A few days ago, I published a post about a paper by Kirabo Jackson, explaining that the non-cognitive effects of teachers are often more important than the test scores of their students.
As it happened, mathematician Robert Berkman read the paper and explains here why it is another nail in the coffin of value-added measures, which judge teacher quality by the rise or fall of student test scores.
Berkman writes:
In this post, I’m going to examine one of the studies that no doubt had a profound impact on the members of AMSTAT that led them to this radical (but self-evident) conclusion. In 2012, the researcher C. Kirabo Jackson at Northwestern University published a “working paper” for the National Bureau of Economic Research, a private, nonprofit, nonpartisan research organization dedicated to promoting a greater understanding of how the economy works (I’m quoting here from their website.) The paper, entitled “Non-Cognitive Ability, Test Scores, and Teacher Quality: Evidence from 9th Grade Teachers in North Carolina” questions the legitimacy of evaluating a teacher based on his/her students’ test scores. Actually, it is less about “questioning” and more about “decimating” and “annihilating” the practice of VAM.
He adds:
What should be noted is that Jackson is not an educational researcher, per se. Jackson was trained in economics at Harvard and Yale and is an Associate Professor of Human Development and Social Policy. His interest is in optimizing measurement systems, not taking positions on either side of the standardized testing debate. Although this paper should reek with indignation and anger, it makes it’s case using almost understated tone and is filled with careful phrasing like “more than half of teachers who would improve long run outcomes may not be identified using test scores alone,” and “one might worry that test-based accountability may induce teachers to divert effort away from improving students’ non-cognitive skills in order to improve test scores.”
But lets get to the meat of the matter, because this paper is 42 pages long and incorporates mind-boggling statistical techniques that account for every variable one might want to filter out to answer the question: are test scores enough to judge the effectiveness of a teacher? Jackson’s unequivocal conclusion: no, not even remotely.
The only puzzle is why Arne Duncan keeps shoving VAM down the throats of states and school districts.
PS: Berkman added his credentials in a comment:
“I’m a math teacher who has worked with pre-K through college aged students for 30 years. My degrees are in Urban Studies, and Elementary Math Education. I have also done extensive work in neuroscience and numeracy, as well as technology and education, not to mention cognitive science.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Another NBER working paper referenced as evidence?
The last one that was featured in the blog was roundly criticized for not having been published in a peer reviewed journal. No doubt this one will also be criticized for the same reason.
The earlier NBER study was discussed here: https://dianeravitch.net/2014/02/03/that-chetty-study-fire-more-teachers-with-flawed-data/
Like this report has gotten the same high profile, let’s-drag-it-out-again, we-can’t-say-this-enough attention as has been repeatedly given to Chetty et al., from Obama on down? When “reformers” are constantly garnering media hype for reports from their belief-tanks, I don’t have a problem with dueling white papers.
I like the name ‘belief tanks’, instead of ‘think tanks’. It fits what they actually are. I will remember to use it in the future.
“Belief Tanks”
Oh, that is very, very good.
Except the NBER is not really a “think tank,” in that it is not composed of former politicians turned lobbyists, and it does not pay its authors lavish salaries to promote a cause. Krugman is a member of the NBER; here is his explanation of its history and work – http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/04/22/understanding-the-nber/?_php=true&_type=blogs&_r=0
Regardless of the type of tank it is, I have a serious problem with the fact that research in education by economists trumps research in education by educational researchers. No one listens to AERA now.
When it has become perfectly acceptable to supplant research methods on child development with research methods on corn growth, despite an ever growing body of data indicating that children and teachers cannot be conflated with corn and farmers, it’s apparent that nothing dazzles free market neo-liberals more than propaganda, profits and genuflection.
And BTW, I had a really great 4th trade teacher. I earned three college degrees, and I’ve been working in my field for 45 years, but I still can’t afford one Starbucks latte per week.
I was not thinking NBER. I agree that NBER is neither a ‘think tank’ or a ‘belief tank’. I was thinking Heritage Foundation, Cato Institute, and Center For American Progress.
