In this post, Rick Hess of the American Enterprise Institute in D.C., debates Peter Cunningham, who served as Arne Duncan’s Assistant Secretary for Communications in President Obama’s first term. The subject: Should the federal government mandate teacher evaluation.
Cunningham, not surprisingly, says yes, suggesting that teachers would not be evaluated correctly (I.e. using test scores) without a federal mandate.
Hess opposes a federal mandate.
Here is the beginning of his very fine response:
“School systems should do much better when it comes to teacher evaluation, but Congress should stay far, far away from that process. When it comes to teacher evaluation, where the question is not whether it’s done but how well it’s done, federal requirements are good at spurring commotion and compliance, but lousy at ensuring that complex tasks are done well.
“It’s not like teacher evaluation is a new thing. Schools and systems have done it forever, and they’ve generally been awful at it. Guess what? For all the frustration and furor prompted by the Obama administration’s waivers, little has changed. In states like Florida, Tennessee, and Michigan, 99% of teachers were rated effective before they unveiled new evaluation systems in accord with federal demands—and 98% or 99% were deemed effective under their new systems.”
My thought: Teaching is a very essential profession, even though most teachers are not paid like professionals. If Congress insists on mandates for teachers, why not high-stakes doctor evaluations? Lawyer evaluations? State legislator evaluations? Members of Congress evaluations? Governor evaluations?
For legislators, for example, how often were you absent? How many votes did you miss? Who funded your campaign? Did your votes reflect the wishes of your contributors, or the needs of your constituents? How many bills did you introduce? How many passed? What changes did they produce? Did you help to reduce poverty? Unemployment?
Wonder how doctors and lawyers would respond to evaluations mandated by Congrress?
Diane Ravitch's blog 
The system of teacher evaluation pushed by some – using test scores as a defined percentage of teacher evaluations – is a really bad idea (see http://34justice.com/2014/05/19/the-problem-with-outcome-oriented-evaluations/). But it’s important to distinguish between the faults of that type of system and the concept of standardization in general.
Having a common system of standards, be they for teachers or students, is important. Standards prevent legislators, administrators, and even educators in certain places from ignoring aspects of science and history and subjecting kids to propaganda. Standards also ensure a baseline level of quality. Hess’s arguments against federal mandates are the same arguments often used against important federal standards for labor, civil rights, and other vital issues.
It’s completely legitimate to oppose Congress’s implementation of teacher evaluation standards on the grounds that their recommendations are bad, because they are. But that’s a problem with a specific approach people to teacher evaluation, not a problem with the concept of national standards.
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If standardization is so important, then all of our country’s children should be learning the same things. Do you actually believe that the curriculum is the same in a high poverty urban school as in the schools Gates, Duncan, Koch, etc. children attend?
And don’t try the “standards aren’t the same as curriculum” argument. Standards=curriculum=tests. If teachers don’t follow that equation, their evaluations go down.
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“Standards prevent … from ignoring aspects of science and history and subjecting kids to propaganda.”
Hmmm
Apparently, NONE of Louisiana’s voucher schools are ignoring aspects of science and history.
http://www.opednews.com/Diary/Stop-Governor-Jindal-s-Cre-by-Zack-Kopplin-120716-764.html
Where have you been????
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Unless I’m missing something, Jindal’s push for creationism supports my argument. A large part of the point of national standards is to make sure stuff like creationism isn’t taught in schools.
And to your other point – no, the curriculum is not the same in high- and low-poverty schools, and that’s part of the problem. Well-designed standards are supposed to address that issue as well.
Again, we probably agree that the implementation of standards has been bad. That just doesn’t mean the concept isn’t a good one.
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“we probably agree that the implementation of standards has been bad. That just doesn’t mean the concept isn’t a good one.”
They have national standards in Finland but they aren’t monitored and controlled by the government and/or a corporation like Pearson. The teachers are in charge and the standards are only a list of choices and teachers are in charge of what to teach from that list of standards. They pick and choose and they have total control over how to teach those standards they select.
In addition, there is no mandatory rank and yank testing regime or lock step material that is copyrighted and owned by a corporation that will profit off decisions made way above education and the classroom environment.
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That sounds pretty solid to me. I think one of the biggest issues with the Common Core, for example, is that there are way too many standards, and I think making sure teachers have autonomy is critical. Any reading you recommend on Finland’s implementation of standards?
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Sorry, Ben, you ARE missing something. We have the national standards in Louisiana and we have religious schools teaching creationism with public money. Perhaps national standards would ensure stuff like that isn’t taught in schools were it not for the fact that the reformers keep churning out chaos. Not content to tell public schools what and how to teach, they push unregulated charter and voucher schools. You can’t have it both ways. Just having national standards does not ensure what is taught in places no one is monitoring.
To your point about the CCSS including way too many standards, they were promoted nationally as fewer, clearer, higher.
It’s all a big mess.
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Robert, you’re not contradicting anything I wrote. The issues you’re writing about reiterate two points on which I believe we agree:
1) Standards aren’t a panacea and can’t prevent other problems in education, including the push for unchecked charter proliferation and the use of school vouchers.
2) Standards haven’t been implemented well, and Common Core’s rollout has been extremely problematic and counterproductive.
Again, however, neither of those things mean that the idea of national standards is a bad one. That good standards have value is the only point I was making.
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“Having a common system of standards. . . . Standards also ensure a baseline level of quality.”
