Howard Blume has written a very informative and fair account of the study of charters in Los Angeles conducted by Bruce Fuller and other researchers at Berkeley.
The study, which is linked in the article, says that students in charters begin with higher test scores and improve faster than their peers in district public schools.
The implications, I believe, are that those who enroll in charters start off ahead academically, and their academic gains are increased by peer effects. If a student is enrolled in a school with other higher-performing students–and if the students with behavioral problems and the unmotivated students are not present–the students learn faster.
What are the lessons for public schools? Remove the students with behavioral problems; remove the students who are unmotivated; remove the students with severe disabilities; remove the students with low test scores; limit the number of English language learners to those who are nearly fluent. That’s a formula for success. In a school where everyone is motivated, well-behaved, and ready to learn, students get higher test scores.
But what should we do with all those kids who were removed and excluded? If Eli Broad has his way, half the children in Los Angeles will be in charter schools with strong peer cultures, and the rest will be left behind in squalid public schools. Are they his problem too? Why not just give the entire enrollment of Los Angeles Unified School District to Eli, and let him take responsibility for all the children, not just the likeliest to succeed?
Take the challenge, Eli. Think big. Can you do it? Take responsibility for all the children, not just the ones you want. If you aren’t willing to do that, stick to funding art and medical research. You don’t tell artists how to paint or doctors how to perform surgery, do you? Stick to what you know.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
What Eli knows is how to discriminate. Pick the easiest, sure bet and build on it. Take no risks and help no one out of your known circle. Actually promote educational opportunities nah, take the sure bet, take the money.
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“Are there no prisons? Are there no workhouses?” – E. Scrooge
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Diane, You are starting the year earlier than expected but in great form.
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I don’t care which “side” you’re on- there’s something really wrong when a billionaire can buy a public school district and there’s zero debate on the fundamental question of whether this is appropriate and instead we’re just quarreling over details.
Wow. I know there’s a widely held (and justified) believe among a huge swathe of the public that wealthy people have purchased government, but now we’re not even using elected middlemen. Wealthy individuals just buy the public entity directly and the only public role is to bicker over the terms of the sale.
Why bother to participate in civic process at all?
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The same can be said about the way in which Gates has been allowed to saddle public education with his bogus bad ideas that become policy. Even a notion as flawed as VAM is accepted as gospel.
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Chiara,
I never knew that LAUSD, a public school district was for sale. In this blog I learn some thing new every day. Only thing is that I am not sure what am I learning. Such sales are they only known to a select few like you?
I would like to find out which other public entity was bought recently by a wealthy individual. Who is the seller and who is the buyer? How can I get on this bandwagon, or sale? Is it heavily discounted, like 50 to 100% off? You must at least provide one instance of such sale, because you have just raised my curiosity.
Did I miss something or is it all hyperbole?
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Raj,
Think of the privatization of New Orleans as a good example of the selling out of an entire public school district. All the teachers were fired and replaced by temps. Almost every public schools was handed over to a private entity. Was this a sale or a giveaway?
Then there are charters like the ones owned by non-educator Baker Mitchell in North Carolina. He opens charters, makes millions of dollars, and contributes nothing of value. Is that a sale or a transfer of public funds to a for-profit corporation?
Does it matter what you call it? I call it wrong, although I might also call it a theft of public property.
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Raj,
Check out the sale of 18th Avenue School in Newark, New Jersey.
Abigail Shure
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Abigail Sure
I checked it out. and here it is:
“After more than 130 years in Newark’s Central Ward, the Eighteenth Avenue School didn’t open its doors to new and returning students yesterday.
The demise of the once-stately brick building is indicative of what’s happening in cities across the country: enrollment down to 250, walls and infrastructure well past their years, student test scores on the low end in a city where the norm is nothing to cheer about.”
Now tell me who bought this building not the school? Ask yourself a question, “When do you close a school, when the building collapses or when the enrollment goes to zero?”
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Raj, why don’t you read Dale Russakoff’s “The Prize” about Newark.
Why are you so eager to destroy public education? Why do you support the greedy every time?
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And how did the building get into such poor condition and why has the enrollment declined?
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Raj,
It was sold to a charter school for a below market price.
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Abigail Sure
Are you sure that a public school district sold its property at below market value? Do you have any proof? Are you just making it up to support your argument? Did the school board which sold the building (not school) on the cheap get any kickback? Where did the charter school get the money to buy the dilapidated school building and what did they do with it?
If what you say is true then the public has the right to question the elected school board and make amends. That is why the school board is elected.
In the last 15 years, the total number of public schools have remained between 98,000 and 99,000. During the same period almost 30,000 schools (brick and mortar kind) were closed, that means 30,000 new schools were built to keep the total number schools nearly constant.
The primary reason for school closure are demography changes, not enough kids in the area, degradation of old school buildings and cost of maintaining old buildings.
It is not poor performance as claimed in this blog space. Here it is customary to blame all els on NCLB and race to the top. They were closing schools prior to NCLB or Race to the Top and they will continue to close schools at the rate of about 2000 per year and also build at the same rate. The new school building are far more efficient and the idea is to build new efficient school buildings where the students live not maintain poor infra structure at high cost where the students no longer live.
If you believe that a majority of schools were closed (30,000 in the last 15 years) such that the property can be sold to the lowest bidder and the school board getting kickbacks on the sale, you are barking up the wrong tree. In that case the public is not being served, and public funds are wasted by the duly elected school board. You need to organize and go after the school board if you believe that scenario. Go ahead participate in the civic process and make your contribution.
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FYI Raj,
The Newark Public Schools is a district run by the State of New Jersey. The elected school board serves in an advisory capacity. I would suggest that you conduct further investigation in to the matter before you attempt to besmirch my reputation. Although many choose to disagree with me, I am rarely accused of making up my facts.
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Diane,
You seem to think New Orleans is an example against charters.
Let me say my piece. New Orleans had a student to teacher ratio of 9 before Katrina because you claimed that 7000 teachers were fired. They had about 63,000 students before Katrina. This is incredible, since most school districts and private schools in this country have a much larger student teacher ratio. After Katrina half the population on New Orleans left New Orleans. Probably half the teachers and students left. If they had retained all the teachers it would lead to an absurd student teacher ratio of 4.5. These are facts.
Now with the grip of the teachers union on the school district, the only way they could figure out is to fire all the school teachers and then rehire them as the case may be. Remember they only needed half of them. They did exactly that and were questioned by all of you. The school district was a mess before and after Katrina and there was no way to fix the problem.
It did not turn into a charter school district overnight. The district tried very hard to run the schools as public schools. In a few years the school district made it into an all charter district and eased the financial problem of managing the school district.
Now what happened to half of the students that left New Orleans? They ended up in Huston, Alaska, San Diego to name a few. Did these school districts ask New Orleans or Luisiana state for financial support to teach the New Orleans children? No they absorbed the students without any complaints.
Obviously other solutions for the management of the New Orleans school district may have existed, like hiring all the teachers to teach half of the students with revenue from property taxes reduced by half. Remember half the homes in New Orleans were destroyed, property tax revenue halved, but according to you a contract is a contract, the teachers must be paid whether they are needed or not.
