Surprise: Most of the teachers in Ohio are effective or highly effective.
However, there are more ineffective teachers in districts with high levels of poverty.
Chicken-and-egg? Correlation?
Lesson: if you want to be a highly-rated teacher, avoid high-poverty schools and districts.
Second lesson: This is a ridiculous way to evaluate teachers, and the results were predictable and flawed. Also meaningless.
How many millions were spent to learn this?
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I am high on the seniority list in my Florida school district, and I voluntarily teach at a super high poverty school. The first time my students test scores negatively affect my evaluation and thereby my pay, I will move to a higher income school.
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How many hours wasted in reaching this conclusion, especially compliance with criteria that become meaningless by their sheer quantity and garbled jargon-saturated language. Officials in the State Department of Education and our legislators seems to think taht the more specifications for “effective performance” put into a checklist designed for computer entries the more one approximates “objectivity” in ratings.
Any teacher who survives the hurdles of evaluation in Ohio, including those 25 criteria for one SLO (and multiple SLOs may be required) deserves a purple heart for valor under fire.
Some of the Brookings economists think that you need to fire teachers at a much higher rate, cull the bottom 25% and send them packing. That way you can raise test scores. That is the metric that matters the most–favorite food for VAM.
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Where do they get this, though?
The private sector fire rate is no where near 25%. They’re called involuntary separations and the rate includes lay-offs.
http://www.bls.gov/news.release/jolts.nr0.htm
Why would teachers be uniquely bad at their jobs, enough to merit firing 1/4 of them?
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Because they’re lazy union thug waiting to retire and collect their golden parachute retirement and . . . oh the majority are women.
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Poverty is a broad umbrella and of course should be a consideration. However, when individualized, assessment of a school and teacher should include individual students who are significantly affected by poverty, and other issues. Assessment then drives support and the ability to take kids from where they are, at their best rate, based on past history and current conditions.
Poverty should not be used as a tool to throw up our hands and accept no gains, but a specific tool to show where support is needed, and then provide that support. All kids should make gains, and to insure that happens support systems must be in place.
By painting poverty with a broad brush we are doing a disservice and lowering individual expectations. However, when done with individual concerns, we hold high expectations based on where the students are and put the emphasis raising their bar with every whole child assessment given.
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Cap,
“Poverty should not be used as a tool to throw up our hands and accept no gains. . . ”
I have not seen/read anyone anywhere who use poverty as an excuse to “throw up our hands and accept no gains”. Please provide evidence that that has occurred.
Gracias,
Duane
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Hey Duane,
Please show me evidence of anyone talking about a viable alternative to the testing fiasco. I believe public school teachers are the best in the world at innovation. What I mean by innovation is finding ways to help all kids learn.
By focusing on how bad other schools are, we are hiding the light under the bushel. It’s time to focus on innovative assessment that shows individual student gains in a whole child curriculum that will exemplify the high quality of public school teachers.
Until that happens, we are sending the message of how bad other schools are but not the message of the strength and shining light of the public schools.
De nada
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Your right in that historically speaking teachers and those involved in public education have never been very good at tooting their own horns. As much as the vast majority of teachers do a bang up job in class but shy away from publicity because they know and believe that the thing that matters the most is what happens educationally for each child/student and the teachers feel no need for publicity for what they consider to be “just doing my job.”
I can say that my rural poverty district actually does a good job of getting the word out on innovative and stimulating activities, projects involved in the teaching and learning process. But then again we have a local weekly paper that loves to publish those types of stories as the stories focus on the folks who live here (a town of around 9,000-Warrenton, MO). Unfortunately, at a larger scale, local, state and national few papers/media outlets appear to want to publish the success stories preferring to focus on the few negatives that do occur.
Perhaps that is why the most folks believe that their public schools are fine but have an overall negative impression of the rest of the schools around the country.
And I’m not so sure that the vast majority of teachers bad mouth other schools. Usually teachers know other teachers in other schools and can empathize/commiserate with the struggles that all are going through.