Tell ya what, Ben, get back to me after you’ve read and understood Noel Wilson’s complete destruction of the concept of “educational standards” and it’s accompanying standardized testing. If you don’t change your mind then I’d like to hear why Wilson is not correct in his arguments. Feel free to contact me either through a response to this post or email me at dswacker@centurytel.net as I’ve been searching for a decade and a half and haven’t found a single logical rebuttal/refutation.
See: “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.
1. A description of a quality can only be partially quantified. Quantity is almost always a very small aspect of quality. It is illogical to judge/assess a whole category only by a part of the whole. The assessment is, by definition, lacking in the sense that “assessments are always of multidimensional qualities. To quantify them as unidimensional 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 the descriptive information about said interactions is inadequate, insufficient and inferior to the point of invalidity and unacceptability.
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. And 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 attempts to measure “’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.
By Duane E. Swacker
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Ben
There is a response awaiting moderation that I’d appreciate that you read and comment on.
Thanks,
Duane
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Hey Duane,
Where? Sorry, I don’t see one. Thanks!
Ben
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Standards are a two edge sword. Poorly written or overly restrictive standards hinder progress and innovation. Once a terrible or archaic standard becomes established, it requires immense effort, disruption, and cost to advance or correct the problem. We see that everywhere from our inability to go metric, running out of IP addresses, to security issues using credit cards.
Standards are useful if they are are controlled by a meta-standard, are an extensible baseline, modifiable by an open process, and relevant to practice. Common Core is none of these in reality and fails in application.
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That seems like a pretty reasonable assessment. The one thing I’d point out is that it doesn’t make sense to me to judge the Common Core standards completely in isolation. Compared to the standards that existed beforehand, I think they’re an improvement, though I agree that they’ve failed at doing what standards truly should, and also think their implementation has diverted resources and attention away from more important ideas.
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Come on…let’s talk about objectives… you know the objectives for a 12 year old learning algebra or a 7 year old learning multiplication. I have all the state objectives for science , math writing and humanities in the NYC public schools, How else could I have planed
They FUDded the conversation when Bush ignored there real standards research ON LEARNING and Duncan turned the national conversation to evaluating those failing teachers.
Performance objectives, once stated offer the rubric for assessment. The student either meets it or not… if he does not, then more lessons are needed… no one is judged and thrown out the door, o r labeled ineffective.
THEIR CONVERSATION ABOUT STANDARDS AND TEACHING NEEDS TO END HERE AT THIS BLOG!
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Ben,
You are making blanket statements. Have you reviewed all the standards in states that had them prior to Common Core? New Jersey had excellent ESL standards. Common Core only has ELA.
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Lots of states have written standards. I wrote some for New York state in ESL over three decades ago. In fact, I just read them over, and I think they stand the test of time. The difference today is all the attached value that results from the testing along with punitive outcomes for teachers in the Common Core is all based on false assumptions. VAM is a false metric that forwards a political, not educational agenda. The current use of standards is to put teachers in a vice grip of control through the ensuing testing protocol with arbitrary cut scores. It is not designed to guide or enlighten the profession; it is designed to paint teachers in a corner.
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Common Core has many defects, but one is grade level standards. I’ve got 10th graders with 6th grade level math skills. Interestingly, if I was following the industry model for quality standards in a value add supply chain, those students would be sent back to my suppliers. Instead, I teach them, and my VAM score ranks me ineffective. I could bring these students up 2-3 grade levels, and often try, but they do not even begin to register on the VAM assessments, so I stay ineffective, ranked by faceless politicians who have never stepped into my classroom.
Common Core has lots of other problems. The math standards are a mess and look arbitrary and inconsistent. They also reek of hubris and ignorance.
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NJ Teacher, I am not familiar with New Jersey’s ESL standards, so you may be correct about those. I should have said “math standards.” Thanks for the clarification.
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Ben,
It’s still awaiting moderation. I’ll repost it at the bottom of the current posts except I’ll leave out one of the links (any more than one an it gets moderated. I didn’t realize my email address would be picked up as a link.)
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Sounds great – thanks!
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National standards are actually illegal in this country. It doesn’t stop the privatization crowd from trying to put them in. The law or the constitution or the separation of powers doesn’t matter to them. Education has always been handled via the states apart from civil rights issues.
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If teacher evaluation using test scores is a bad idea, and I believe it is, what is a good idea for teacher evaluation? We are arguing about whether the federal or state or local authority should create it, but that is not the most important issue. The real issue is show me a good teacher evaluation system – focused on high standards. I believe I have developed one or at least a VERY good start on one. If you are interested contact me – tomunwin7@gmail.com. I would love some feedback.
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Tom Unwin,
For a good and effective teacher evaluation method, learn about Peer Assistance and Review.
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I often waffle back and forth regarding the merits of centralized standards and local autonomy, largely along the lines that you’ve identified in your post. Centralization is a risk both based on the quality of the standards, as you pointed out, but also because they allow special interest groups to concentrate their attempts to influence the standards to their advantage. I’m very interested to see how a new education funding formula in California, called the Local Control Funding Formula, pans out. Essentially, the state has changed its per pupil spending formula to provide additional money for English Learners and students from poor families. This money is not provided to districts in the old “categorical” buckets that didn’t allow for much funding flexibility. Instead, local districts are asked to develop a plan for how the money they spend aligns to 8 different priorities identified by the state government (you can check out more on the LCFF here http://edsource.org/publications/local-control-funding-formula-guide#.VOoTM1PF-nA ).
If the federal government does wade into the realm of teacher evaluation, I would hope that it would follow the LCFF model in which broad priorities/values are established and individual states are allowed to develop plans based on those priorities. Unfortunately, I’m skeptical that the politics of the moment will only tolerate reforms that appear to impose harsher rules for teachers rather than smarter ones.