It would have been a great school district with 4.5 students per teacher but we will never know. All the school board had to do was to double or triple the property taxes on those unlucky few New Orleans residents who some how survived Katrina. Could they have survived another disaster on top of Katrina such as doubling or tripling of the property taxes to afford to keep all the school teachers? You be the judge.
Over the long run turning the New Orleans school district into an all charter school district may not have been a perfect solution, but you are not coming up with alternative but more perfect solution.
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Raj,
Question: How are charter schools funded in New Orleans?
Multiple Choice Options:
A) They are funded by Goldman Sachs.
B) They are funded by the tax payers.
C) They are funded by the Tooth Fairy.
D) A, B and C are correct.
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Abigail Shure,
Just like every where else they are funded by Santa Claus.
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Diane Ravitch,
You state with conviction “You are wrong. Many school age children in New Orleans are not in school. Most of the charter have state grades of C, D, or F. The choices are not good, unless you test I to a selective charter.”
I do not see any evidence. Do you have any idea how many are not in school? Is it one, a hundred, a thousand, a million, a trillion? Just remember that there are about 45,000 in the K-12 public school system in New Orleans. Your number better be less than 45,000 and please show me the proof.
It is your turn to prove it with reliable data. Just saying that some one some were gave you that information is not good enough. I cannot accept that you because you are a historian feel in your bones that it is true. Just prove it for all the others who do not have Devine guidance.
I can only agree (may be) that charters may not be better than public schools. I believe that some public schools are just horrible in educating our children.
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Raj,
You just proved my point. You are not informed and you have strong pro-privatization opinions.
Andrea Gabor wrote that there were 45,000 students in NOLA schools, but 26,0000 who are “disconnected,” unaccounted for.
http://mobile.nytimes.com/2015/08/23/opinion/sunday/the-myth-of-the-new-orleans-school-makeover.html?referer=
She wrote:
Louisiana’s official dropout rates are unreliable, but a new report by Measure of America, a project of the Social Science Research Council, using Census Bureau survey data from 2013, found that over 26,000 people in the metropolitan area between the ages of 16 and 24 are counted as “disconnected,” because they are neither working nor in school.
Raj, do you have counter-evidence? You do have a habit of doubting everything that supporters of public schools say. Where is your evidence that all the children of New Orleans are enrolled? What do you know that the Social Science Research Council doesn’t know? What is your source?
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Diane, you stated:
“Raj, why don’t you read Dale Russakoff’s “The Prize” about Newark.
Why are you so eager to destroy public education? Why do you support the greedy every time?”
Here is my answer for the world to see.
I categorically state that I do not neither have the desire nor the power to destroy public education. I do not support the greedy every time.
I am certain that public education is not (emphasize “NOT”) being destroyed. It is doing fine.
Since you are off topic and attacking me here goes:
I can only state that you have lost the ability to understand any other point of view and you cannot put forward a logical reasoning to rebut opposing opinions.
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Raj, Sorry, but your response is not logical. You write comments here disagreeing with anyone who supports our democratic system of public education and supporting any instance of privatization. I have been on both sides of the issues, and I understand both sides. I also can tell the difference between right and wrong. You have never been a classroom K-12 teacher, I seriously doubt that you attended a public school, and I don’t think you are a scholar of education. You are entitled to your opinions. Other bloggers would have blocked you long ago. I have not because this blog is open to discussion even when we disagree. There are lines, but you haven’t crossed them..yet.
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This gets to the heart of the charter debate. The actual practices at charters (at least the ones that are lauded for high test scores) are at best ordinary, at worst oppressive and racist, but the different composition of kids allows classes to move along more quickly. There is not an active teacher out there who has not experienced the difference just a small handful of disruptive students can make to a classroom. Remove those kids and your class can flow. We know this.
But can you claim “success” by discriminating against and harming the more vulnerable students? Is it “success” for a student of color from a low-income background to go to college while dozens of other low-income students of color are directly hurt by the policies that allow that to happen? How much harm will we allow? How many throw-away students and families are there? Can you discriminate against even one “undesirable” child and still be a “public” school? Does one school “success” justify dozens of other schools being sabotaged and set up for failure?
#FirstDoNoHarm
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A great way to start off the first day of a new year—
Ms. Katie Osgood sharing with us what’s in her heart and on her mind.
😎
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Those most likely to be in the “throw away” category are poor black and brown, ELLs, and classified students. Oddly enough, most of these students should be the very groups that should be protected by the federal government under civil rights laws. Instead, the feds are guilty of incentivizing discrimination against these groups. I keep crossing my fingers waiting for someone to file a class action suit against the resegregation of publicly funded schools.
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Katie Osgood
New Orleans school district is all charter. Therefore the New Orleans charter schools cannot counsel out bad students as often claimed in this blog. The entire spectrum of students, i.e., English Language learners, poor, middle class, special education are all in the charter schools. There is one exception, the parents can now decide which charter school they send their child. Such choice never existed during the days of public schools before Katrina. Therefore no one can blame the charters for cherry picking. The question is how are they doing?
In the all charter school district environment, there cannot be any discrimination, no harming vulnerable students, no harming undesirable child, no discrimination against the poor, no sabotage and setting up for failure.
I have to yet to find a school teacher claiming that such discrimination does not ever happen in public schools. If there is one such being please stand up and be counted.
Using myopic reasoning some people over in this blog have stated that the charter schools are horrible, but people with no axe to grind have not come to the same or any other conclusion about New Orleans charter schools. I am not sure what think tanks on either side have concluded.
As they say the jury is still out on this issue.
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Raj,
You are wrong. Many school age children in New Orleans are not in school. Most of the charter have state grades of C, D, or F. The choices are not good, unless you test I to a selective charter.
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The only reason charters exsistence is because if discipline issues. The courts in an attempt to “be fair” made it impossible for the district’s to handle discipline. Sloppy administration and fear of lawsuits has made it difficult to place difficult teens in appropriate settings even when they are available. LAUSD changed policy during Deasy’s term that created nearly unmanageable situations for these kids and for their teachers. Probably to save money.
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West coast teacher
“The only reason charters exsistence is because if discipline issues.”
This one is new to me. I would have never guessed it and have trouble in agreeing with it.
Why the charters do not have this situation I cannot comprehend. New Orleans has only charters and they cannot avoid this by cherry picking their student body. The rejected students have no place to go and it is against the law.
I can imagine the unmanageable situations in the class room and I do not have a solution. I do not agree that is the only reason for the existence of charter schools.
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We need one of our more research oriented commenters here. However, I do remember reading that New Orleans does not keep track of students who leave charters. They have no idea whether they have enrolled in another school or not. While the population shrank drastically after Katrina, there is some indication that kids just disappear from the schools and no one has any idea what happens to them. If I am remembering correctly, these numbers are not negligible and would indicate that charter attrition is alive and well in New Orleans. That is one of the problems of an all choice system that has no central management. Each school is only accountable for those children who are currently students and no one looks out for those who leave a particular school. Chicago has had a similar problem that they have ignored. When they closed those 50 schools, not all the students enrolled at the charter replacements or other public schools. No one has any idea where they went. CPS apparently no longer felt responsible for those students.
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2old2teach
You brought up a good point, thanks.