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Cap,
I’m still interested in evidence concerning my request “I have not seen/read anyone anywhere who use poverty as an excuse to “throw up our hands and accept no gains”. Please provide evidence that that has occurred.” And what do you mean by “gains”?
TIA
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Gains are to demonstrate a skill or concept that students haven’t in the past.
Evidence is:
every time a child fails a classroom assessment and moves on to the next chapter
every time a child fails a class and has to repeat the whole class
every time a child fails a grade and has to repeat the whole year
every time a child gets so far behind that they drop out
every time a child “fails” and feels stupid rather than using it as a positive part of the learning process
every time we give a letter grade that is meaningless without identifying gains
every time there is a comment on this blog and no solution is presented, just “it’s poverty”
every time we refuse to let the world know the gains that are made, not on a test, but in the classroom
every time we refuse to recognize that even before the testing fiasco kids were failing and dropping out
every time we give a chapter test that is no better than the hi stakes test in content, and judge kids on the chapter test,
every time we have a student give the answers we want rather than use critical thinking to give the answers they discover
every time we have a classroom assessment that the kids must “pass” in the way we say, not in the way they do it best.
every time we give a letter grade:
A smart
B kinda smart
C average but no one knows what that means
D kinda stupid
F stupid
or sometimes we use U unsatisfactory,
But what the child sees is us using both F U
But what we say is “It’s poverty”
Best said in this song:
For those who do not fit the mold, who never get the chance
For those with their talents hidden, who never join the dance
For those who aren’t the chosen ones, don’t blossom all the same
For those at whom the fingers point, who hang their heads in shame
Cho
We sing for you we pray for you, let the change begin
Ignite the passion in your soul, that’s how it must begin
We sing for you we pray for you, let the change begin
Ignite the passion in your soul, the genius from within
For those through all their trials, are slow to make their mark
For those with no fault of their own, are pushed out in the dark
For those who see the hands that push, from ones they want to trust
For those forced to walk away, their dreams left in the dust
Cho
Take the labels off their heads, let them grow free
Empowered to reach their future, their new reality
Take the shackles off their legs, the children still oppressed
Stop the race to emptiness, let them fulfill their quest
C. Lee
On this blog and BAT’s and SOS are done great things. we just need to show our skills as public school teachers and demand we be allowed to innovate as a priority, not just test. We need solutions, no more whining
Will you respond to this comment with more whining, arguing and trying to make an irrelevant point, or will you respond with solutions?
The challenge is out there, what say you?
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Cap,
Thoroughly agree with your analysis of grading and it’s nefarious effects. Unfortunately you appear to be still trapped into that thinking as evidenced by your statements “every time a child fails . . . rather than using it as a positive part of the learning process.” You are using the “F” word as if it is a natural part of the teaching and learning process.
I understand and agree that the labeling of students is an educational malpractice and have been trying to get people to understand that for years. I have addressed the grading and labeling problem with the students every year and over the course of the years have used the tests/quizzes as a teaching and learning device working with the students to help them learn to reflect on their own learning and where they may be at any given time (without labeling that “learning space”). The students have appreciated that approach as they are sick and tired of testing, testing, testing.
To think that a student “fails” a chapter test is absurd as learning does not occur in digesting and regurgitating discreet bits of information in a supposedly linear fashion. I contend that, yes, one can and should move on in the learning process without the student necessarily completely understanding everything. Through repetition, reviewing, and reteaching as a natural part of the teaching and learning process the student can come to “learning” the subject matter of the class if they put the effort that they need to put in to learn it.
As far as your last comments, well the challenge has been being met by some, certainly not enough, in using approaches that work for their particular subject area (I’m thinking in terms of secondary school in this writing). I make no pretense to have “solutions” as that is up to each teacher, in conjunction with other teachers and administrators, but more importantly in conjunction with the students in a “Responsive” framework/fashion as outlined by Wilson. Now Wilson is not setting out to give “solutions” but to contrast different epistemological fundamental frameworks for viewing/doing assessment in the teaching and learning process.