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Debra Gist, Commissioner of Education, spent $73 million coming up with a “new” teacher evaluation system in RI…all Race to the Top money. Same outcome. Almost all of the teachers were rated as effective or highly-effective. She blamed it on the principals who were doing the onerous evaluation protocols. They weren’t tough enough. Her solution…more training for the principals! Go figure.
For a good history of teacher evaluation and the attacks on this profession as well as an excellent read, download The Teacher Wars by Dana Goldstein. It’s available on iBooks.
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Same in Louisiana. After all of the time and money spent on the “new” evaluation system ( which included VAM), and extensive training for administrators, the outcome was basically the same as before. Go figure…
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“Go figure. . . ”
Well I figure that the many systems already in place before the newfangled ones were probably working quite well.
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There is nothing wrong with evaluating any employee, including teachers. However, evaluating teachers on the basis of a two-dollar group test is absolutely crazy and we need to ask why anyone would want to do that. There is clearly another agenda at work here.
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I have been through many evaluations, but as years have gone on they come back meaningless. For example, one time I was told, “I know nothing about the program you teach.” Another time they did not even set up a meeting afterwards and I requested one several times. The end of the year came and I had to turn in the data to back my SLOs and all I was told is to keep reminding them. I never did get that meeting and left all the data in the principals box, but she posted “Not Met”. They data showed I went over and beyond. That was the year they closed a green school. What a mess everything was. I did end up getting an unfinished and unposted evaluation that was quite good, but we would not want to post anything that showed it was not the teachers fault the school went under. The difference between the old evals and the new ones is the standardized rubric. I think they put that in for all the untrained teachers. Our professional development took a step backwards also. Nothing new was discussed, but programs that I had learned in college were gone over as the new way to teach. Programs and strategies like Guided Reading and Gradual Release came into PD more than ever. Those were things I had to know before I ever stepped into a classroom. We wonder why teaching has gone down hill? To back something that is not working is absurd!!
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The problem with evaluating public systems that serve a common social good is that it will never reflect an equitable response to actual services provided and will only reflect the individual populations served. For example, police services will look vastly different in high poverty areas than they would in gated wealthy communities. Medical services provided to indigent uninsured populations will have vastly different outcomes than medical services provided to typical middleclass insured populations. That is why all of the evidence so far clearly shows that standardized test scores are aligned along SES lines and reflect not only family income, but also parental level of education. If we really want to evaluate systems, we must look at all variables, not just a single variable. Research has shown that teachers have less than 20% of the total influence. Other factors, both in and outside of school also have an influence. Again, the false conversation of evaluating Education systems, tries to pin all of the blame on a single source, teachers, because no one wants to try to fix the bigger problem, Poverty.
Teachers have always been evaluated by their administrators. The “new” evaluations are just another Trojan horse for the EDDeformers who have not stood in front of a classroom of high poverty students day after day. If they had, they would know better than to pretend the teacher is the ONLY variable that matters.
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Bridget: You have identified the flaw in the test crazed thinkers. They refuse to understand that poverty is an issue and act a though it doesn’t matter, even though all the research confirms that test scores generally parallel the socioeconomic level of the test taker. VAM is a bunch of voodoo math, and the Common Core is trying to test students at a frustration level of readability. Those are the facts.The problem is research and facts fail to enter in the discussion. The “reasoning” of our leaders has been co-opted by greed now that education is politicized and monetized.
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Actually, I believe they DO understand that poverty is THE issue. They are just unwilling to address it. We can spend billions and trillions on military solutions to problems in other countries, yet are unwilling to spend any money here in our own country to address childhood poverty. Shameful!
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“The problem with evaluating public systems that serve a common social good is that it will never reflect an equitable response to actual services provided…”
You are so right, Bridget.
The problem is the 1% and ed deformers don’t even want to serve a common social good or to have public systems. They look down upon and do not comprehend those of us who actually care about others. Many of us were lucky enough to be reared with old fashioned values, but there are many who were not. Unfortunately, it is the later group who is now in charge.
I believe they view us as ignorant, lower class trash who, if we were smart enough, would be spending our time stepping on others to acquire more money for ourselves. It is beyond their comprehension that some people in this world actually care about others. Note the quizzical, incredulous and disdainful ways they look at those who advocate for public school children. They cannot believe we actually do care. They sincerely believe we are not good enough to do anything other than teach and we all just vegetate until we can collect a pension.
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You are correct Robert. This really is all about money and privatization. They think they have it all figured out and that we are the ones who will be left behind. I somehow have to believe that in the end, right will prevail. Wishful thinking? Maybe? I am willing to bet on our children. I believe they will be the ones who one day turn this all around. Until then, I will continue to fight for those who have no voice. One day they will find their own voice, because this really is a civil rights issue.
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Even if we do make to a pension, it does not negate our love for a profession that truly invests in the future. I cannot imagine crushing a career that tries to support opportunity for all. I actually felt that my career choice was serving my country; you can laugh if you find that funny! As someone on a pension, I realize if the greedy opportunists eat current teachers for breakfast, I am on the menu for lunch.
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I say this all the time. We were dedicated Americans who faced a conspiracy and a process that deprived us of our civil rights, and I am not reading about this anywhere, except on the blogs of the activists who have been saying this for over a decade.
