A teacher writes to challenge the claim that teachers are never fired and to explain why it is wrong to judge teachers by test scores:
“Teachers do get fired. 3 in my own school in recent memory. Tenure only provides teachers the right to due process before they are let go for poor performance. And, how do you judge me on my students’ performance? I’m a special education teacher. I teach students with autism, with mental illness like schizophrenia, with dyslexia, with ADHD. I work just as hard as the AP Stats teacher down the hall. Guess what? A student getting electric shock treatments three times a week doesn’t have very good ACT/SAT scores. Neither does a student with autism with limited language skills. Neither does a child who reads letters upside down and backwards. Neither does a chronically truant child. Or one who comes lives in a home with drug addicted parents. Or who has post traumatic stress due to sexual abuse or parents who fight day and night. All of these things affect test scores, and all are beyond teachers’ control.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Agree totally with points made.
Consider the AP STAT teacher who has a class of seniors who have already gotten into college and have decided they are no longer interested in their AP test scores but would rather relax the last term of high school.
Education deform reality check no. 377,984,994,752. Well done!
In my latest department meeting, we were discussing second data points and grading rubrics for final assessments of student work. After much back and forth of how to make this work in the teacher’s favor, I couldn’t stand it any more. I had to break it to my uninformed colleagues that it is not suppose to work in our favor. The game was rigged by it’s very design and is an invalid measurement of our teaching. As soon as I was finished talking, we went back to discussing rubrics and data points.
I agree with your comments. I have had 4th grade students who had similar needs as your students, but they were those who didn’t qualify for services for whatever reason. Usually the district decided that they didn’t want enough students “identified” as having special needs.
In Ohio, the subgroups have to be of a certain number to “count” in the over all state report card. So we kept our numbers low.
Therefore, we were told to differentiate for all students. So we each had 1-3 students that required special ed planning and CSP (child study process) meetings to record our concerns and to direct the teacher on appropriate interventions to use in our differentiated classrooms. We did have a small Special Ed unit, but they would not hire enough Special Ed teachers. Ours was very overworked and couldn’t take on more.
Our secret was to spread the kids around so that scores would be counted among the regular ed scores. So, if the district had 2 kids per 4th grade teacher (there were 5 teachrs) who simply couldn’t pass the OAA, that would count as a score of 92% passage in a class of 25. 92% keeps us in the high functioning range, but the AYP scores sometimes took a hit. Having so many variations in instructional levels in a classroom, it wasn’t easy to keep the upper students working at full capability while attending to so many with other needs. For a 92% passage rate included much intensive individualized instruction for 5-8 students per classroom.
This testing process has been so riddled with unnecessary punitive actions. It is unfair to most students, except for the very high functioning chikdren . And they have to endure the kinds of teaching techniques that we are forced to utilize. As I have said before, our district has scored exceptionally well. Using these strategies helped us attain those scores, but I feel the best classes, the best teaching, the most wholehearted learning took place before these tests were in place. Isn’t it “interesting” how our brand of differentiation wasc”successful” on the surface, but otherwise punitive to so many.
Here is today’s NPR report on college entrance testing.
http://www.npr.org/2014/02/18/277059528/college-applicants-sweat-the-sats-perhaps-they-shouldn-t
Super Reformer says — “Sounds like EXCUSE MONGERING to me!!!”
He then flies from his perch on high, blasting the school with his Rays of Rigor until it is torn asunder and replaced with a lucrative new charter!
Deb said: “This testing process has been so riddled with unnecessary punitive actions. It is unfair to most students, except for the very high functioning children.”
Actually, it hurts them too. As you said, AYP suffered because of the way students were being processed (with “hitting the target” being treated as if it were of primary importance, even if it wasn’t objectively the most important thing).