Here the problem is it is hard to get documented data, and I am unwilling to accept guesses in these blogs.
But I believe the parent is responsible to send his/her kids to school. Otherwise he/she can be prosecuted. I think that is the law in this country. It is the elected school boards responsibility. They are the central management. They are the ones who dole out the money to the charter schools based on enrollment. They are the only ones who may have hard data on school attendance. If they do not have it they can easily demand the data from each charter school and it is their responsibility.
May be no one is in charge because the school board is lax in maintaining authority over the students and parents.
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Raj, if you find speculation on the part of public school advocates suspect, then I suggest that perhaps you should refrain from speculation as well and stick to the well documented facts you demand from others. I would also suggest that there are many well informed bloggers, who have provided significant information on the state of the education system in New Orleans, as there are in many other areas that have seen significant abuse by the charter industry. Mining the blogs of those closest to a particular situation would be most valuable. You inject yourself into a blog intended for those who see public education being systematically dismantled by a charter system that is not serving the needs of the communities from which they are drawing scarce resources and defend that very system whose track record is not at all compelling especially considering the cost to the public schools on which they feed. As an industry, charter schools are a monumental failure. It is a shame that schools that truly serve a community need are being tarred with the same brush. Perhaps those schools should be working to control the abuses within that sector a little more vociferously. That is not the job of this blog.
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Raj: Mandatory school attendance is NOT national law. It is state law, and various states have different ages in which students can legally leave school. In Utah, it’s 16. And a legislator is trying to remove that requirement entirely in Utah. I don’t know what Louisiana’s policy is, but many of these kids could easily be “forgotten” by the system, and legally, they don’t have to care what happens to them if they’re over the age in which they could legally leave.
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Apparently, New Orleans “forgot” to figure out how to track its school aged population in a decentralized charter system. I seem to remember a video of some meeting where officials had to admit that they didn’t have such information. Mercedes?
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2old2teach:
Here is the story: http://mobile.nytimes.com/2015/08/23/opinion/sunday/the-myth-of-the-new-orleans-school-makeover.html?referer=
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http://city-journal.org/mobile/story.php?s=12454#.VobMlew8KnM
Wanted to share with you and your readers.
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The writer needs to work on not making his bias quite so obvious. He does have the reform talking points down although some factual information might help as well..
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This post describes exactly what is wrong with the so-called “successful” charters. They discriminate, period. If the pro-charter folks had their way, the charter schools would educate the kids who have ALWAYS done well in public schools, and leave behind the students who struggle. Of course, they lie about this because honesty is not a value that the “successful” charter schools value.
What you see right now is those charters claiming far more than their rightful share of public resources because they are NOT educating the kids who are expensive to educate. And what is far, far worse is that they lie about this and pretend they welcome every child. They welcome them until the one way their inexperienced teachers know how to teach doesn’t work, and then they are told “sorry, go elsewhere”.
It’s disgusting. And the fact that these people are teaching those dishonest values to families and children is even more disgusting.
Why aren’t charters trying to educate the most vulnerable students? Why not welcome the ones who struggle the most, instead of welcoming the ones who struggle the least? I truly do not understand how those people can look in the mirror and not be disgusted with their own dishonesty.
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I believe that the original idea for charters way back when, was to do exactly this. Be free to do what’s needed to teach the hardest to teach students. It’s totally morphed into the present nightmare.
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Here’s an interesting article with an analysis of the differences between charter enrollments and public school enrollments. http://commonwealthmagazine.org/education/charters-better-than-or-just-different-from-district-schools/
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This is fascinating and NYC is truly crying out for similar research and reporting to be done on their own charter schools. Who stays, who leaves, and who replaces the students who leave? All data suggests that the best performing charter schools get rid of the lowest performing students in their entering Kindergarten class and replace them in older grades with students who are tested before allowing them to join their grade. It is perfectly acceptable for a charter school to ONLY offer a seat in a lower grade (i.e., repeating their previous grade) in order to discourage a “not up to snuff” child from enrolling. And no matter what, it insures that every student who joins an elementary school at 2nd or 3rd grade is already performing at grade level. Of course, the students who win the lottery for Kindergarten can’t be discouraged by making them repeat pre-K again, so looking at how many of those original K lottery winners leave is what demonstrates successful charter schools’ cherry-picking of students.
Most discouraging is that the oversight agencies absolutely don’t care about attrition. At least in NY State. And that speaks volumes about how little the charter school movement — and their so-called oversight agencies (i.e. cheerleaders) — is about educating at-risk kids. It’s about educating middle class kids and whatever at-risk kids can work at grade level while being taught by the most inexperienced teachers. The rest of the students — at least from the perspective of the charter school folks — can rot.
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NYC Public School Parent,
Several years ago, the economist Caroline Hoxby published a study claiming that students who spent eight years in a charter school outscored students in the state’s wealthiest districts. I think she was comparing the survivors of charters with the general population of a district like Scarsdale. But in any event, NYC has now had charters for 15 years, and the top-performing charter chain, Eva’s Success Academies, has yet to place a single student in one of the city’s elite high schools. Having aced state tests for years, they can’t pass the entry test for Bronx Science, Stuyvesant, Brooklyn Tech, or Townsend Harris. Yes, time for another study, preferably by someone who is not committed to a point of view before the study.
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That’s hilarious that Caroline Hoxby spent her time researching the obvious: If a charter school has a philosophy of making the kids who can’t keep up with their high standards feel misery and either suspends then over and over or just keeps failing them and holding them back, nearly every one of those kids will leave and you can brag about how wonderful the remaining kids do — even if the remaining kids are small in number.
The best example of this is BASIS Charter Schools! Success Academy is not far behind.
What I find most appalling is that the oversight agencies don’t care about attrition. The rate of attrition is the only thing that tells you whether a charter school is good or terrible. Attrition matters far more than results because parents leave a terrible charter school and they also leave the charter school that “randomly” accept Kindergarten students and loses large numbers of them because they don’t know how to teach most children who struggle to learn.
I have posted this before: The July 2015 NYC Independent Budget Office Report tracked attrition rates of the entering Kindergarten students in 53 charter schools that had been around long enough for lottery winning Kindergarten students to have advanced through 5th grade (4 of them were Success Academy schools).
Those 53 charter schools lost 49.5% of their starting Kindergarten class. The IBO (purposely?) refused to give a breakdown of the individual attrition rates of those 53 charter schools. However the IBO did provide an individual test performance rate of those charter schools and Success dwarfed them all. Just like the REMAINING seniors at BASIS Charter schools’ test performance is so high. Is there a correlation between high attrition and high test scores? The pro-charter folks are desperate to keep that from being researched. And THAT demonstrates just how corrupt they are. And their influence in keeping the IBO from showing the individual attrition rates of those 53 charter schools, while INSISTING that they show the individual test performance of the charter schools and not lump them together shows how pernicious the influence of certain charter schools and their billionaire funders are.
Here is the link for the IBO study — page 9 shows that 53 charter schools have a 49.5% attrition rate. In a later article about this, the reporter confirms that 4 of these are Success Academy schools. They heavily backfilled in 1st and 2nd grade to fill the spots of the all the K kids who “got to go” but the way they backfill is a lesson in itself: they apparently TEST children and tell them they have to repeat a grade to insure that none of those missing K kids is replaced by a child who isn’t already working at grade level.