I wrote this in 2004, after being subjected to it in 1998, and I post it here ,there and everywhere, but not once, anywhere do I here it addressed.
http://www.speakingasateacher.com/SPEAKING_AS_A_TEACHER/No_Constitutional_Rights-_A_hidden_scandal_of_National_Proportion.html
If you understand that every word is true, and that I have all the evidence of the failure of the union to protect me, and the evidence of scores of teacher who sued (some won, some lost but none had their experience reviewed in the MEDIA, although a few knew what happened to that fabulous teacher , David Pakter
http://parentadvocates.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=article&articleID=7501
who gave up years o this life, and half a million dollars to sue when the union failed to represent him on charges of insubordination ( he brought in a plant). And Francesco Portelos, all thee years later, is reduced to being a sub.
http://protectportelos.org/the-david-pakter-saga-an-all-too-familiar-of-a-story/
http://protectportelos.org/a-case-for-tenure/http://protectportelos.org/allegations-against-me/
and look what they did to him:
The NAPTA blog tells the story.
http://endteacherabuse.org/
Betsy Combier has been chronicling it for a decade
http://nycrubberroomreporter.blogspot.com/2009/03/gotcha-squad-and-new-york-city-rubber.html
Perdaily lays it all out: http://www.perdaily.com/2015/01/were-you-terminated-or-forced-to-retire-from-lausd-based-on-fabricated-charges.html
http://www.perdaily.com/2014/07/former-ctc-attorney-kathleen-carroll-lays-out-unholy-alliance-between-union-and-public-education-pri.html
http://www.perdaily.com/2014/07/former-ctc-attorney-kathleen-carroll-lays-out-unholy-alliance-between-union-and-public-education-pri.html
If anyone goes to the links I provide so often, the reality of the second assault, where testing is the weapon, can see that the UTTER SILENCE about the first assault with took our wonderful dedicated Americans like you and me, gave these lawless, criminals the go-ahead.
We are so much fodder for them, and I have been saying this here from last july, when I began to write her, and for a decade at Ope, for all the difference it makes.
http://www.opednews.com/Quicklink/HAVE-REPORTERS-BECOME-POLI-in-Best_Web_OpEds-Media_Media-Bias_Media-Blackout_Media-Corruption-140322-673.html
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Would such a mandate include that all principals and superintendents be SWORN UNDER PENALTY OF PERJURY….like the cop who gives you a ticket?
Because these top-down people will be able to say anything they want to end the careers of teachers. If they did that to doctors, their would be lawsuits a plenty, but teachers do not have the money to sue liars… look at California where 10,000 teachers were sent packing…all of them fired with no access to the American Justice system.
http://www.perdaily.com/2015/01/were-you-terminated-or-forced-to-retire-from-lausd-based-on-fabricated-charges.html
A federal system to judge teachers when the system that is in place now has led to the end of civil rights in the workplace for over a hundred thousand Americans who just happened to give their lives to educating children… our future voters!
http://www.perdaily.com/2014/03/lausd-and-utla-collude-to-end-collective-bargaining-and-civil-rights-for-teachers-part-2.html
This scandal which I described in 2004, is still hidden.
http://www.speakingasateacher.com/SPEAKING_AS_A_TEACHER/No_Constitutional_Rights-_A_hidden_scandal_of_National_Proportion.html NO ethnic minority could be deprived of their civil rights like this… and it never ends…because it has never made the NEWS!
http://www.opednews.com/Quicklink/HAVE-REPORTERS-BECOME-POLI-in-Best_Web_OpEds-Media_Media-Bias_Media-Blackout_Media-Corruption-140322-673.html
Now that they are gone, in that first lawless assault that Lorna Stremcha describes here
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nfNxj-O1DiI
Look how the federal government has ‘fixed’ health and human services.
And, how come the schools worked before all this top-down management took over the classrooms? Could it be that TEACHING is a profession, and the education practitioner in the classroom is the one who knows how to reach the minds of kids, and to facilitate learning… while all these businessmen and politicians know is how to ‘rate’ employees.
Take a look at Finland, if you missed this one, and see what it takes to teach (WITTT).
(Hint;;; it is not a government overseer)
http://blip.tv/hdnet-news-and-documentaries/dan-rather-reports-finnish-first-6518828
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“Wonder how doctors and lawyers would respond to evaluations mandated by Congress?”
Would Congress create a new agency or assign the task to Homeland Security, and then assign an agent with one of those x-ray machines to every court room, hospital operating room and classroom in the country.
One good thing would come of it. There would be no unemployment.
Every child would be guaranteed a job if there were no other jobs available—until someone invented a robot that would do the job cheaper.
They could join Homeland Security to be an evaluator of doctors, lawyers and teachers.
And heck, there would be no need for even a high school degree or a GED. All the evaluator would have to do is tap bubbles on a screen for ten evaluation questions that each come with three choices: A. excellent B. average and on probation for two years C. failed and fired.
In fact, these federal evaluators working with Homeland Security wouldn’t’ even need to get out of bed. They could fill in the bubbles for the Common Core evaluation on their tablet or smartphone from bed and then go back to sleep. Isn’t that about what they are doing in Florida already.
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This would be funny, if there weren’t people like Scott Wlaker who would think this a great idea.
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Walker would probably endorse replacing the US Congress with a Corporate Congress eliminating the popular vote and passing laws that made only billionaire eligible for positions of leadership at the federal level.
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Hee, hee.
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Not Walker. When Walker talks, you can almost see the Koch Bros lips move.
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They are traditionally male jobs, and the people in them have higher IQs than SAT failures who go into teaching.