VAM may be based on mathematics, but the application of the concept to human interaction is misguided at best. It is tough to find a complete presentation of the actual models used in each state. I’ve been trying to piece together Ohio’s model. VAM might work great for cars on an assembly line, but laughable as an accurate measure of teacher effectiveness. The tests upon which the data are based are unproven and not evidence based. The models fail to include typical parameters such as attendance and student home life. And what is “negative value add”? Teachers steal knowledge from students?
But the issue is not whether the critiques of VAM are peer reviewed. No, it is VAM in education that needs peer reviewed.
VAM = VOODOO
I am considering marketing a new teacher evaluation tool. It will save the country countless millions of dollars which can be better spent on art supplies, musical instruments, maps, sports equipment, and science supplies. My new and improved tool produces results that are just as valid and reliable as the complex models used in VAM evaluations.
For only $49.95, one complete kit includes:
(1) Prime Effects sleep mask (blindfold);
(1) Large diameter dart board with only four colored sections: RED (50% coverage) = developing; BLUE (25% coverage) = Ineffective; YELLOW (20% coverage) = Effective; GREEN (5% coverage) = Highly Effective. Note: Custom boards can be ordered with coverage percentages that fit your management style; school colors available as well).
(25) darts w/adhesive labels for teacher names
(1) Rule book (No peeking. No re-dos)
And yet here we are in NC facing our very real situation of VAM in our NC Educator Effectiveness System and EVAAS http://www.dpi.state.nc.us/effectiveness-model/evaas/
Timing is everything.
You might want to do some research on the NBER: it’s not even close to being a “think tank” in that it is not composed of former politicians turned lobbyists and the authors don’t make money for sharing their white papers. Read about the NBER here: http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/04/22/understanding-the-nber/?_php=true&_type=blogs&_r=0
Kirabo Jackson published a paper last year that demonstrated that the effects tracking in middle school made it virtually impossible to use VAM for middle school teachers. It was also excellent.
“Actually, it is less about “questioning” and more about “decimating” and “annihilating” the practice of VAM.”
Well to see the “nukular* bombing of the educational standards and standardized test which totally, completely obliterates any sense logical foundation of those malpractices read Noel Wilson.
*ol georgie porgie had a way with words, which way I’m not sure, but he had a way.
“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.
Duane, No doubt your passion for the Noel Wilson approach comes from a ‘good place’. Just a gratuitous request: Duane, enough hitting us over the head with with Noel Wilson. By the tenth hammer ‘whomp’, numbness sets in, eyes glaze over and “The law of diminishing returns” makes itself manifest.
John A, in his defense (not that he needs it) I think Duane is hoping to catch new readers each time he posts it. There are casual Ravitch blog readers and drive by comments—-I think he just doesn’t want to miss them. (I just giggle when I see it. . .because it is pretty often, as you point out).
TAGO.
JB-
Your benign approach is one to which I will ascribe. Admittedly, you have more patience than I ! Regardless, I should have waited to post until post coffee 🙂
john
White noise to some. Shear profundity to many.
Never deny a person their passion (as long as its legal)
John,
Joanna is quite correct in her observation about new readers and getting a message out.
And there are another couple of reasons. When a study is so damning of current practices as is Wilson’s the powers that be will do what they can to minimize it’s effect. The best way to do that is to not even acknowledge that it exists and to confine it to the “dustbin of history”. Well I’m tring to not let that happen with what is arguably the most significant writing about the teaching and learning process in the last half century.
It was Goebbels who said ““If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.” If what he said is true, and I think that has been borne out by the edudeformers and their lies and deliberate misstatements about public education, just think what happens as we turn that statement around to ““If you tell a big enough TRUTH and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.”
And that is the function of this blog, to keep illuminating and repeating the truth about public education.
I’m surprised that I have posted this comment so many times but I see a need to in many of the comments that I read. I’m trying to counteract the misconceptions and outright falsehoods that make up public education discussions.
I hope that helps all understand why I post this so often.
Duane
P.S. I have no passion for Noel Wilson-we’ve only briefly exchanged emails. I do have passion for his logical thoughts and ideas concerning the epistemological and ontological shortcomings of much of what we do in education.