My son is pretty bright — he scored a “3” and “4” on his NECAP tests for Reading and Math (the NECAP test is on a 1-4 scale). Still, he was forced to take “Literacy” and “Numeracy” classes in the 7th grade, IN ADDITION TO ENGLISH AND MATH. Turns out ALL students had to do this — they were ALL being “doubled up” on reading and math. No administrator would admit to it but everyone knew why this policy had come into being — reading and math are tested. Whatever the two classes were that my son was being denied so that he might double down on reading and math, we can all rest assured that they were NOT tested subjects. This narrowing of the curriculum hurts all students.
“Fear not!”, says Pearson. “We have tests for ALL the subjects, or we will soon! Just lobby your school board to make them mandatory and we’re SURE those courses will be given priority!”
Pearson et al are laughing themselves all the way to the bank, all the while winking at each other and grinning ear to ear about the dum-dums who have fallen into their clever trap. It must be easy for them to believe that the American people are so abysmally stupid that they DESERVE to be fleeced. You can almost hear them justify their actions to each other with jovial remarks of “you can’t teach a Sneech!”
As a social studies teacher, I get that comment a lot: “We NEED to have these new standardized tests for social studies, so that social studies will get respect!” My response to those people (and they are sometimes other social studies teachers): we should be LEADING the way for something better, not FOLLOWING all of the other lemmings off the cliff of standardized tests.
Many in my field, world languages, say the same–that we will get respect and protect our programs through testing. Now we are charged with writing our own student growth goals (and the correlating assessments) for the new teacher evaluation. I’ll play their game just for the chance to write a goal that can’t be multiple choice tested. Watch my students pass presentational speaking and interpersonal communication! Though of course it would help to get class size down from 30 to 20 for that to really work.
I agree that the upper level students don’t get what they need. And , as a teacher, you feel terrible, but with limited time and resources and unreasonable demands, choices have to be made. The best efforts to give children enrichment are made but it is seldom enough.
The increased class sizes that occur in some districts add to this problem. The things that need to happen to provide district access don’t always provide individual success. I personally couldn’t have spent more hours than I did. All students had multiple opportunities to read on level with peers in 5 reading groups (the demand was that the lower two groups had to have daily direct instruction) and they also had multi-level opportunities to work on plays, informational texts, activities, and projects.
The rules get in the way of actually teaching many times. I went home most days feeling worn out, wishing I could have done more, and always concerned. There is an added stress that comes along with trying to suppress the low morale among teachers towards an administration that had the main goal of “no matter what you do, it is inadequate” for 90% of the staff every single day.
This kind of staff “rigor” wears people out in every facet of life…academic, spiritual, physical, mental, psychological, educational, …
A huge self-imposed requirement our staff shared was to never let the students know how miserable our principal made life at our school.
deb, for so many of the staff that retired/left with me, we thought the problem was either ourselves or we were the only school to be like this. It wasn’t until I started reading Diane’s blog, that I realized … this toxicity was not isolated to my school. You taught elementary, I secondary, but we, and others, say the same thing!
“A huge self-imposed requirement our staff shared was to never let the students know how miserable our principal made life at our school.” lol We had that code, too, until a new assistant principal came aboard and actually barged into colleagues’ classrooms and yelled at them.The students were embarrassed for the teachers for the administrator’s disrespect and lack of common courtesy.
At the end, I just felt I no longer could put up with the charade every day. I had teenagers crying in public and private over how “stupid” they were, how their test scores were never good in math, no matter what they did. In front of the students, I was most positive, but inside I knew they deserved something better than what our education system was giving them.
Yes. I felt as if I were becoming a hollow almost robotic creature. Others felt the same. It continues with the staff still there. Most of those who were there in 2005, when our principal arrived have moved on…retired, found other jobs, quit teaching completely.
She is noted for her ability to humiliate teachers and students in front of each other and parents and to humiliate parents in the same fashion. Twice, we have tried to rein her in. It has done no good. The administration keeps her. Most parents don’t like her either. Yet, there it stands.
Not only did the more experienced teachers leave after having tried to resolve her issues, but, the younger teachers there have been victimized by her hatefulness.
They continue to “hold it together” for the children. It is, quite simply, insane.