I read so often the “Well, what are YOUR solutions to . . . ??? and my response is:
Me say that I don’t have the arrogance (which unfortunately too many people have) to even begin to pretend to have A(n), THE answers/solutions for the multi-faceted concerns of the very human process that is teaching and learning.
But without correctly identifying the myriad “problems” first, one cannot even logically begin to attempt solutions and hope to get at a workable one. And each “problem” has it’s own context, time, people involved, and is very specific to it’s situation. Me say: Let those involved provide the “solution(s).
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There’s a perfectly viable alternative to the testing fiasco: just stop. You’re almost as bad as the rephormers the way you buy into the “failing schools” canard and the “yes, poor kids really can learn” straw man.
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And if you insist on defining “gains” as improved test scores you have seriously lost your way. If not, what is your definition or description of “student gains”?
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“How many millions were spent to learn this?”
How many have been / will be hurt by this? Millions?
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It’s still so arbitrary. Some administrator who is in favor of a teacher marks all skilled and effective on the rubric. Same administrator knows to mark one ineffective in a certain category (completely unfounded and unfair) drops another teacher down to developing. The new system was supposed to be objective.
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Please, all of you!
How can you place a dollar value on something as intrinsically valuable as data?
I mean, c’mon!
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Well, data is the coin of the realm of the edudeformers, eh!?!?!
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I don’t know how to get the better teachers to the most struggling students, but I’m fairly confident the answer isn’t to open an unlimited number of charter schools that pay teachers less than public schools pay teachers.
That’s probably a non-starter on the road to equity, driving wages down.
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“Better teachers” ?
You could swap the teachers from the Chicago Laboratory Schools with those (by your implication) “lesser teachers” in the lowest performing, highest needs public schools on the Southside and it wouldn’t make one whit of difference.
I really respect your tireless and undaunted efforts here and agree with 99.9% of your commentary. But not here.
Students do not “struggle” because of their teachers. And until the weakest links in the teaching/learning train are addressed nothing will change.
Weak links such as daily attendance, pre and post natal nutrition, family dysfunction, teenage single parent homes, generational poverty, substance abuse, employment opportunities and a living wage, and equitable funding to significantly lower class sizes.
Teachers don’t even make my list of the weakest links.
Once again, thanks for all you do here, but please understand that “attracting better teachers” is an edu-faker diversion phrase and an insult to the thousands of teachers working in impoverished high needs urban and rural districts.
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Thanks for the response. I don’t mind at all if I’m corrected.
If I take them at their word, and I think I have to take SOME of them at their word, they’re looking for a more equitable distribution of higher scores, because that’s all they measure. I don’t agree with the premise, but I was just addressing the stated goal.
I’;m an Ohio public school parent and the teacher ranking system is of no use to me. I have no earthly idea what it means and I think “ed reform” attaches a false certainty to their various theories so I’m always skeptical. Ohio sends out elaborate school report cards to parents and they get slicker every year. The measures are presented as determinative each and every year, which is amusing because the formulas change nearly every year. If they used one method in 2013 and then another method in 2014 is the 2013 number invalid? I don’t know. If they come up with a different method in 2015 can I just disregard all the prior year reports I got? I don’t think these reports are credible, in other words. I don’t know why I would rely on them if they change all the time.
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If you want the most accurate teacher reports, just ask your kids. Then advocate in their best interest. It is a rare building principal that will deny a parent request for (or against) a particular teacher. As your kids get older and subjects get more specialized and technical (math and science), teacher quality can make a significant difference. In the long run, your efforts as a parent will make the biggest difference.
Please keep advocating for PUBLIC school improvements. If you want to get on one concrete bandwagon, become a strong and vocal advocate for small class size. It is the one tangible thing that can really make a big difference. Check out those CLS class sizes. And thats with the some of the most advantaged students in the state.