Click to access school-indicators-for-new-york-city-charter-schools-2013-2014-school-year-july-2015.pdf
What is the true attrition rate of the starting Kindergarten classes at the highest performing charter schools? Apparently, no one is ever supposed to know. And the pro-charter folks don’t care about any child left behind — ironic since THOSE are the kids they were supposed to care most about.
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Also, I forgot to say that the very excellent Townsend Harris High School isn’t a specialized high school and admission is done via a more holistic view of a students state test scores and report card grades. The other schools where the SHSAT is the only admissions exam are High School of American Studies (HSAS), High School of Math Science and Engineering (HSMSE), Brooklyn Latin, Staten Island Tech and York College.
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Eli just wants kids with disabilities to go away. The last thing these guys want is to pay for kids they think don’t deserve their largess.
After Arne stopped enforcing compliance in 2011, he gave every state and district in the country permission to ignore IEP’s. To make matters worse, Arne’s OSEP director, Melody Musgrove, has failed to do anything to support public school SPED children beyond monitoring test scores.
What Arne didn’t do was rewrite IDEA. As a legal contract, public schools are required by IDEA to provide all recommended SPED services deemed necessary by the IEP team (an IEP team must include teachers, therapists, the parent, and sometimes the child.) It is illegal for public schools to deny any IEP services for lack of funds,lack of resources or lack of professional expertise.
Parents can leverage the IEP’s contractual obligations by opting their children out of the standardized tests.
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True Facts About the Dung Beetle — I mean the LA Times Editorial Board:
Howard Blume reports the facts. His editors then twist and spin them. That is how the LA Times do.
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Diane, the LA Times published an editorial yesterday (12/31/15) titled “The Ongoing War on Charters.” Plenty of spin to dissect, starting with the ridiculous title.
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There has always been a lot of hostility towards a court decision….Brown versus Board of Education. Perhaps less so, as they learn ways to finesse it.
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Quite so.
I seem to remember that, not so long ago, the “schools of choice” spawned by the court decision you reference were dubbed by their critics [IMHO, correctly] as “segregation academies.”
Increasingly the new “schools of choice” resemble, in some respects, their older counterparts. And just like their predecessors, their promoters and defenders reserve their invective and spin for those that point out the commonalities between old and new “choices.”
One striking similarity: the attempt to preserve and maintain inequalities of all kinds.
Thank you for your comment.
😎
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Howard Blume leaked the Broad report to the public. I am surprised he kept his job.
But I beg to differ — Eli Broad should not “stick to funding art and medical research.” He has neither expertise nor insight in either of these.
These billionaires should give away all their money to the people who really earned it.
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No, these billionaires should pay their taxes without carving out exemptions to their own “non-profits”.
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At the very least, isn’t this an argument for tracking in public schools? Why shouldn’t the kids who can learn the material faster be allowed to progress rather than having to tutor their classmates to assist the teacher?
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Virginia, tracking doesn’t answer the question of what we do with the millions of children who will not be wanted by charters.
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Diane, actually it does. Or would help a lot. When you track, you can vary class size by ability level. The higher ability students can be placed in classes with larger student/teacher ratios (say 35:1). That frees up teachers to assist the lower ability students with smaller class sizes (say 15-20:1). And it ensures that both achieve growth at their natural rate (don’t hold back the talented students while providing extra attention to the slower students without making them feel stupid for never understanding as quickly).
Remember, while I support the concept of charters and parents being free to choose, I don’t think they are necessary. And I strive to make the public schools more efficient. If public schools were reformed (no-nonsense discipline policies, tracking, accurate evaluation methods, better collaboration and support for teachers), we wouldn’t need so many charters.
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While I appreciate you recognizing that lower performing students benefit from smaller classes, I question your assumption that high performing students do not. The amount of support needed does not change because the class expectations increase. By increasing the class size you are actually guaranteeing that some students will not get the support they need no matter how academically bright they are. As a teacher, I am going to spend less time on individual students as the number of students increases. Of course your assumptions are predicated on teachers having sufficient time for planning and collaboration. More teacher planning time means fewer classes per teacher which means more teachers and/or larger class sizes. You champion tracking so that higher performing students can move at a faster pace and then cripple that faster pace scenario with larger classes.
I have mixed feelings about tracking. As a special ed teacher, I recognized the need for extra support for struggling students and even taught self contained classes for those who had fallen too far behind their peers. I also saw the benefits of tracking to children who were able to move much faster than the pace dictated by the typical class composition. As a parent, at one point, I had to intercede for one of my kids who was always seated with the kids who could not sit still or focus. She never got to sit with her friends because of her assigned role model duty. At least then the teacher made sure there was one other kindred spirit in the group. It is even harder at the high school level to meet the needs of all students in a heterogeneously grouped class. As is appropriate to the age, high school students have definite opinions about what they need and want.
Of course, no matter how we split up students we are really trying to create a “good enough” system of delivery. I ran into the “good enough” scenario on a very obvious level when I found students identified for special services based on how far behind their peers they were. In a low income community using test scores as the deciding factor meant that students had to be testing at an extremely low level. In the higher socioeconomic communities, if test scores had been the definitive factor, most of the general education students from the lower income community would have been classified as needing special education services. This whole issue is extremely complicated as what a child gets out of a class depends not only on school factors but on myriad factors outside the control of the school environment. How do we challenge students at a level appropriate for them individually and yet still meet those same needs for their classmates?
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virginiasgp nothing is stopping the top performing charter schools from tracking — they can do as they please. But what they “please” is to get good test scores, and tracking doesn’t work anywhere near as well as having a “got to go” list where you suspend 5 year olds over an over again until their parents understand how unwanted they are and pull them out. Plus, that’s far easier than keeping the struggling kids and trying to teach them through “tracking” when your inexperienced teachers don’t have a clue except their undying belief that if you punish a kid enough, he will miraculously learn a concept that he struggles with.
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Tracking has disastrous effects on the lower tiered children. For example, if I group my ESL students homogeneously, the least proficient students will be exposed to only one role model; me. In heterogeneously grouped classes, on the other hand, students have access to the input of their more advanced peers. One of my students wrote more than was required for an assignment and the other students in his group were inspired to be more prolific as well.
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Abigail, you probably just described why charter schools prefer to weed out the poor performers rather than to keep them and just track them in a lower performing class.
Of course, the bottom line is that charter schools don’t want to teach those kids and need public schools to absorb them so they can profit from only educating the cheapest to educate students. Sure some charter schools do have a commitment to the low-performers, but since little of the millions in donations the privatizers make flows their way — it goes to the big charter chains who need it the least so they can grow even bigger! — those charter schools will likely soon be gone. They don’t realize how expendable they are, and unless the charter schools run by decent people start copying the “best practices” of the charter schools run by the people who want to promote themselves far more than they care about educating all at-risk kids, those school will not last.