The problem for advanced students is most acute in mathematics and the sciences. A high school student is likely to be exposed to great writing by a master like Shakespeare, Elliot, or my youngest son’s favorite Hemingway. The student of mathematics will not be given access to any mathematics of comparative value in high school.
“We NEED to have these new standardized tests for social studies, so that social studies will get respect!” HUH? Is there nothing of intrinsic value anymore, unless it’s associated with “points”?
Why would your peers encourage following? Do they want to be as miserable as Math and English teachers who were sacrificed at the corporate altar, watching as their subjects’ hearts were ripped out? You have my sympathy …and respect.
Your questions are all questions I have asked these other teachers. I keep being told that, “It’s going to happen anyway, so we should support it.” The so-called inevitability bothers me to no end. I’m especially bothered since we’re social studies and the whole idea (I thought) was to help students become socially conscious and democratically engaged. In my opinion, these ridiculous standardized tests are the exact opposite of that. But I’m a voice crying in the wilderness, I guess.
I was our district rep to study the social studies standards in Ohio k-12. It was ridiculous. The social studies focus was in 5th – 8th grade. The credited requirements were minimal. The presenter shook his head. He gave us tips on how to use the ODE site to grasp an idea of what might be available in the way of shared lessons and/or how to use the site…but it wasn’t working correctly. I haven’t checked since retiring. That was 2011-12. It bothered me that American history was of minimal significance.
Speaking of Spec Ed and meaningless testing, the county Severely Handicapped teacher down the hall had to administer a test on the Periodic Table of the Elements to all her students, whose IQs were in the 50s and below. The next year, the county spent tens of thousands of dollars to buy a program, so she could teach her students Algebra and Geometry.
I kid you not. I would often visit her classroom, and she showed me the elements test and all the materials for the alg and geo lessons. This kind of insanity is what drove me to retire earlier than I had intended; my own version was having to teach all the steps to solving a quadratic equation by completing the square to a student who had a 77 IQ and whom psychologists had written up that he had trouble following anything beyond two steps. Such craziness.
Disgusting. In my opinion, it is how we treat members of society with the greatest needs–children, the elderly, and the disabled–that shows what a society is made of. At this point, by that indication, our society is terminal.
I hear ya. I hope you are young enough to stay in education and can see a change away from this authoritarian style.
Permit me to share something with you. I knew I wasn’t leaving because I was burnt out, but I couldn’t put my finger on exactly what I was suffering from. That bothered me. Then I read the following
http://neatoday.org/2012/02/07/how-bad-education-policies-demoralize-teachers/?utm_source=nea_today_express&utm_medium=email&utm_content=demoralize&utm_campaign=120314
That’s what has been happening! Demoralization, not just to teachers but to students, too! When I left, I left a school so demoralized.
I was lucky, I could escape the insanity and demoralization, but my colleagues who stayed could not. There was such a sadness behind their eyes, when I finally told my colleagues I was retiring. They were happy for me, but neither of us could voice the truth behind our sadness. They were hoping things would change, but I knew things would not change, in fact worsen.
The feeling I got from my colleagues when I left was that I was the lucky one to have my prison sentence over. And these good people were great teachers. Things must change.
Yes. My colleagues are happy for me, knowing that I got out “just in time” at the end of 2012. The sad thing is that there are the same and worse problems. The eyes and pained souls are still there, swathed in the hope that it might get better, but knowing that it won’t before they and students have been subjected to much worse.
I’m 40. I don’t know if that’s “young enough” to see the change happen. I hope so, but, frankly, I’m not holding my breath.
The famous VAM formulas supposedly account for certain situations (e.g., excessive absences, etc.). They never have claimed to account for the myriad of situations that affect HUMAN BEINGS like the ones mentioned above.
Oh, I forgot- nothing matters except what happens in school.
The reformers believe that because they have absolutely no idea (nor do they care) what happens to the HUMAN BEINGS outside of school. They can’t measure that so it must not count, correct?
It’s not a matter of “when”. There is no “when.” There is no measurement.
The tests are not “measuring” devices. So many have been told/brought up to believe that these tests “measure” something. They can’t as they are not designed to be a “measuring” device even though they purport to “numerize” and “scientize” the assessment process.