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Teachers and administrators in charter schools were also more likely to receive lower ratings than their peers in school districts.
How will the charter crowd spin this one?
Teachers in non-core academic areas that relied on district-created assessments to measure growth had higher ratings than their peers who taught reading and math and whose results were based on state tests.
No kidding.
All politicians that write education law should be required to teach one year in a title one school.
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What is the definition of a “title one school”?
TIA!
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What more can be said that has been said so MANY times on this blog.
It is, to me, terrifying that the general public can be so bamboozled by the propaganda propagated by the corporate controlled media. How long was it before the facts were finally admitted, how many people died because “tobacco was not harmful,” promotions by the media, how many will suffer because politicians do not believe in climate change.
Educators are scape goated because of political failures, becoming the whipping boys for their failures.
How can we educate in the face of such propaganda? How can we educate when truth becomes the victim of political intrigue?
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“It is, to me, terrifying that the general public can be so bamboozled by the propaganda propagated by the corporate controlled media.”
“One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we’ve been
bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle.
We’re no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has
captured us. It is simply too painful to acknowledge — even to
ourselves — that we’ve been so credulous.” Sagan
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More interesting is what’s not said. What are those same teachers’ and principals’ designations/rankings BEFORE the inclusion of the 50% for test score results?
(Full disclosure: my evaluation by the rubric was “Skilled” – 3 points from “Accomplished” – but with my 50% from VAM I’m officially “Least Effective”)
Do the Big 8 also have low scores AND high poverty? Do the suburban and rural districts, those with “better” (more “skilled” and “accomplished”) teachers have higher scores AND lower poverty? Might poverty somehow be involved in how effective teachers are in relationship to students’ scores? Perhaps the writer should do a bit of a follow-up investigation.
And teachers don’t just say they don’t know what questions are on state tests, we aren’t allowed to know, or even say if we do. We could be fired for just looking at the questions and even talking about them. But our non-state/PARCC tested colleagues many times WRITE THEIR OWN TESTS on whose results they are evaluated. Huge discrepancy on that 50% of a teacher’s rating.
Apparently, “shared attribution” is the way to be more fair. Instead of writing their own tests AND choosing which results that want to use, I get to share my scores with them – whether or not they actually have my students in class.
Yep – that makes more sense in Ohio….. NOT!!
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We teachers stated this since the 1990s when we had the Ohio Proficiency Test. We told the superintendent and the school board, as well as our principals. As those who didn’t “believe” the validity of such tests and didn’t accept what was happening retired, we were replaced by wide-eyed believers. As time marched on, they dropped their idealism and began to stand up for what we always knew was right and best for kids.
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So ridiculous! And if you want to go to one of the country’s top public high schools (if not claimed to be the number one school) be very wealthy and live in the wealthy suburbs of Northern VA…
http://www.newsweek.com/2014/09/19/number-1-high-school-america-offers-real-head-start-268693.html
Why are wealthy students given the wonderful freedom to learn while the poor students are shackled by testing and data collection???
Answer: There is profit to be made off and political power to be gained by controlling the poor and the “ed reformers” have tragically done (should change the verb tense… are DOING) a “remarkable” job at the expense of the students and those who teach them.
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Once again, this reinforces the idea that the most important factor that determines student performance on standardized tests is theIr ZIP CODE.
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Which begs the question,
“What is the most important factor that determines ZIP CODE?”
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I AM an Ohio teacher! This is the most insane, illogical, connivance that the “reformers” conjured up to blame teachers. I wish someone could explain to me the reasoning behind the hatred of teachers, public schools, and now even the children that attend them?! What is the long term goal of demonizing them?? What do they want this generation of children to be like? What kind of example is this setting? Would they encourage teaching hatred and disgust of a group of people just because they can? I am very worried about our children…………..To the teachers, keep on teaching from your hearts, keep on teaching the children who sit in your classrooms, shut the door and do what you know is best for those children – that’s why you became a teacher!
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Invaders always need to demonize the enemy.
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