I fear will come to pass is that Shea will fail (by design) to meet its transformation targets and teachers will be taken aside and told that Pawtucket and RIDE have agreed to do them a BIG FAVOR — they will be allowed to keep their jobs, but only if some MAJOR concessions are made.
Or maybe they will fire us all and agree to rehire 100% of teachers who will sign a new contract that the union hasn’t been consulted on. Of course these last thoughts are just idle ones, but they do concern me.
Teachers College, Columbia University, will honor Merryl Tisch at its 2013 Convocation.
As Chancellor of the New York Board of Regents, Tisch has launched the state’s most demanding regime of high-stakes testing in history. Teachers College specifically congratulates Tisch’s leadership not only in tying test scores to teacher evaluations but in tying test scores to the school of education that prepared the teachers.
The press release notes these accomplishments:
“TC alumna Merryl Tisch, Chancellor of the New York State Board of Regents. Tisch will speak at the first master’s degree ceremony on May 21st, which starts at 9:30 a.m. As Chancellor, Tisch, a former first-grade teacher, has championed public education as “the greatest civic and civil liberties issue of our time.” She galvanized the state’s bid to receive federal Race to the Top funding, helping persuade teachers unions and other players to commit to increased charter school development and creation of a system that substantially based a teacher’s performance evaluation on students’ test scores. She has spearheaded creation of a statewide data system that ties student performance to specific teacher input – and to the school of education that prepared that teacher. On her watch, the state has provided annual $2 million grants to low-performing schools that have a demonstrated plan for turn-around. And she has expanded teacher preparation beyond the standard range of players and perspectives, leading the way in accrediting new preparation programs housed in museums and other non-traditional venues.”
The last sentence of he press release means that the Board of Regents is willing to let non-traditional providers–like museums and perhaps KIPP and TFA–award masters’ degrees instead of stodgy traditional places like Teachers College and other university-based programs.
Some TC students and faculty are dismayed ad have suggested that they might organize a protest.
The president of Teachers College, Susan Fuhrman, is a member of the board of directors of Pearson, the testing behemoth. Personally, I think this is a conflict of interest, but that’s just me.
To see a different side of Teachers College, once proud bearer of the progressive education banner, read this article by the distinguished psychologist Edmund Gordon, who says that the current misuse of standardized testing is “immoral.”
Dr. Fuhrman, Chancellor Tisch, pease read what Professor Gordon wrote. Then look in the mirror.
PS: I received a 2011 alumnae achievement award from TC. When I learned that Cathie Black–the recently named Chancellor of the NYC public schools–had been invited to deliver the keynote at the event, I declined to attend. Her resume proved that neither education nor experience was necessary. she was a refutation of all i thought TC stood for. She was fired before the event.
A proposal to turn the public schools of York, Pennsylvania, into an all charter district was overwhelmingly rejected.
Do you think someone told them that the Néw Orleans Recovery School District is the lowest rated district in Louisiana?
Louisiana is expanding the number of students attending voucher schools to 8,000, despite a court ruling that it is unconstitutional to take money from the dedicated public school fund for non-public schools.
Bobby Jindal thinks either that the law doesn’t mean him or that he knows more than the courts and can ignore their rulings. (L ‘etat c’est moi.)
Which schools get vouchers?
New Living Word got the most. It won an additional 117 vouchers, bringing its total to 214.
A Reuters article described the top voucher school as follows:
“The school willing to accept the most voucher students — 314 — is New Living Word in Ruston, which has a top-ranked basketball team but no library. Students spend most of the day watching TVs in bare-bones classrooms. Each lesson consists of an instructional DVD that intersperses Biblical verses with subjects such chemistry or composition.” It did not receive 314 vouchers last year.
Plus:
“Family Christian Academy will increase from 43 to 104 while Claiborne Christian Academy will increase from 23 to 32. Northeast Louisiana Baptist School will increase from 19 to 20, Old Bethel Christian Academy from 20 to 25, Our Lady of Fatima from 40 to 59, Prevailing Faith Christian Academy from fewer than 10 to 17, Quest School from fewer than 10 to 12 and St. Frederick High School from 11 to 14.”
EduShyster here tells the heartwarming story of how DFER tried to elect one of their own in Boston (white, privileged, no experience or knowledge of public schools necessary) and lost.
If you recall, the California Democratic Party called out DFER as a front for Republican and corporate interests.
Here are the key paragraphs of the resolution:
“Whereas, the political action committee, entitled Democrats for Education Reform is funded by corporations, Republican operatives and wealthy individuals dedicated to privatization and anti-educator initiatives, and not grassroots democrats or classroom educators; and
“Whereas, the billionaires funding Students First and Democrats for Education Reform are supporting candidates and local programs that would dismantle a free public education for every student in California and replace it with company run charter schools, non-credentialed teachers and unproven untested so-called “reforms”;
“THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED, that the California Democratic Party reaffirms its commitment to free accessible public schools for all which offer a fair, substantive opportunity to learn with educators who have the right to be represented by their union, bargain collectively and have a voice in the policies which affect their schools, classrooms and their students…”