John,
Also please feel free to ignore the bulk of my posts with my summary but at least read to the link.
Also, have you read Wilson’s work? What are your thoughts on his work?
One other thing. We continually debate what I consider secondary and tertiary problems-length of tests, types of questions, the grading/marking of answers, etc. . . . And although it is good to challenge these educational malpractices at that level, I believe it is even more important to destroy educational standards and standardized testing at its foundations, the epistemological and ontological conceptualizations that are used to rationalize the practices as being valid and useful-they’re not and Wilson destroys those rationalizations.
Destroy the beast at it’s head and it can’t survive very long.
John,
See the next entry by MathVale and the responses. The discussion is dealing with what I consider secondary or tertiary level problems which in discussing those level problems serve to reinforce that standardized testing is okay and just needs tweeking on the edges. Well it’s not okay and is in fact completely invalid. Let’s quit reinforcing the malpractice discourse and focus on the primary concerns of validity and the unethicalness of the whole process.
My effort is not to validate the tests through discussion. I believe VAM as applied to humans is fundamentally flawed. The very real problem we grapple with in our student population is negative growth. I want someone more knowledgeable in the study of VAM to tell me what negative growth means. My argument is that with the current approach, negative growth is absurd in the rational sense. It is an anomaly; a paradox; a defect that needs explained by the proponents of the VAM models. I believe, by extension, that negative growth reveals a more general invalidation of the entire model as applied to students.
I have yet to find a good explanation of “negative value add” in the VAM models. When students fail to try on the tests or have low classroom attendance, VAM measures that go down are an issue. To me, this sounds like negative length or reverse entropy. Yet it impacts the classroom score. Does that mean teachers take knowledge AWAY from students? Did students lose knowledge due to being exposed to the standards and content?
No, the concept is very simple. If 4th grade students are supposed to, on average, learn a year’s worth of material (skills, knowledge), then if a given teacher’s classroom does worse on a good standardized test when compared against identical kids in other classrooms, then we might see that that classroom learned only 6 months’ of material in a year’s time. This is negative value-added — the kids did learn something, but they fell further behind their peers with similar backgrounds in the classroom down the hall.
“Compared against identical kids in other classrooms…” Did you take time to think about this absurdity you just wrote? This is the crux of all problems with the new “reform”- these are HUMAN BEINGS not robots or widgets. Each child is unique and therefore cannot be compared, no matter how good a test may be. There are a million factors that may affect a student’s day-to-day academic performance: sleep, hunger, new friends, problems with parents, possible move, possible divorce, drugs, alcohol, unemployment, hormones, substitutes in classroom, health problems, death in family, illness in family etc. There are no identical kids-period.
Let me rephrase. If a student earns a 60 on a pretest then a 70 on the post test, they have gained some measure of growth (as represented by the test). The have positive “value” added to their growth as represented by the test. Now compared to “equivalent” students through the magic of counterfactuals, they have less relative POSITIVE growth. This is not negative growth. The teacher still delivered some knowledge, just not enough to arbitrarily compare against his/her peers.
Now, what if a student earns a 60 on the pretest but a 50 on the post test? What does than mean in the models? The teacher took growth away from the students? That knowledged gained was lost in the minds of students? Students became less intelligent? This situation is very possible in challenged populations of students. I have yet to hear a good explanation of the validity of negative growth.
WT… Your simple recipe does not address where the children in classroom ‘X’ started, as compared to where the children in classroom ‘Y’ started at the beginning of the year.
It also might be true that the children in the classroom who performed better on the standardized test had a teacher that wasted the most class time on test prep. In that case, I would argue that the children with the lower scores probably received a better and more appropriate education than the children with the higher scores.
Your argument also starts with the premise that what is evaluated on a corporate designed cookie cutter standardized test is what students should be spending all of their time learning.
Are you a teacher?
Negative growth in VAM is a reductio ad absurdum argument.
Assume the VAM properly reports the year’s growth for the targeted teacher for a student.
That student shows negative growth on the post-test minus pretest.
That student then lost knowledge.
This has to be knowledge measured from the pretest as a baseline.
