Peter Greene noted that Minneapolis followed the terrible examples of Los Angeles in 2010 and New York City in 2012 and published teachers’ value-added ratings in the newspapers for all to see. Even Bill Gates objected to this practice and said in a New York Times article that it would harm the relationship between supervisors and teachers to publish job ratings in the paper. Gates said that publishing VAM scores was an act of “public shaming” and no good would come of it.
Greene writes:
As promised, this morning brought the publishing of teacher ratings, including VAM scores, with a map and a pearl-clutching interview with the district’s superintendent. The gap is shocking, alarming, inexplicable.
I’m speaking of course of the apparent gap between Superintendent Bernadeia Johnson’s brain and reality. How does somebody with this gigantic an inability to process data end up as a superintendent of a major school system?
Superintendent Johnson is shocked– shocked!!– to find that under this evaluation system, it turns out that all the worst teachers are working in all the poorest schools! Hmmm– the poorest schools have the worst results. What’s the only possible explanation? Teachers!! [Pause for the sound of me banging my head on the desk.]
“It’s alarming that it took this to understand where teachers are,” Superintendent Bernadeia Johnson said Friday. “We probably knew that, but now have the hard evidence. It made me think about how we need to change our staffing and retention.”
No, Superintendent Johnson. What’s alarming is that you don’t understand a damn thing.
Here’s what you have “discovered.” If you rip the roof off a classroom, the teachers that you send to teach in that classroom will get wet when it rains. You cannot “fix” that by changing the teacher.
But apparently that’s the solution being considered. “Okay,” says Superintendent Johnson. “Over here we have teachers who stay dry and their students stay dry, so we’ll put this dry teacher in the classroom without a roof and have a dry teacher for the wet rooms. That’ll fix it.”
And Superintendent Johnson appears willing to go further. “Maybe we just need to fire the wet teachers and replace them with new, dry ones,” she may be thinking. [Sound of me banging my head against the concrete slab of my basement floor.]
If you want a dry teacher in the room, build a damn roof on it.
Look. Look look look look look. We already know that poverty absolutely correlates with test results. Show me your tests results and I will show you where your low-income students are. Poverty and lack of resources and underfunding put these students in a classroom without a roof, and anybody you put in there with them will be a wet teacher.
Build a damn roof.
Minneapolis public school officials say they are already taking immediate action to balance schools’ needs with teachers’ abilities. The district has created programs to encourage effective instructors to teach at high-needs schools and mentor the newest teachers. District officials say they are providing immediate training for teachers who are deficient. And last year, the district fired more than 200 teachers, roughly 6 percent of its teaching staff.
Wrong. All wrong. In fact, worse than wrong, because you are now in the position of saying, “Hey, over here we have a room with no roof on it, and if you teach in there and get wet when it rains, we intend to punish you. Now– who wants to volunteer to teach in the roofless room?? Also, we’ll probably smear your good name in the local paper, too. Any takers?”
And to the students, sitting in that roofless room day after day, shivering and wet as poverty and lack of resources and insufficient materials and neglect by the central office rain down on them, this sends a terrible message. “We know you are sick and wet in your roofless room,” says the district. “So we are not sending a roof or even ponchos or an umbrella. We’re not going to spend a cent more on you. We’re just going to stand a different teacher up in front of you, to see if she gets wet when it rains.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I am now banging my head on my kitchen table…. How can it be that what Peter Greene so clearly sees and describes is not obvious to everybody, even superintendents?
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Please folks, we need you. Don’t get a concussion.
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Just to be clear, the Minneapolis paper did not publish individual teacher ratings, as some other papers have done. The Mpls paper published various forms of ratings for buildings. That included the percentage of faculty with various amounts of experience. In general, the comparisons showed the higher the percentage of low income students, the lower the experience level.
Meanwhile, here’s a column that will appear in various Mn suburban and rural newspapers over the next week: It praises teachers and encourages families to “thank a teacher” during the Thanksgiving break:
http://hometownsource.com/2014/11/19/joe-nathan-column-geeky-glasses-dumbo-ears-and-a-great-teacher/
Please consider sharing it with others.
Geeky glasses, dumbo ears & a great teacher
One of my saddest and happiest days in school was the first day I wore my glasses, in the third grade. I already disliked my ears, which stuck out, and now I was the only kid with glasses. I felt super ugly and hated the idea of going to school.
Fortunately, a teacher intervened. She was the kind of teacher you might want to thank and encourage your children or grandchildren to thank over the Thanksgiving break. She didn’t just teach the “3’rs.” She also taught compassion.