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Abigail: Heterogeneous groupings in elementary schools have a positive effect on the bottom quartile, and with differentiation does not hold back the top students. It becomes trickier in the upper grades as some students may take advanced courses. My district detracked our high school and ran summer programs for minority students to enable them to meet with success in advanced classes in high school. The program worked! The more we can do to cast a wider net, the better. All students deserve a chance to challenge themselves to go as far as they can. No test can measure drive or work ethnic. Let’s spend less time and money trying to pigeonhole students with tests and rankings. Life is hard enough without erecting artificial barriers.
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Progress to where exactly? They won’t get to where it is that they are supposed to be going if they have to learn beside others who do not memorize and spit back predetermined answers on standardized tests as proficiently.
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As long as the students/parents are the choosers. Surprisingly, the customer can choose what he/she needs.
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Charters are holding education down by winking at the problem of relatively homogeneous characteristics among their pool of applicants. The lack of substantial gains in test scores by the more affluent group, charters, exacerbates the problem.
Tracking holds education down by winking at the problem of relatively homogeneous characteristics among groupings. Heterogeneous groupings help all students in early and middle grades learn from each other.
Charters and tracking — they’re both misguided. Divided we fall.
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To the critics of tracking who offer zero evidence for their claims (besides stating we “know” the gifted did just as well), I recommend that you read some research and get a clue. I think Duke’s TIP program is a little more familiar with the scientific studies that your anecdotes which don’t even provide objective data.
Abigail, you miss the point on tracking. Even if the kids were being taught off-topic material at an accelerated pace, it teaches them to challenge themselves. When you are presented with material at a much slower pace that your ability allows, you become lazy. You learn to take it easy. That is a huge danger to the high ability learners. I’m not saying that schools should be segregated. But core classes like math and ELA must be tracked to fully challenge the students at all levels. Read the link above and get back to me. I also understand you are focused on ESL and maybe even SPED students. I understand you want the entire class of above average students to co-teach your ESL students who likely have limited overall potential anyway (they are not on the verge of creating the next medical cure despite what you may claim). Yes, all students deserve to be educated but don’t hold other students back so that you can use them as assistants to do your job.
West Coast Teacher, agree that care needs to be taken to ensure “other factors” are not used to assign tracks. However, we must also be careful that parents who simply wish their kids to be gifted are not allowed to place their kids in classes over their heads. When this happens, teachers often slow down the pace and everyone loses. As long as teachers uphold the standards of each class, then let students choose. If they fail because of wishful thinking, then they fail.
And if charters are the only ones who handle discipline, then why aren’t teachers organizing for better student discipline as much as they organize against CC, VAMs, and charters?
Bmarshall, I suggest you read a PISA exam report. There are no regurgitated facts on these exams. Maybe you could even take one and see if you can honestly claim your knowingly false claims still hold.
NYC school parent, please explain what difference it makes whether charters weed out kids with low scores if we evaluate charters based on VAMs? Do you realize that the growth is relative to the starting position of the student AND the capability of that student? Regardless of how many times this is explained to you, you seem unable to grasp the concept of value-added measures.
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RT,
I teach in elementary, but I have taught every grade. In addition, I am an adjunct in a community college. Life is not conducted by interacting with only “the best and the brightest.” My friend who barely completed ninth grade is far more adept than I in sorting out emotionally charged situations. This college and career readiness is total balderdash.
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Diane
You state “Virginia, tracking doesn’t answer the question of what we do with the millions of children who will not be wanted by charters.”
To start with only 5% of students from a total of 40 million K-12 public school students attend charter schools. That means charter schools educate about 2 million children. What do you mean when you state “what we do with the millions of children who will not be wanted by charters”? Where do you get this number of millions?
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Raj, in D.C., nearly 50% of the children are in charters. In New Orleans, nearly 100%. In a dozen more troubled cities, where families live in desperate poverty and school budgets have been cut, charters enroll a significant percentage of the children. You are smart enough to know that it is disingenuous to compare the total number of students in the U.S. to charter enrollments. There are no charters in a handful of states. They are concentrated (so far) in big cities. I thought you were an honest critic. I was wrong. I lost all respect for you with that sleight of hand. Far too obvious.
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virginiasgp says: “please explain what difference it makes whether charters weed out kids with low scores if we evaluate charters based on VAMs?”
1. If you weed out every child who will not do well in your charter school and you KEEP the children who will do well in your charter school, and VAMs only look at the children who STAY, please explain how that is supposed to be an impressive achievement. And why you believe all public schools will be good if we can just rid them of the kids who won’t do well there. I am curious as to how this works.
2. I live in NY State and my city (NYC) has many charter schools. Those charter schools are perfectly free to use VAM methods to evaluate their teachers and compare one charter school to another. My bet is that this would never happen because the charter schools that do exactly as I mentioned above and rid themselves of the kids whose test scores don’t improve would always seem to be “better” than the charter schools who try to teach those kids instead of directing all their efforts into how to REMOVE those students. Where is the VAM analysis of charter schools one against another?
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NYC school parent: like you, I wondered where you asserted that charters are evaluated by VAM. Charters typically—I would appreciate specific info re the contrary—simply use the raw test scores of their selected student bodies to make the case that they are superior to public schools with lower raw test score results [*A case where they differentiate themselves from public schools, although when it comes to the transparent use of public monies and various disguised and not so disguised forms of bullying/creaming/excluding students and parents and staff, etc., they are often proud to proclaim themselves distinct and nothing like public schools].
And how did VAM and SGP become exactly one and the same?
But remember, when it comes to mathematical intimidation and obfuscation, you can never go wrong when the greatest hero of self-proclaimed “education reform” took “her” students from the 13th to the 90th percentile—that’s not just growth relative to the starting position of the student but literally and figuratively the educational equivalent of walking on the waters of VAM and turning SGPs into wine. It’s a miracle!
😳
Except, of course, when the selfsame fanboy eviscerates said claim, gutting Michelle Rhee’s pretensions so thoroughly that they only outcome could be—that she remains the greatestestest hero of rheephorm that ever existed!
😏
Unrequited love is grand, and so is $tudent $ucce$$, don’t you think?
😎
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I think that three years of test scores are necessary to reach a VAM rating; how many charter teachers hang around for three years?
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Ok, what’s good for the goose…. Both public schools and charters should be rated by VAMs. It’s silly to rate them based on average test scores alone. I realize that many of their salespersons tout such nonsense, but that just opens them up to the critiques pointed out on here (only selecting high-scoring students). Nobody should listen to the salespersons. I’m not saying they everything they say is a lie, but the truth of a statement has very little to do with whether a salesperson will make that statement publicly. If you want the truth, ask the techs (or technocrats/researchers).
And yes, charters must be open for multiple years to obtain reliable VAMs. However, a one-year VAM is related to a multi-year VAM, just less reliable. If the scores are particularly low the first year, then officials might consider closing the school early. Note that in reviewing the Imagine Schools press releases (my corrupt school board chairman works for the owner), I noticed they quite prominently displayed growth gains. So no KrazyTA, charters do use VAMs to tout their performance at times. The fact that some advocates overestimate the gains does not invalidate the actual results. I find it odd that you argue via anecdote.
But Diane, this is why we need accurate accounting. You claim charters pick the cream of the crop. Those students cost less than the more challenging ones. With accurate accounting and the money following the students, those students who you claim are “left behind” would have more money following them that the diligent students. A free market system solves that problem by charters opening specifically to teach those students who are less motivated because there is higher funding for them.