But the pretest measures knowledge not yet gained.
So the student lost knowledge they never gained.
So VAM cannot be properly measuring a year’s growth for the targeted teacher for that student.
Negative growth makes no sense.
Take for example geometry. Say a student scores less on the post-test than pretest. They have “lost” geometry knowledge measured on the pretest. But that is knowledge yet to be taught. So how can they lose knowledge they haven’t been taught?
WT, the kids are never perfectly matched. VAM is high order nonsense. Why are we the only nation in the world doing it?
I don’t think Vilified And Malfunctioned assessment has anything to do with student’s academic knowledge whatsoever. It’s a magical formula for fixing teachers.
TAGO!
What’s a good standardized test? I’ve taken, and excelled, on the DAT and MCAT. By taking practice tests alone, I increased my score by 30 percent.
I understand the convenience of your neat, clean number: 70% vs. 60%; it gives you a phony, but ostensibly objective number to fire people away. However, if your model judges one teacher high one year and low the other year, it’s a pretty useless system, save the ability for vindictive administrators to assign low-performing students to a targeted teacher.
In my state, Comissioner Deborah Gist would agree that VAM isn’t enough BY ITSELF, but that it would be fine to use VAM as ONE PORTION of a teacher’s evaluation.
Is there anything about this study that would challenge the use of VAM as ONE PORTION of a teacher evaluation?
Only that VAM is unproven when applied to teacher effectiveness. The questions are wrong. It should not be “are the studies ABOUT VAM objectively verified?” but rather “is VAM in education itself objectively proven?”. So far, the answer to the latter is “no”.
So why not use VAM for a portion of a teacher’s evaluation? Maybe in a controlled experiment or well designed observational study. But not a nationwide rollout with careers of very good teachers and the success of future generations on the line. Education should be evidence based but with a realization that even then, dealing with human beings means we don’t throw away our ability to challenge and question.
Right now, VAM severely penalizes teachers who work in the most challenging environments. The models are terribly flawed. The tests are questionable. Valid objections are suppressed through secrecy or force of law. Acceptance of VAM is not by reasoned thought and debate, but by forced politics and coercion.
Duane, enough with the spam comments!
Dr. Ravitch — I’ve not heard middle school math teachers with no actual math degree described as “mathematicians” before. What prompts this description?
WT… If you have already read Duane’s ‘Noel Wilson’ post it takes less than two seconds to scroll past, as I do now, after having read it a couple of times. He is obviously looking for new eyes each time he posts.
No harm done.
I see nothing in this post calling middle school teachers “mathematicians”, she does refer to a mathematician who analyzed results but I do not believe he is a middle school teacher
WT: Actually, that was my bad, as I didn’t include a bio on my blog. I’m a math teacher who has worked with pre-K through college aged students for 30 years. My degrees are in Urban Studies, and Elementary Math Education. I have also done extensive work in neuroscience and numeracy, as well as technology and education, not to mention cognitive science. So give Dr. Ravitch a break: she may have to have her knee replaced!
Sorry, Robert. we posted at the same exact time. I found your bio on LinkedIn.
An MS degree in Mathematics/Elementary Education looks like a dual major to me.
WT: Actually, that was my bad, as I didn’t include a bio on my blog. I’m a math teacher who has worked with pre-K through college aged students for 30 years. My degrees are in Urban Studies, and Elementary Math Education. I have also done extensive work in neuroscience and numeracy, as well as technology and education, not to mention cognitive science. So give Dr. Ravitch a break: she may have to have her knee replaced!
and I’m sorry about the double post: I was trying to edit my last reply and hit the wrong button!
Thanks, Robert Berkman for adding your bio.
I am in Louisville, Kentucky, and they are keeping me very busy.
Robert B
Did they leave you off the list of national thought leaders attending Camp Philos?
NY Teacher: I applied to be the keynote at Camp Philo, but they found the last person on earth who believes in VAM, who promised to explain how it works using finger puppets and a mallet….
Hilarious!
Say huh, WT?
Did you mean me? If so what spam comments?
Unless you mean this:
Reblogged this on David R. Taylor-Thoughts on Texas Education.