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“SAT failures who go into teaching”
I hope you were being sarcastic, because I don’t think most lawyers and doctors would last one full year teaching in an urban/inner city school with high rates of childhood poverty.
A high SAT score does not automatically create a teacher who knows what they are doing and is capable of surviving for more than a few years in a classroom. A SAT test is just another bubble test.
In fact, the best teachers happen to come from that same communities where we find the most children who live in poverty. Urban residency teacher training programs don’t bother to look for college students with high SAT scores or GPA’s. Instead, they focus on finding college students with average GPA’s who come from the same communities where the most at-risk children are found and teachers that go through urban residency programs have the highest retention rate at four years (86%) and receive the highest evaluations, on average, from principals compared to all other teachers from other training programs.
But two thirds of TFA recruits with their high SAT scores and high GPA’s are gone from the classroom by two years or earlier and less than 3% of the total will stay in an urban school with high rates of childhood poverty beyond four years.
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“Schools and systems have done it forever, and they’ve generally been awful at it.”
Bullshit, utter bullshit!
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Agreed! Teachers have always been subject to an evaluation procedure. While we were cognizant of test scores as were administrators, they were not part of the rating criteria. Likewise, tenure laws ensure that there will be a stable staff for future planning. I have seen teachers fired before and after tenure, tenure is NOT a job for life. The system worked well for all parties! Now we have chaos and uncertainty. We will suffer from a severe shortage of teachers rather than an abundance of “bad teachers” as new recruits will be few.
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Not b.s. when it comes to principals, who aren’t even supervised for all intents and purposes, and are protected by the system, especially if they have collective bargaining rights.
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I only know about California, and administrators (principals and VPs, etc) have no due process job protections and can be fired at any time. I saw it happen.
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One-size-fits-all standardization is wanted by profit seekers who think Walmart-type “scale” is a virtue. That is wrongheaded for education, unless you think education should be no more than training, especially for jobs.
Of course there are demographic issues, not least the 50% plus poverty rate, and the population shifts that make for “minorities” becoming the majority.
But there are other differences that make one-size-fits-all evaluations wrong. Consider the radical differences in teaching sustained in some schools by “philosophy.” In my town, we have a K-12 Montessori program, a talent-oriented School for the Performing and Creative Arts, and some community schools with wrap-around programs including dental care.
If you look for an educational system that comports with testing and more testing, with “mastery” on standardized tests the AIM of education, you are looking at a system keyed to training students to meet expectations set by the test-makers and those who promote testing as if test scores are “objective” and the only evidence that matters.
The rubrics of Marzano and Danielson, the student surveys in use, the frauds–junk science of SLOs and VAM and the so called Common Core and associated tests–are all systems of surveillance and part of the effort to standardize education nationally. The policies for K-12 public education are designed around a one-size-fits-all ideology suitable for a dictatorship.
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I think lawmakers in general need to stay out of education policy. We have state boards of Ed. Let’s use them. And it would be absurd for our federal government to control how states evaluate their teachers. Don’t they have other things to be doing?
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Shouldn’t the situation be that state boards of Ed handle Ed policy unless they see a huge and compelling need for a law relating to education and then they go to their representatives and ask for said law?
Everything is backwards right now. Has it ever run the way it should? Will it ever?
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I don’t trust the state board of education in my state (Utah) any further than I can throw him. Some of our union leaders were in Washington, D.C. for a conference last fall when they ran into Jeb Bush’s conference. Half of our state school board and several legislators were there. Not that the feds are any better…
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I absolutely LOVE the government evaluations. Let’s start ant the top, not the bottom
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By start at the top, do you mean evaluating Chief State School Officer, then state deputies? Could be interesting.
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“Having a common system of standards. . . . Standards also ensure a baseline level of quality.”
Tell ya what, Ben, get back to me after you’ve read and understood Noel Wilson’s complete destruction of the concept of “educational standards” and it’s accompanying standardized testing. If you don’t change your mind then I’d like to hear why Wilson is not correct in his arguments. Feel free to contact me either through a response to this post or email me at dswacker @ centurytel.net (no spaces) as I’ve been searching for a decade and a half and haven’t found a single logical rebuttal/refutation.
See: “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.
1. A description of a quality can only be partially quantified. Quantity is almost always a very small aspect of quality. It is illogical to judge/assess a whole category only by a part of the whole. The assessment is, by definition, lacking in the sense that “assessments are always of multidimensional qualities. To quantify them as unidimensional 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 the descriptive information about said interactions is inadequate, insufficient and inferior to the point of invalidity and unacceptability.
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. And 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 attempts to measure “’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.
By Duane E. Swacker
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Ah, you knock me out. I loved this comment, and I hadn’t read that, so thanks for that reasoned argument… perfect!
Also, Ben said correctly,” I do not think that tests, grades, and standards must necessarily go together.’
So, in danger of repeating myself, I never had a conversation about standards in all the years that I was teaching…including the 2 years when the ph’d arm of the Univ of Pittsburgh ran the seminars on Principles of Learning… although the Harvard research was called the National Standards. I talked with the kids about objectives for successful writing (criteria, and rubrics) in September
In the LRDC seminars, the subject of GENUINE evaluation (their buzzword) was, of course, essential in order to ‘set-up’ the first principle of learning, which was CLEAR EXPECTATIONS. In order to evaluate success in June, there had to be a very clear understanding of the objectives for excellent work.
I guess you could say, that in September I set up the ‘standards,’ for performance… but I never used that word, nor did the LRDC. I introduced — to the students –the parameters for a piece of writing — a letter to me about the book they were reading, which was my weekly assignment, and the tool I used to assess progress in acquiring writing skills.