NYC public school parent, you suggest that charters are overrated because they only keep the kids who will perform well. There are several problems with that statement.
1. VAMs measure progress against similar students. Thus, it is a measurement of the effectiveness of the instruction regardless of the overall level. It’s not like they keep the high-scoring students only. If you are suggesting that they keep the students who could have shown growth if given the chance but had previously failed to do so in a public school, then why not? That is the whole point of charters. As West Coast Teacher mentions, schools are afraid to impose discipline and thus sentence the diligent students to remain in classes with disruptive students. That is patently unfair to the diligent students. No suburban parent would put up with that. If we separate those two groups, we can still work with the disruptive students but we free the diligent ones to reach their potential.
2. There are many ways to evaluate VAMs. Since VAMs are calculated at the individual student level, we can look at the average, median, percentage of high/low VAMs, the range, etc. In order for your hypothesis to be correct, a single class would have to contain both very high VAM students and very low VAM students. You assert that the charters rid themselves of the low VAM students and thus stand out. But there is no evidence of that. When we evaluated the SGP data we received from VDOE, there would occasionally be some stragglers that are very high or low. But in general, teachers have a range of SGPs in their classroom that are somewhat bunched in a range (of say 30-40%). The less effective ones have their ranges skewed lower (1-50%) whereas the more effective teachers have their ranges skewed higher (50-99%). Not only are you making wild conjectures with your theory on selectivity biasing VAMs, but the objective data rejects your hypothesis.
3. If you are suggesting that discipline policies affect results, I would agree. VAMs/SGPs can show that. When you have a teacher that transfers into/out of a school and her VAM changes, that is a result of the differences in policies between the two schools. You can tell which schools have better climates for teaching with school-level VAMs. I think the common cause among both charter and public school advocates may be better discipline. I’m not talking about the harsh techniques where no kids can speak, but an end to being afraid to remove completely disruptive students from the class.
4. I see no reason why districts/states can’t require charters to report VAMs by teacher and school. Would you support that policy?
2old2teach, you are arguing that regardless of how independent students are, they need you at a low student-teacher level in order to learn. That doesn’t fly. Kids go off to college and have 200 in a single lecture hall. Many of those high-performing kids are a year or two away from that environment where they must take the initiative. Yet, you are opposed to them being in a class of 35 and actually being challenged so that instead you can use them as co-teachers in a class of 25? Really?
I would further argue that we dilute the teacher talent pool at the low student teacher ratios. Just like a sports league has lower levels of performance once they expand or players usually flock to the best coaches as opposed to the lowest ratio, research shows paying the best teachers more and actually increasing class size for those effective teachers results in gains.
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Virginia, VAM is junk science.
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“2old2teach, you are arguing that regardless of how independent students are, they need you at a low student-teacher level in order to learn. That doesn’t fly. Kids go off to college and have 200 in a single lecture hall. Many of those high-performing kids are a year or two away from that environment where they must take the initiative. Yet, you are opposed to them being in a class of 35 and actually being challenged so that instead you can use them as co-teachers in a class of 25? Really?
Gee, I don’t ever remember arguing that regardless of how “independent” students are, they need me at a low student-teacher ratio, and I find it offensive that you assume that my reason for not advocating for larger classes for advanced students was so I could have student co-teachers. I do remember arguing that all students can benefit from small classes. Low student-teacher ratio does not mean hand holding; that really is a weird description of what happens in a small class. It is much easier to help a student reach beyond their own expectations in a small class no matter how high or low performing they are. I don’t ever remember feeling like a professor was holding my hand in a seminar class. They were the most challenging courses I took.
I really hate the argument that relies on what students will be doing in a couple of years. So what!? If they were ready for that environment, then they would be there now. Viewing all learning as merely a stepping stone to the next stage dismisses the importance of where a student is now in their development. When one of my younger kids would complain about something they were struggling with, there was frequently an older sibling to dismiss their struggle with a “wait until you are my age” attitude. Doing what the younger one was doing was as important to them as the struggles of the older were to them. It was silly (and I told them so) to compare. It is laughable for you to talk about denying high-performing kids the challenge of larger classes. Does anyone think their learning in a class of 200 was optimal? The fact that such large classes are offered devalues them. They are survey courses important only as stepping stones to more engaging subject matter. We expect college students to have the maturity to handle them although I am sure we all have anecdotes about how people gamed them. Teaching or nurturing the independence required to handle the tasks expected of college students does not come by mimicking it in high school.
I find it interesting that you choose to put words in my mouth on class size rather than pursuing my ambivalence about the value of tracking where we actually share some commonality.
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First, to crazy KrazyTA. The following link shows Imagine Schools (a charter network see) that references student gains (that’s essentially a VAM) and even describes 63% achieving gains of more than a year. Also note the word “Exhibit” in the title of the document as I am using it to hold the undisclosed right-hand man of Dennis Bakke (owner of Imagine), Chairman Eric Hornberger of Loudoun County schools, accountable. Some of us are more than just empty talk.
As for anecdotes, you mentioned a single case in which Rhee likely exaggerated the gains of a student. That does not undermine VAMs or any policy that Rhee advocated. It is, by definition, an anecdote.
2old2teach, yes we do likely agree on tracking. But implicit in the elmination of tracking is using the high-performing students to assist the lower-performing kids. That’s a co-teacher. A main argument against tracking is that if you split out students by ability level and use a constant student-teacher ratio, the lower-performing kids lose that co-teacher known as their classmate. A solution to that is to vary the class size based on ability level. I’m fine with having equal ratios and still tracking, but you may see lower gains by the underperforming students.
As to the arguments against high student-teacher ratios for advanced kids, I have several reasons:
1. It’s fashionable to support “project-based learning” these days. In essence, students conduct a lot of their own research to “discover” what was previously taught to them by teachers first. While I am obviously not a big fan, a key aspect is allowing kids to learn on their own without as much interaction (hand-holding) by the teacher. Thus, higher ST ratios are consistent with anyone proposing this.
2. Many also espouse “critical thinking” including independent research. The core of that approach is allowing students to read the texts and identify the most important concepts for themselves. It is imperative at college that students read the assignments ahead of time and are able to learn by themselves. That’s not to knock the guidance of profs or TAs, but after college, folks don’t have a prof to teach them. I argue that if HS students simply read the assignments ahead of time, performance would skyrocket. When we place more of the burden on students in HS to take responsibility for their learning (and the advanced ones can do this), they will step up and even learn this skill. I know. I was given the textbooks for Algebra I, Geometry, and Algebra II and told to have it. Most efficient courses I took in HS.
3. Capable learners actually benefit from more ideas rather than individual assistance. Notice that organizations want a wide variety of ideas in their conventions or professional groups? There’s a reason for that. Advanced learners are better off hearing the questions and ideas of other advanced learners. Yes, they will occasionally need some hand-holding and feedback on papers is critical. But unlike struggling learners who often don’t understand what’s going on in class, advanced learners excel when they hear broader perspectives offered by more peers.