Even many here, although against these abominations of educational malpractices that are educational standards and standardized testing for all sorts of the reasons, don’t seem to be able to correct their thinking in regards to the sheer errors and the resulting invalidities that render the whole process mute, ephemeral or as Noel Wilson states “vain and illusory”.
I’ll challenge all here, again, to read and understand, and if you can rebut and refute* what Wilson has proven about the errors and invalidities in his “Educational Standards and the Problem of Error” found at: http://epaa.asu.edu/ojs/article/view/577/700
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 logical 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 crap in-crap 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’ 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.
Señor Swacker: so we’re back to the “vain and illusory” are we?
Next thing we know, you’ll be telling us that the brilliant polymath John Tukey [Bell Labs & Princeton University] was on to something:
“When the right thing can only be measured poorly, it tends to cause the wrong thing to be measured, only because it can be measured well. And it is often much worse to have a good measurement of the wrong thing—especially when, as is so often the case, the wrong thing will in fact be used as an indicator of the right thing—than to have poor measurements of the right thing.” [Jim Horn & Denise Wilburn, THE MISMEASURE OF EDUCATION, 2013, p. 147]
Or that Art Costa, professor emeritus at Cal-State Fullerton, wasn’t out of his mind:
“What was once educationally significant, but difficult to measure, has been replaced by what is insignificant and easy to measure. So now we test how well we have taught what we do not value.” [aforementioned work, p. 1]
Next thing you know, you’ll try to convince us that when leaders of the “new civil rights movement” of our time send their children to, let’s say, Harpeth Hall [Michelle Rhee] or U of Chicago Lab Schools [Rahm Emanuel] or Lakeside School [Bill Gates], that their “most precious assets” don’t learn world-class 21st century grit and rigor by withstanding the same sort of withering constant barrage of high-stakes standardized tests just like those they mandate for OTHER PEOPLE’S CHILDREN in public schools.
[Speak up, Michelle, I can’t hear… They don’t have to undergo that punitive hazing ritual? I let the cat out of the bag? Ok, next step…]
Señor Swacker, ignore my last two paragraphs. It must be the pernicious influence of all those shrill and strident voices in favor of a “better education for all” that infest this blog.
I humbly submit to the Rheeality Distortion Field emitted by She Who Must Flee Debates.
😎
I have a little bit of a problem with the argument that teachers get fired and this is sign that we are policing ourselves. It has the tinge of conviction by accuse. Kind of like saying, “Aren’t you happier since you stopped using drugs.” It seems like we are participating in the belief that we needed to be pushed around. It has the quality of a child who is choosing their punishment… We didn’t do anything wrong. All we did was remind people that there is poverty and racial segregation in the united States. Corporate reform was kind enough to step in and shape the debate in a way that blames teachers. I think the teachers that need to be dismissed are few and far between. Even doing the math in my own school, out of 35 teachers maybe 1 could be doing another job… But even that person I see doing more to benefit kids than most first year teachers… (No offense to first year teachers, the arch of teaching is long, and you are growing).
I think teachers fall into three categories, new, in stride, and burnt out. (I think I could write an essay about that alone-which I may). None of these categories need threat of dismissal to be improving- should they need improvement at all. I thinks it’s sad that there were three teachers fired from your school. However, I have to wonder, did they deserve it? Was their true failure not in teaching, but in failing to be aligned to the politics of reform, the principal, the dominate clique of the school…?
so we’re back to the “vain and illusory” are we?….
Pardon my tangent…
Vain and illusory seems to describe “Status”. Status when viewed through Maslow
eyes, isn’t the highest form of intellectual maturity.
Could that be the game plan? Look at how many taller children (disguised as adults),
chase status, or bemoan the loss of illusory status. It’s good for the PTB market.
Keep them puppies running in place so they will never catch us.
The test thing is a real gas. Good thing the college tests, one by one, elective by elective,
leading to certification, were valid…
Reblogged this on 21st Century Theater.