An old post from Alan Jones is worth re-reading.
This is the central problem (tragedy) with treating education as a production/manufacturing industry instead of a coping organization (what organizational theorists call education). The goal of a production industry is to reduce variation in processes in order to manufacture a product that customers are certain will perform according to expectations/specifications. In a coping organization you are confronted with uncertain inputs, uncertain processes, and uncertain outcomes. Added to the inability to control inputs, processes, and outcomes, what parents are looking for in schools are instructional programs that increase variation in outcomes—further develop the unique abilities, talents, and interests of their children. For this reason, as Deming attempted to point out, but which our school leadership and political class still don’t understand, is that managing a production industry and managing a school require entirely different set of intellectual and organizational tools. Not understanding the fundamental differences between manufacturing and educating is the reason that all the intellectual and organizational tools—merit base, standards, standardized testing, curriculum alignment—that the Duncan’s, Rhee’s, are implementing will fail, and in fact will result in the dysfunctional outcomes Deming describes in his books—cheating, drop outs, early exiting of teachers, etc. I would add, that the set of intellectual and organizational tools that school leaders require to lead a coping organization—schools—are not taught at all in administrative certification programs. I do provide a full description of these skills in my book: Becoming A Strong Instructional Leaders: Saying No to Business as Usual (Teachers College Press; Amazon and Kindle books).
“. . . managing a production industry and managing a school require entirely different set of intellectual and organizational tools.”
And, might I add, very different goals (as Alan alludes to in his comments regarding variation as a desirable outcome).
Yes schools MUST emphasize variation because its the only way it can work!
poets
accountants
welders
engineers
historians
cartographers
comics
singers
statisticians
doctors
lawyers
future parents
voters
rebels
skateboarders
computer geeks
orthodontists
landscapers
NFL running backs
judges
consultants (sorry)
sculptures
conductors
trumpet players
coaches
referees
song writers
firefighters
community activists
politicians
CEOs
burger flippers
mechanics
electricians
plumbers
astronauts
dreamers
librarians
stockbrokers
pilots
presidents
pioneers
nurses
dancers
construction workers
stay at home moms (or dads)
scientists
teachers!
students
David Coleman
Arne Duncan
Duane Swacker
Harlan Underhill
Bob Shepherd
Diane Ravitch
She Who Should Not Be Named
Kurt Vonnegut
Jonas Saulk
Lebron James
Yet there must be meaning to things like graduating from high school or getting credit in an algebra 2 class. There must be variation (which I often post about), but within that variation there should be some set of minimal abilities associated with education at different levels.
For example, one poster in this thread took having a masters in elementary math education to mean that the person who earned the MA degree has the equivalent of an undergraduate mathematics degree. That may or may not be justified in this particular case, but it certainly would not be justified if why don’t seek to have a common core of knowledge at the heart of the mathematics major across all mathematics departments and a common core of knowledge across all masters in elementary math education.
I would never argue against reasonable, flexible standards.
generated by educators, experts in cognitive learning theory, brain development, and child psychologists, and especially veteran teachers in the trenches.
TE, Robert’s LinkedIn page says: “MS, Mathematics/Elementary Education.” To me, that sounded similar to high school teachers who’ve had a dual major in Math and Secondary Education. It also sounds different to me from what he wrote here, “Elementary Math Education,” as I now wonder if it was a dual major.
Robert, Can you clarify, please?
My point is not about the particulars in this case (at my institution an MA in secondary mathematics education requires almost as much math as an undergraduate mathematics major), but that saying a person has an MA in elementary math education conveys some information because there is assumed to be (correctly, I think) some standardization across institutions that grant those degrees.
You want common core on college campuses, TE? How about we start with a common core of knowledge for economists, to bridge the dichotomy established by the two very different camps of economists who are teaching people economics on college campuses?
As economist Richard Wolff described on Moyers & Company, it’s not a pretty picture. Economists in Economics departments teach people about the wonders of free market capitalism guided by the invisible hand, and those in Business departments teach people how to manipulate and capitalize on free markets etc –which Wolff saw as a huge gap in his own training at Ivy League colleges: .
http://billmoyers.com/episode/encore-taming-capitalism-run-wild-2/
Get your own house in order before telling people how teachers in other fields should be taught.