Bottom line is that economics is the study of satisfying unlimited wants using very limited resources. I understand a teacher’s answer to every problem is to tax the public more and spend it on education. That’s not reality. Given a limited budget, how should we slice it? I am suggesting that GT kids need a challenge much more than they need hand-holding. Let’s give that to them and use the savings to lower the class size of the students who do need hand-holding.
I appreciate an honest response to tracking. Thanks. But how exactly would you use the limited resources in switching to tracked classes? Have equal ST ratios for all? Have higher ST ratios for the advanced? Or just tax/spend more to achieve both?
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” But implicit in the elmination of tracking is using the high-performing students to assist the lower-performing kids.”
No it is not implicit. It is your conclusion. Where it is a possible conclusion that high performing students will be turned into co-teachers, it is the conclusion of someone who has never differentiated instruction. Within any group whether homogeneous or heterogeneous, there are those who more than pull their weight and those whose contributions lack commitment to the task. These soft skill slackers are much more detrimental to the operation of a group than one whose academic prowess is not quite up to snuff.
” It’s fashionable to support “project-based learning” these days. In essence, students conduct a lot of their own research to “discover” what was previously taught to them by teachers first.”
Funny, so science labs are a waste of time? All the material can be taught by direct instruction. There is no need for the expensive, messiness of “practicing science.” You really have a simplistic understanding of project based learning. Yes, it can be done poorly, but it can also be done in such a way that the concepts the teachers wishes to convey come to life. How many high schoolers remember the lectures on the judicial branch of government? How many remember participating in a mock trial on a major policy issue? Which student remembers more about how decisions are reached?
” I argue that if HS students simply read the assignments ahead of time, performance would skyrocket. ”
Of course reading ahead helps! …except in those schools where students do not have individual textbooks. It is pretty hard to read ahead when your textbook is part of a class set used by 4 or 5 other classes. I worked in a low income district where only “college track” students were given their own texts. How’s that for tracking?!
“Capable learners actually benefit from more ideas rather than individual assistance.”
I’m not sure why you insist on equating small classes with individual assistance and why you assume that the ideas will flow more freely in a large class of high performers. Again, a very simplistic understanding of instruction.
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2old2teach, so teachers can “differentiate” instruction to 3-4 groups (or maybe even 25 “groups” of 1) as efficiently as they can teach 1 or 2 aligned groups? I don’t think you really believe that. Teachers parrot that line in back to school nights. Off-campus, they tell you it’s impossible but they must tote the PR line.
I do not oppose projects per se. Teachers have always used them to reinforce direct instruction. Whether chemistry or a mock trial, the concepts/theory is usually taught first so students understand the reaction or principles they are employing. Are you seriously suggesting you can cover as much ground in studying the civics by holding a series of skits like mock trials? How much preparation does that single mock trial take? I enjoyed those in school but they were in addition to direct instruction. MS/HS is about instructing students in a broad array of topics. In college or post-secondary, they can focus or specialize. But according to my district, if we just teach them nebulous “skills” like collaboration, they can learn knowledge by themselves. Who knew!
Students should have textbooks regardless of the neighborhood in which they live. Agreed.
I didn’t say ideas will flow “more freely” but rather there is a larger and more diverse set of them. Most GT kids are not shy about sharing their opinion. So what’s wrong with increasing ST ratios but giving those same kids an accelerated pace? The only thing I can imagine is that it would reduce the requirements for some teachers. But since those teachers could be employed in other tracks, I don’t see why teachers would be so opposed. Scores/growth of both groups would improve.
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Virginia, you are very free about telling teachers what to do. On what do you base your opinion?
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Great question. Mainly via feedback from other teachers.
Two years ago, I visited my daughter’s teacher for a conference. That teacher was the best one to date. Her first grade year was basically just a long study hall. I asked the second grade teacher whether the school tracked, and if not, how was it humanly possible to provide targeted instruction to every child. At first, she gave the party line but then admitted she had discussed the same topic with her husband and that no, it was simply not possible. I’ve heard the same thing from other teachers. Nearly every company is also setup that way. Common groups specialize and then they created matrixed teams when multiple skills are needed. If districts in Virginia would provide me data on which schools are tracked, I can use the SOL data to empirically measure whether tracking helps/hurts.
As for the PBL, you should follow the WP blogs. Many a retired teacher will recount the recycled fads that come and go like PBL. They admit that projects are useful and while it is theoretically possible to teach significant content (first) via some projects, it is an enormous task to do well. So feedback from teachers and data from the PBL institutes (Buck Institute cited a few research papers which were not impressive). Note that there are no (count that – zero) metrics for whether students are learning the supposed new competencies called collaboration, communication, critical thinking espoused by PBL disciples? As one of my district officials put it, I guess we’ll just “know it when we see it”.
As for tracking, I understand there are different opinions. But it’s often a political decision made by admins with no public debate as opposed to one based on research. Nobody tries to refute the studies that show self-esteem improves with tracking (see Duke TIP studies), they simply argue the alternative based on anecdote. As your good friend Amrein-Beardsley would point out, evaluating such policies are a legitimate use of VAMs.
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Virginia, please please please read Todd Farley’s “Making the Grades.”
You have more faith in standardized testing than I do. I spent 7 years on the national testing board reviewing test items and removing those that were wrong. They had passed through numerous review panels before I saw them and they were still there. No one’s life should be adversely affected by these flawed instruments.
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Diane, I haven’t even finished reading Reign of Terror and Amrein-Beardsley’s book yet and you’d have me prioritize a diatribe from a disgruntled ex-employee over those two?
Ok, ok, I took a look on Amazon. One commenter said this about the book: “At the end of the book, Farley recommends we trust the evaluations of classroom teachers (Mrs. White and Mr. Reyes are his examples) rather than the standardized evaluations. This, however, is of little use for a university admissions officer who must choose between a student from Mrs. White’s class and a student from Mr. Reyes’s class. In addition, Farley argues that teachers were horrible scorers, in part because they “make huge leaps when reading the student responses, convinced they knew what a student was saying even if that didn’t match the words on the page” (236).”
So your “boy” admits that teachers are remarkably inconsistent and even biased graders because they want to give their own student credit for ideas the teacher believes the student intended to write…. but didn’t. Sounds like a pretty honest assessment of how grade inflation has become so rampant. Maybe I will have to read the book.
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Virginia, you are a man possessed. Obsessed. Please find another passion or better yet, apply for a teaching job and try it. VAM yourself.
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Diane, I know of a few billionaires who might give you the same advice, nay?
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” That teacher was the best one to date. Her first grade year was basically just a long study hall. ”
Did you really just say that the teacher who ran her class like a year long study hall was the best teacher to date? Are you serious?!
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Sorry. My use of pronouns was confusing. The second grade teacher tried to engage all of the children and consistently provided enrichment material to the kids. None of the other teachers in the school provided the enrichment material (“Sunshine math” worksheets). My daughter’s (her) first grade teacher ran it like a study hall. I gather she worked with the kids who were behind. Every day I asked my daughter what they did in school and I could count on one hand the number of days in which the teacher actually worked with her and her reading group. Guess they assumed they would pass easily so they were essentially ignored. Would have received the same value from sitting in the library.