I did this by asking : What does a best work look like?
I asked: If you do your best work ever, is it considered a best work in this class?
Then, after the kids grasped that even with hard work, there was a clear expectation for what was considered ‘best writing,’ we set about TOGETHER (for a week), looking at language in literature, and examining the letters from previous students on the overhead.
Then we set up the criteria:
To meet the criteria for excellence, a letter had to be…;
To be considered very good, it had to be…;
To be considered acceptable (good) it had to be at least:…;
Poor and fair work was described as missing certain criteria,, not as passing or failing.
The parents received a synopsis of our conversations and the rubric we made.
Of course, in June, students would get a grade, but no parent ever questioned the grade, because they knew the criteria, and saw the letters EACH WEEK, and my skill sheeting noting progress, or explaining what skills remained to be learned.
MY standard for excellence was clear because it was an OBJECTIVE to be met, not a benchmark against which the child would be judged as failing.
So, all this talk about standards leaves me with the thought that the CONVERSATION is vein manipulated by people who are using FUD, which ddkona described so well, right here in Diane’s amazing teacher’s room!
It is time WE changed the national conversation, and explained how an authentic education practitioner sets up objectives and rubrics. We need to tell the clueless public what learning looks like and WITTT (what it takes to teach) and end the Duncan/Gates/ rant.
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Amen to that. The conversation does need to change. And the mandates need to stop.
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Hey Duane,
I look forward to reading the entire piece, though it may take me a little while to get around to it.
From your description, though, it sounds like this argument is about tests and grades more than about standards. My opinions on tests and grades are still evolving, but I tend to be very skeptical of grades in particular, for many of the reasons you’ve indicated. I do not think, however, that tests, grades, and standards must necessarily go together, and in fact have argued (see the comments on this thread, for example: http://34justice.com/2014/08/20/cooks-chefs-and-teachers-a-long-form-debate-on-evaluation-part-3a/) similar points in the past in relation to teacher evaluation.
Maybe Wilson contends that it’s impossible to split these concepts from each other, but if so, isn’t that argument contradicted by the fact that some schools give people feedback and expect high quality work without grading or ranking their students?
Ben
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I get the impression that you see standards as essential. I’m thinking that you need to come up with a definition for standards, for I suspect that there are a range of opinions on the matter. For instance, we all seem to agree that a literate population is important in order for an individual to thrive in both the public and private arena and to be able to contribute to the greater good. Literacy is a very broad topic and becomes broader everyday as everyone tacks the term on to their particular bailiwick. To be able to read, write, speak, and listen at a level that allows an individual to gain some measure of independence while still contributing to society is just about as much as I would want a national literacy standard to say. In my mind, deciding how that translates into curriculum (or even more subtly nuanced standards) is the work of state and local bodies.
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You make a good point about needing a definition. How about: “things everyone should learn by the time they’ve completed X amount of school?”
I know math best, but here’s a literacy standard that I think is important that may be illustrative: students should be able to analyze an argument from multiple perspectives and determine source quality.
In math, I believe both the Common Core and what came before is/was too specific. Kids should know logical argument and how to construct proofs, for example, but things like knowing the proof of the Pythagorean Theorem should definitely not be standards.
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“things everyone should learn by the time they’ve completed X amount of school?”
I like the generality but not the requirement that everyone should learn it by a specific time. Your examples did not thrill me. While I was quite good at geometric proofs in hig school, I can’t say that I have ever used them again. To me that is a curricular decision. Your ELA standard is a bit better probably because it is not your strength and therefore tends to be broader. Now if you had attempted to define what that analysis should look like again you would be wandering into curriculum decisions. My Latino students were quite skilled at analyzing arguments pertinent to their daily life. A credible source in their world view would tend to be different that yours or mine. As I think I have said before, there were situations in which I relied on their judgement. We all needed to work on viewing situations from multiple points of view.
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Just to clarify about proofs: I’m not talking about geometric proofs, but the concept of how to prove something logically. Those are two very different things, and part of the reason most people don’t recognize them as such is because of the inappropriate narrowness of our current standards.
I do think you need some sort of time delimiter. It’s clearly not okay if someone can’t read or add when they’re 15. The time delimiter in many cases could be, “by the time you graduate,” or “before you move on to the next level of schooling,” but I don’t think you can leave it entirely open-ended.
But I think we agree on a lot here.
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Your inclusion of proofs in your math paragraph led me to geometric proofs which are the only kind of “proofs” we did in math. Being able to argue logically is far broader applying to all subjects and is a noble goal after years of rigidity driven by bubble testing. I used to tell kids that I was asking an opinion question to get the blank stares off their faces. They would venture an opinion because they didn’t feel the same pressure of giving the right answer. I loved Likert scales as well; they generated wonderful engaging and provocative discussions. I was working at the middle school and high school level, so my expectations would be much different than those of a third grade teacher. As Duane says, goals and objectives are more appropriate for delineating yearly expectations. Standards? Those are cousins of the mottoes they carve over the school’s main entrance.
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Absolutely. Duane has ti right, and read my response on this page about OBJECTIVES VS STANDARDS.
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Ben,
Wilson takes the concept of “educational standards” and blows it to smithereens.
These days most folks confuse standards with goals and objectives which have always been around in American public education.
I hope you enjoy the reading.
Duane
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The governing management system for public schools, and in much research, is that standards, instruction, and assessments MUST be perfectly aligned.