In the second grade, some youngsters decided that my ears merited the title “Dumbo Joe” or “Dumbo ears.” Some of you may remember Dumbo as a Walt Disney movie character. He was an elephant with very large ears.
This was decades ago, before there was widespread understanding of how much damage bullying could cause. I remember not wanting to go to recess, where some classmates would call out “Here comes Dumbo Joe” or ask if I could fly with my big ears, as Dumbo learned to do.
I thought things would get even worse with glasses. No one else in my class wore them. I don’t remember if we used the word “geek” in those days. But I sure felt different and dumb when I looked at myself in the mirror with those glasses. I strongly resisted them, even when tests showed I’d be able to see much more clearly.
The first day I went to school with glasses was really bad. I tried telling my parents that I was too sick, but they knew the real problem. They tried to encourage me, but I still felt terrible.
Perhaps one of my parents called my teacher to tell her about the glasses and ask for her help. I don’t know. What I do know is that the teacher welcomed me that day and said something nice about the glasses.
She also may have asked a few of my classmates to say something positive about them. I was stunned and shocked when two students asked to look at the glasses during recess. One said they were “cool. “ In fact, one of them said he could see a bit farther with them, too. A few months later, he also had glasses.
All this happened more than five decades ago, but I still remember that teacher’s kindness. Years later I wrote her a “thank you” note.
That brings me to something you might do during the upcoming Thanksgiving and mid-winter holidays.
You might pick 30 minutes to do three things. First, you could describe a teacher who made a big difference in your life. Then you could ask your youngsters (children or grandchildren) to describe something a teacher has done that made them happy or helped them learn more than they thought possible. Then you could write a brief “thank you” note to one or two teachers and help your youngsters do the same. It might be via a formal, handwritten note, or it might be via email.
Either way, you’re modeling something that will help your youngster for years. Thanking others is good both for the person sending and the person receiving the message.
Whether it’s about making it easier to deal with “geeky glasses” or ears sticking out, teaching someone to read or helping them understand an algebra formula, teachers often provide huge help for young people. This is a great time to tell them.
Joe Nathan, formerly a Minnesota public school teacher, administrator and PTA president, directs the Center for School Change. Reactions are welcome at joe@centerforschoolchange.org
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My favorite comment to the blog post:
Jackie ConradNovember 2, 2014 at 9:30 AM
Eureka! Get the Nobel Prize ready for me. The way to cure cancer is to FIRE THE ONCOLOGISTS!!!!
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Agree!!!!
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From the Startribune article:
“The new information is emerging as Minneapolis schools are facing federal scrutiny for an achievement gap between white and minority students that is among the worst in the nation.”
Any details?
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“Shame is not the solution”
“Shame is not the solution
Firing teachers is”
Bill Gates’ revolution
For fixing what’s amiss
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Infuriating. These people need to sub in these schools and get a reality check, for sure.
I am retired and now subbing. Even the best teachers with the best plans have students who present problems beyond their control. Put 30 kids in a class with multiple problems and you have a recipe for disaster.
This superintendent simply has no common sense. Publishing these “results” is cruel and hateful.
Solutions will never occur with this kind of thinking (or lack of thinking).
It is revolting to realize that even one person thinks as this superintendent does, let alone to know that so many are blinded by false assumptions.
Does he realize that there are some schools that have a student population that has no respect for teachers, education, or the law? The kids go to school looking for sex partners and to make drug deals. They don’t care what any adult has to say. They don’t listen, care, or try.
In order to change this, there must be hope. To have hope, the students need to be taught basic skills in reading and math in small groups and have other needs met. When a student can see his/her way up, learning will happen. If the parents don’t respect the school and don’t support learning and behavioral expectations, it is not the “fault” of the teacher! Even one disruptive, time-demanding student can ruin a day or week or class period. Now, multiply that by 30 or more.
I am irate.
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What the headline should read:
Minneapolis’ worst “Data scores” are in the poorest schools, data show
(obviously)
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That is beautiful Mr. Greene, simply beautiful.
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Reblogged this on Lloyd Lofthouse.
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Here’s a column by a current Minneapolis District Public School teacher described the positive impact that public school teachers can have. She also urges a change in the discussion about teaching to acknowledge and respect what teachers can do.
http://www.minnpost.com/community-voices/2014/12/myth-irrelevant-teacher
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Take one of these schools, let them watch Kahn academy videos for a year, and then give Kahn his VAM score.
VAM is just garbage out from the data mining dullards.