In my discipline, at least, there is essentially a common core. As part of my duties I transfer credit hours into my institution from colleges and universities around the world. It is an easy job as the course content of core classes in an undergraduate major (typically a couple of courses in microeconomics, a couple of courses in macroeconomics, and a statistics/econometrics course or two) are nearly identical across institutions. The material in a course taken at a different institution may have a different flavor, but the broad topics will typically be the same no matter the institution.
I do think you have too simple a view of economics education. I discuss market failure in virtually every semester long class that I teach and teach one semester long class that focuses on market failure. Macroeconomics is a sub-discipline of economics that is based on market failure, as is environmental economics and public economics. Industrial organization is concerned with, among other things, the use of market power to manipulate the market to a firm’s advantage.
Take up the “simple view” with Harvard/Stanford/Yale trained U Mass Professor Emeritus Wolff.
Most students I’ve worked with take only ONE Econ course and it’s the one thats in the Economics department, How much of your Econ 101 course is lollipops and rainbows and how much is devoted to manipulating markets and market failure?
Most places have two classes: a principles of microeconomics course about markets and individual economic decision makers and a principles of macroeconomics about the economy taken as a whole. In a typical principles of economics text you will find a chapter on externalities and public goods, both areas where markets fail, along with a chapter on oligopoly markets. The macroeconomics class could be argued to be entirely based on market failures.
And where is the info that teaches business practices, including how to manipulate markets, PR, marketing, HR policies, etc?
Law school perhaps.
While TE seeks to impose Common Core on Higher Education, especially in Teacher Ed, that’s contrary to the orthodoxy within his own field.
Folks should look into Heterodox economics. See also, “Economics lecturers accused of clinging to pre-crash fallacies: Academic says courses changed little since 2008 and students taught ‘theories now known to be untrue’ ”
http://www.theguardian.com/education/2013/nov/10/economics-lecturers-accused-university-courses
I have neither the desire nor power to impose anything on anyone. What I did do is point out that there is a common structure to academic disciplines that make them, well, disciplines.
How different are the curriculums in teacher education across different institutions? Here is a list of the core courses required for elementary school teachers at my institution:
Curriculum Learner in the Elementary School
Children’s Literature in the Elementary School
Mathematics for Elementary School Teachers I
Literacy Instruction in the Primary Grades
Literacy Practicum in the Primary Grades
Mathematics for Elementary School Teachers II
Instructional Instructional Approaches for ESOL Learners in the Elementary/Early Childhood Classroom
Literacy Instruction in the Intermediate Grades
Literacy Practicum in the Intermediate Grades
Social Studies in the Elementary Classroom
Science in the Elementary Classroom
Mathematics in the Elementary Classroom
Educational Technology in Elementary/Middle Ed
Instructional Strategies in Physical Education for Elementary Classroom Teachers
Development and Learning of the Young Child
Teaching Exceptional Children and Youth in General Education
Would the accrediting bodies allow a radically different teacher education?
All of the ed schools where I’ve worked have very similar program requirements, with some minor variations.
How about the influence of the Koch brothers in your neck of the woods, including the “Koch Professor in Business Economics”? Yours is not the only college they’ve been buying: “Koch Fueling Far Right Academic Centers At Universities Across The Country” http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2011/05/11/144280/koch-university-takeover/
Would you attribute the similarity in education school programs to some secret common core standards imposed on education schools? Who do you suppose imposed it?
They are based on the standards for teaching, learning and teacher education that were developed by educators in specialized professional associations (SPAs), such as ACEI, NCTE, NCTM, etc., Yes, standards already exist, but they were not externally imposed by non-educators with no K-8 classroom teaching experience, as with the Common Core.
You seem to think that Teacher Ed is a haphazard field thrown together at a whim. It is not. NCATE adopted the standards of the SPAs. States also have standards, and some states partnered with NCATE, such as mine, so all ed schools here are required to meet NCATE standards. Other states did not. In both cases, ed schools can seek NCATE/CAEP accreditation independently.