The alignment is perfected in programmed instruction delivered by a computer. In the meantime, human consultants to districts and schools are required to undergo ” calibration” trainingS with the aim of making their judgments as free of inferences as possible.
This leads to the proliferation of checklists, data dashboards, and a host of other record-producing strategies as proxies for face to face conversations and recognition that human judgments are fallible.
In research and policy, there is a quest for replication of results from “interventions” –scaling up–along with anxiety about the “fidelity of implementation.”
This iron triangle of perfectly aligned standards, instructional methods, and assessments functions is an ideological fortress against the reality that there is little in education that is steady state.
Real students and their teachers are not widgets, but alive and filled with the wiggles and urges to depart from official lessons for all sorts of reasons ranging from a glorious rainbow in view from the classroom, to the kid who comes in and says, ” My grandpa died last night.”
The big to-do about alignment extends to the myth that the CCSS have been aligned with college OR career expectations, as if requirements for getting into Harvard and a community college are the same, and life after school had no opportunities or requirements other than getting a job or going to college. Overall this is a pathetic vision for education.
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I predict Democrats cave on backpack vouchers. They were 90% of the way to the Republican position on public schools, and this will take them to 100%.
They’ll call it something else, make some claim or another about how they got funding in exchange for privatization, but they’re getting ready to capitulate on vouchers.
Get ready to get sold out. It’s probably already a done deal, just like annual testing was always a done deal.
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Why is the discussion about public education, something that should not be open to debate at all, dominated by right-wingers like Hess and Neoliberals like Cunningham?
Where are the teachers in this, the people who know what they are talking about?
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There you go…That is what I say from day one. We have been effectively silenced. Not only removed from our careers, tens of thousands, but our voices were replaced by selling the public a billow goods by the likes of Rhee, Klein, Duncan, and a host of clones.
Where I write, at OEN, the publisher’s philosophy it that the top-down management has replaced the bottom up expertise. We, the professional facing those kids, not ‘trained’ but educated and intelligent, talented, dedicated people are being told what works when we know it won’t. Anti-learning mandates work only because the public has no conception about WITT, what it takes to teach, and yet, we are the last ones who get to say…here’s what must happen , the support we need, and the autonomy to enable the kids to learn.
We are the facilitators, and yer people who have never been in a classroom, are writing the agenda, the curriculum and the rules. This could not happen to doctors or lawyers or any professional doing a complex profession… THAT is the crux of it…. they built a media campaign to equate the profession of pedagogy with a trained civil servant.
How else could they foist the TFA on children, claiming this was ‘reform.’
it is time,we at the bottom had a voice in this discussion.
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Susan
“. . . top-down management has replaced the bottom up expertise.”
And that right there sums up the edudeformer philosophy–management replacing/surpassing/overcoming expertise. TARGO!!
If I may correct your last statement:
“It is time, we WITH THE EXPERTISE HAVE a voice in this discussion”
And that is what this blog does is gives us a forum. But, more than that, we need to force that expertise on to those who refuse to listen our expertise.
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I did not want my answer in that long side bar, so I posted it at the top, but it is my answer to you!
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and how do we do that?
I have been writing for 15 years, and Norm Scott, Lenny Isenberg, Karen Horwitz Leonie, Anthony and scores of others have been writing just as long.
The voice at the bottom is lost, and even top educators like Diane have to fight to be heard in a country where the media is owned by the oligarchs.
I can see the conversation moving, thanks to the fierce campaign that educators and Diane are waging: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/17/opinion/how-useful-are-standardized-tests.html?emc=edit_tnt_20150217&nlid=50637717&tntemail0=y
but I am not hearing anything about funding schools or improving instruction.
I know we have to keep trying, but I get weary and sick of trying….
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This is amazing. I completely agree with the fact that congress should stay away form teacher evaluations. Teaching is absolutely essential to the country’s future but that does not mean the federal government should get involved. I feel like it should be state (if that) mandated but the county must make sure teachers are meeting standards.
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Rick Hess-two years of teaching Social Studies in a magnet high school in Baton Rouge.
Peter Cunningham-ZERO years of teaching
YEP, they’re eminently qualified to comment on teacher evaluation-ha ha!!!
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Overlooked in all of this is administrator/principal preparation, qualification, and evaluation. Principals with just a few years of teaching experience and a fast-track administrative certification program are ill equipped to properly manage a teaching staff. For every really “bad” (harmful) or incompetent teacher there was an administrator who hired them, observed and evaluated them, and granted them tenure. And who is evaluating the inexperienced, lazy, or incompetent building principal doing more harm then good on a wide scale basis?
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Duane and others:
I agree with everything you say, but even here, where teachers often speak about the amazing things they do, there are endless discussions about testing and what is wrong , with it, and how it effects the schools, and very little discussion about those crucial aspects of real learning, that I remember from the 2 years of seminars and weekly analysis of what crucial learning principles enable and facilitate learning.
What I am saying is simple, if we are to change the national conversation with the troll Duncan, we cannot simple continue to argue his narrative about mandatd evaluation… it is like trying “to kill a vampire by drowning it in your blood,” said comedian Amy Richter in tis incredible article
I am not downplaying the crucial role played by brilliant voices like Diane’s, who point the finger at the bogus and the unworkable, so that people will know what is going on.
BUT… there also has to be a vigorous portrayal, up front, of what works — WITTT (what it takes to teach) according to the service -provider at the bottom of the heap, so that LEARNING CAN OCCUR.