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Bernadeia Johnson should be dismissed. Immediately. Either she is lacking the cognitive presence to understand the obvious or she is embracing good politics, not good policy….even if it it hurts students.
That’s just a start. Her enablers need to go with her. MLK said “In times of moral crisis we remember the silence of our friends more than the words of our enemies.”
Remembering…..that’s the key. It falls upon us to remember what people are saying and what they are not saying. The next time I find myself on an interview team I will make a few discreet phone calls. Any applications from anyone like Johnson go straight in the round file.
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But value-added is based on learning gains, not learning levels, so poorest/lowest-achieving schools would not prima facie have lowest value-added. However, we know that teachers in these schools are usually less experienced due to their high turnover rates, so any measure of teacher quality would probably show that legitimately better teachers have self-selected into schools with higher achievement and lower poverty. That pattern is well-established without even bringing VAM into the conversation. Even use the measures preferred by unions–experience and credentials–and you’ll see that teachers in poor and low-achieving schools have less of both.
Is it unreasonable to assert that we need staffing and retention policies that offset the favorability of working with more privileged students?
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Value added is not based on ANYTHING. It is voodoo science. I teach in a high risk school by choice. It is my 14th year teaching. I was my university’s valedictorian. I am NOT a bottom of the barrel teacher, and neither are my colleagues. Do NOT buy into the deformers’ arguments that teachers in high risk schools are deficient.
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This is exactly the narrative from the top down. They don’t study the “data” or question the “data” – as a matter of fact, they could do away with the scoring methods totally and just continue to print this narrative, as this narrative allows the reformers to continue to fail schools and bash/fire teachers. It really makes more room at the bottom to bring in TNTP and TFA and create churn and the “need” for more and more and more charters, union busting, and more TFA. The reformers and governors and lawmakers might as well just cut to the chase and be honest. They want to wipe out an entire mostly middle class profession, of mostly women, and privatize, not from cradle to college/career, but from cradle to prison in the neighborhoods they mostly detest, where the kids and the citizens don’t matter to them.
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Donna, the Minneapolis newspaper article does NOT post individual teacher names and value added scores. The article does make the point that the schools with the most students from low income families tend to have the least experienced faculty – so this is not a pro-TFA article. .
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Joe,
I was confused about that as well. From the main post I expected to find individual teacher scores, but the article reported school averages.
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One thing I’ve realized looking at some of the recent reports from our district on various issues is that the folks writing these have no understanding of data analysis or basic mathematics. They throw some numbers into excel and make a few pie charts that make no sense. For example, recently they published something showing the enrollment of students in different levels of courses – except they lumped all courses together even PE and then double counted students who fit more than one category. They have another one that has multiple pie charts of the time estimate for district/state/federal assessments compared to instructional time.
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Amen!!!!!!! When will these people realize this?????? Every teacher that goes into a classroom without a roof WILL GET WET! Build a roof—-
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I remember reading the test scores of 5 th grade teachers in a Times about 5 years ago and immediately rcognizing the same trend. Not that we didnt know this . Teachers were out spoken back thn about the dubious nature of these tests, AYP, VAM and their use in our professional evaluations. Great pains were taken to obscure the connection socioeconomic factors play in test scores. You see,I do not necessarily accept that these portray the truth about students or teachers in any sense beyond how well they test. I worked as a tutor to Chinese kids while I was in grad school . They were fine students . Earnest . Every Saturady I proctered a practice SAT test. I felt like a sham because my scores were pathetic . Theirs are otherworldly. Many are perfect. At some point students let me in on the secret.
Oh, Miss Deed. We just find out the wrong answers and figure which of the two left is more right. Easy!
If you say so.
When in doubt, Miss, you choose C..
As it turns out they were never as good at reading text , decoding or exposition as my poor high school students in the hood. They tried a lot harder though.
This is about culture too. Fatalistic Latinos are lovers and fighters . Not scholars . As a rule. Their moms say be good. They focus on citenship grades and sometimes disapprove of children who do too well in school. I have seen Latinas sacrafice full rides to UCLA, Berkly and Yale because mom amd pop did not want that for her.
It is different for Asian kids, who get the coat hanger when the slip down to an A-.
This supe has to be a Broadie who missed Deasy’s mantra moment before his great downfall: We are lifting students out of poverty.
What nonsense.
They are actually dooming aging teachers to dire straights and despair .
Check out BigeducationApe@blogger.com to see how investors are ready to liquidate OUR assets ( public schools )
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Wow.
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Miss Deed, please, not in Diane’s living room!
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