You are mistaken about my point. It is the common structure across elementary teacher education programs (and economics programs) that give the degrees meaning to those outside of the individual institutions. That structure is lacking in K-12 education.
When I began teaching, my institution admitted ANY in state student with a high school diploma because graduating from high school meant that a student had a strong enough academic foundation to succeed in post secondary education. I think you would agree that graduating from high school no longer has that meaning and my institution no longer has that admission standard. It is not at all clear what graduating from high school does mean in terms of the capabilities of the graduate.
No, standards are not lacking in K-12. The same SPAs that developed standards for teacher education and teaching also developed standards for student learning, which were adopted by states and school districts. The problem is poverty and standards do not fix poverty.
When I studied Educational Administration in the mid 90s, the business model was invading education in my area and it was very much a part of my training, including Deming. I know that most American leaders in business and education have not listened to the wisdom of Deming, but since when was he omitted from Ed Admin courses? What a sin of omission!
Right about Deming. He said that systemic failures are in the system, not the workers. Fix the system. Fix the leadership. We are asking teachers to obey mandates written by non-educators. This is dumb.
Truer ideas were never spoken.
If you don’t mind me asking, how’s the knee?
Thanks for asking
I am wearing a brace, alternating between a walker and a cane. Doing PT.
Seeing knee doctor Tuesday to learn whether I need knee replacement.
You are like the Energizer Bunny.
Thank you for re-posting NY Teacher
You’re welcome. This should be required reading for every corporate reformer who is deluded enough to believe their own hype.
Dr. Ravitch, here is hoping for the best. Let me just tell you that current knee replacements are vastly improved, should the worst be necessary. I had both of mine replaced in 1984. At nearly 60 years old I can still run two miles under 14 minutes. Walter Reed Army Hospital did a fine job, I am sure that current orthopedic surgeons can do as well. I sympathize with the PT, it is akin to torture, but we trust you will carry on.
Part of the VAM scam is the deliberate use of the phrase “student growth” to literally describe nothing more than a gain in test scores between two points in time while capitalizing on the semantic reach of the same phrase “student growth” as understood by almost all teachers.
The proponents of VAM are quite aware that the econometric definition of “growth” is a gain in test scores pre-to-post test and year-to-year. That literal meaning is mangled by adding the adjective to propagate the nonsense impression that tests scores are “objective” indicators of academic achievement.
In education, unlike statistics and economics, discussions of student growth and development are linked in order to capture the very complex, multi-faceted, and typically asynchronous process of maturation. Asynchronous here means that students develop at different rates and with imperfect alignments of physical, intellectual, emotional, social development. In addition, teachers are not the only or the primary influence on the overall growth and development of individual students.
One of the subcontractors in the Reform Support Network–the PR experts hired by USDE to promote the Race to the Top Agenda–indicated that conflating the two meanings of growth is exactly the strategy needed to persuade teachers that VAMs are educationally important and focussed on what matters–student growth. The cynicism is obvious.
For an example of the strange and strained effort to market VAMs as measures of growth see this “oak tree analogy” that has confused and angered many of the teachers who have been inflicted with the non-sense premise that students are plants with no minds of their own. For the false comparison of student “growth” and oak tree “growth” in a training module for teachers…(note the word training)
see Value-Added Research Center. (2012). Teacher effectiveness initiative value-added training oak tree analogy. Madison: University of Wisconsin. Retrieved from Retrieved from http://varc.wceruw.org/tutorials/oak/index.htm
For other examples see Reform Support Network. (2012, December). Engaging educators, Toward a New grammar and framework for educator engagement. Author. Retrieved from http://www2.ed.gov/about/inits/ed/implementation-support-unit/tech-assist/engaging-educators.pdf
For the marketing program from USDE on behalf of SLOs/SGOs–the alternative for VAM for about 70% of teachers see: Reform Support Network. (2012, December). A quality control toolkit for student learning objectives. Retrieved from http://www2.ed.gov/about/inits/ed/implementation-support-unit/tech-assist/slo-toolkit.pd
Reblogged this on rjknudsen.