The citizens of this country know more about football and what a celeb is wearing what designer, then what real learning looks like, and the DUNCAN/GATES/ KOCH/BROAD narrative tries to Bambloozle them by talking about teaching and testing… while it is crucial that the public realize the failure of VAM and PARCC — It is NOT ENOUGH to repeat endlessly that tests do not work >> that doesn’t work– that doesn’t work here, and that doesn’t work there.
The clueless parents have no idea WHY, because they never had to meet the OBJECTIVES for learning when 35 children are facing them each day.
Perhaps, because we are talking here to like-minded people who know what must be in situ for learning to take place, we say ,”duh’ of course this is how kids acquire skills.
BUT, the public is clueless.!
The average parent goes into a classroom, and if it has pretty bulletin boards, and nice ‘centers’ with books and tech, and if their child is nappy with all the ‘you’re great’ rewards, certificates and medals, she gets for even the smallest effort, , then they believe there is real learning ongoing.
They are clueless about effort -based learning,(i.e hard work) developing the habits of mind that facilitate there acquisition of skills, and the application of knowledge. This was a part of life in all the past human experience… till now, when minimal effort passes the grade, and social promotion is a policy.
http://www.perdaily.com/2014/07/between-dishonest-social-promotion-of.html
They certainly do not understand what rewards for genuine performance are! To know this, they would have to have ‘clear expectations’ about what the performance objectives are!
How can they? If their kid gets 100% on a ‘test,’ and a shiny star for ‘trying so hard’, then how will they grasp that a pat on the back for everything is not the same as genuine reward for actual performance.
The second principle of learning was Rewards for Achievement… but the objectives that defined that achievement were defined in by the first principle: Clear Expectations.
Do you hear any POST of this here, or anywhere, because maybe I MISSED IT.
IT is THIS kind of blogs and essays, that I do not see here, or anywhere, although individual teachers tell of wonderful classroom practice, in commentary… from time to time… when they re not railing on about testing and what’s wrong..
The parents out there need to know what is RIGHT! What works, because PEDAGOGY IS A COMPLEX DISCIPLINE LIKE MEDICINE and needs real explanations, instead of the endless facts and figures about what’s wrong.
When kids and parents know what DEFINES excellent ‘work’ and genuine ‘effort’ then you don’t get an irate parent complaining “Hey, Johnny worked hard on that,(for him) and he is crying because YOU didn’t jump up an down for the 100 word essay he managed to write in the seventh grade. You are hurting his ‘esteem.’
The LRDC could not get over that I GAVE NO TESTS ABOUT WHAT MY STUDENTS READ, and no grades for the first trimester?
How did the parents know the progress of their kids? Since, ultimately, they must receive a numbers grade, how did you do this?
So, they read my lesson plans, my curricula, and filmed me, and read everything the kids wrote, and all my communications with them and their parents, and voila… I matched the principles that underpin genuine learning in a unique way… but they were there:
Getting the writing ready for a reader, for an audience was the meat of seventh grade, THE OBJECTIVE, because these ‘kids’ would be IN HIGH SCHOOL in a little over a year, and were expected to write on a whole new level. (I guess, that level is no longer an objective, because according to my colleagues who teach in college, the students they get can barely put together a coherent though on paper.)
Yes, tests suck, but how else can we… the grunt on the line (not some academic theorist) develop a curriculum based on methods that actually enable kids to progress and do the hard work required to succeed at any task, especially writing.?
Getting the idea and getting it down, did not get a “Hurrah” in my class, although huge appreciation for wonderful ideas was part of the reward system. This was not second grade, where steps one and two were the objectives, and editing was as simple as finding a misspelled word, or using punctuation and capitalization in each sentence.
I hear the words ‘standards’ until I want to scream: OBJECTIVES for PERFORMANCE!
I hear the words “testing’ and VAM does not work, but not what practical activities and methods do work.
The standard for meeting a target is MEETING THAT TARGET/objective.
Yes, I would love to see it begin with Diane, as she is the most powerful voice who can get the attention of a confused public.
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I don’t understand the logic in this evaluation. American public school teachers are not national civil servant subject to DOE. They are subject to each state. What’s the point in mandating Federal evaluation? Isn’t it illegal to force them to federal government evaluation on behalf of state?
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This is one of the main things about RTTT that people have been arguing about for years.
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Geeze. Don’t you know that they can do anything.
The first assault took out the top, most experienced, dedicated, talented veteran teachers, with a process that the sixth amendment prohibits… one hundred thousand… ten thousand in California alone,http://www.perdaily.com/2015/01/were-you-terminated-or-forced-to-retire-from-lausd-based-on-fabricated-charges.html
The civil rights of these teachers did not exist when the unions looked away from the grievance process, and administrators (who are not sworn under penalty of perjury, like the cop who gives you a ticket, can and did say anything they wanted to allege.)
http://www.speakingasateacher.com/SPEAKING_AS_A_TEACHER/No_Constitutional_Rights-_A_hidden_scandal_of_National_Proportion.html
Catch up …I wrote this in 2004 when it happened to me
… and I was already a successful and celebrated NYC teacher. see my author’s page
http://www.opednews.com/author/author40790.html
What is ongoing at this moment,a decade later when the voice of the classroom practitioner has been discredited in the media, and silenced, so the Duncan rant become the national conversation.
Read my “Bamboozle them” essay:
http://www.opednews.com/articles/BAMBOOZLE-THEM-where-tea-by-Susan-Lee-Schwartz-110524-511.html
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I guess there ought to be some independent investigative audit or watchdog institution to scrutinize DOE’s abuse of power and put Arne the Frankenstein to impeachment.
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Ya think?
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