And I’m not sure how often they even studied math. My daughter was taking Mandarin classes on Saturday at the time (very difficult to become fluent even with Au Pairs unless a child either has immersion courses or lives in the country but anyway). I would sit in the Mandarin class and create math problems for her to complete in school. My daughter wasn’t going to get any math instruction any other way. And the school doesn’t give out any textbooks throughout K-5 so it’s not as if the kids can even study on their own. These schools are a complete joke.
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” Every day I asked my daughter what they did in school and I could count on one hand the number of days in which the teacher actually worked with her and her reading group.”
Not that I agree with how your daughter’s teacher ran her class (if she really did run it like a study hall), aren’t you in favor of bright kids bouncing ideas off of each other and not receiving constant interference from the teacher? By your own standards, the teacher was in line with what you see as more suited to advanced students. They need less attention and more independence.
I realize there are young children who would enjoy Saturdays spent studying Mandarin while their father peppered them with math problems, but, for the life of me, I have never met one. Is Sunday a free day or does she spend it on extra worksheets? I’m sorry, but you see life and education through a lens that is foreign to most of us. You admit to no formal training in education or instruction and yet feel compelled to authoritatively instruct seasoned professionals in acceptable pedagogy and are puzzled by your apparent ostracism by your own school system. I actually find some of your comments to be worthy of further debate. Unfortunately you are so sure that you can reduce education to numerical formulas that will not only measure the academic progress and ability of students but at the same time provide an accurate picture of their schools’ and teachers’ quality.
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“…so teachers can “differentiate” instruction to 3-4 groups (or maybe even 25 “groups” of 1) as efficiently as they can teach 1 or 2 aligned groups?”
Teachers have been differentiating for 3-4 groups since forever especially in elementary and middle school. (Your comment about differentiating for 25 is just plain stupid.) You are right that differentiation has been used by administrators as a way to refuse class size reductions or special services for struggling students. (Don’t get me started on the abuses of RTI. I am not a fan of the belief that the least restrictive environment (LRE) means the general education class (often an administrative assumption). For an individual student the LRE may be a self contained small group class.) That is not to say that they have any idea what differentiation is and what is reasonable to expect.
“Are you seriously suggesting you can cover as much ground in studying the civics by holding a series of skits like mock trials?”
You are obsessed with covering ground. I am concerned with depth. Efficiency does not necessarily mean how much you cover in a certain amount of time but how well you cover what you do. There is a balance between amount and quality that I think you miss. And no, I am not reducing civics to “a series of skits” as I hope you are not equating the volume of material presented with quality. You really do not have to reduce my thinking to an either/or dichotomy.
” So what’s wrong with increasing ST ratios but giving those same kids an accelerated pace?”
Nothing. It depends on what and how you plan to teach. I disagree with the assumption that it is an across the board solution that will meet the needs of all gifted students. I haven’t found academically talented students any more cookie cutter as any other “group” we choose to identify.
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Teachers don’t differentiate instruction well to 3+ groups. In college, a professor doesn’t teach a class at 3 different levels. Who are you folkss kidding? Do you actually believe this or are you just arguing for the sake of arguing. Kids have short attention spans at that elementary school age. Are you really suggesting that a kid doesn’t mind having the teacher spend 2/3 of the time involved with other groups? Or are you suggesting that every class should have 1 teacher and 2 aides to entertain the other two groups while the teacher is involved with one? These are just excuses as to why students should not be grouped by ability. As I’ve said before, there are some classes where it doesn’t make much difference to have a completely heterogeneous class so kids are exposed to all backgrounds (music, art, history, etc.). Given a choice between having a group of kids with roughly a single ability level (but likely various backgrounds) and having 3+ groups in a single classroom, who in their right mind suggests the latter?
Maybe you confused my use of the word “volume”. I meant to imply both the breadth and depth. The advanced kids might be able to cover the same breadth of material at a much deeper volume (reading the Federalist Papers in an 8th grade US history class) whereas that might be over the heads of the below average kids. It’s not a race to reach the end of the curriculum but kids need to be challenged yet not overwhelmed. Look, my 8th grade history teacher had us debate the merits of the Civil War and the culture of the North vs South. One side had to defend the abuses of the North in sweat shops and other conditions that were roughly equivalent to the slavery of the South (not on the same scale of course). But forcing kids to defend what is ostensibly an untenable position causes them to research at a much greater depth. However, our year was not filled with skit after skit after skit. Direct instruction ensured we covered the entire curriculum within the year. It’s essentially the difference between US History and AP History. Same range of material but different level of depth and analysis.
So what about allowing kids to “pick” their teacher? In theory, some folks like me would prefer the more “effective” teacher despite the higher class size. Other folks would prefer the lower class size. Wouldn’t both sides win? Would you object to that?
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“Teachers don’t differentiate instruction well to 3+ groups. ”
Differentiation is far more than a poor substitute for tracking although I will agree that administrators in many places jumped on the bandwagon touting it as the answer to all our instructional problems. Of course they were cheered on by publishers who had lots of stuff to sell them guaranteed to make their students excel and their teachers shine. While it can be a useful tool for tailoring instruction for students of different academic levels, initially it was intended as a way for students to be able to explore content through a variety of instructional avenues. Portfolios are one example of the fruits of differentiation that allow a student to demonstrate learning in a variety of exhibits that may not be the same as someone else’s. Does that mean direct instruction should be thrown out. NO!! Nor should discussions, or projects, or skits, or debates, or research reports, or videos, or podcasts, or poetry slams, or bridge building competitions, or service projects, or science experiments, or newspapers,…
Would I allow kids to pick their teachers? Nope, although I think parents’ opinions should be considered in placing students. By the time kids get to high school, they need to learn, if they haven’t already, to take the good with the not so good. I didn’t have any absolutely wretched teachers nor did my kids. Some were a better fit than others, but too often these days the student’s role in learning is brushed aside as if it is the teacher’s job alone to entertain them into learning.
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How many students who aren’t “showing improvement” would be sticking around for 3 years if charter schools were judged on the VAMs of their teachers? Especially if the charter schools were ONLY judged on the students who remained?
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NYC public school parent, I can’t follow your argument. Which of the following are you asserting:
1. You claim that only students who perform well are allowed to remain in charters. Are you suggesting that these students had high VAMs in their public schools prior to arriving at the charters? This is quite easy to disprove so I’m guessing you wont’ take this bait.
2. Are you suggesting that the high-performing charter students perform well because they are unshackled from the disruptive students who were their peers in the pubic school prior to arriving at the charters? If so, then shouldn’t we separate these kids from the disruptive kids in the public schools before they have the need to seek a charter?
3. Are you suggesting that if a charter were transparent and published its VAMs, then those students ill-served by the charter would leave in just 1-2 years? If so, isn’t this what we want? If a charter is not effective for a student, shouldn’t the student seek another school just as a college student can transfer?
Basically, I think you misunderstand VAMs. They discount prior score history. So it’s not like an underachieving student can enter a charter, show progress, and keep showing high VAMs year after year solely because of their own effort/initiative. Eventually, they catch up with their potential and their growth is evaluated against similarly situated kids. If you keep booting kids whose VAMs drop, you won’t have any students left. Yet, that is not what happens at most of these charters. They are oversubscribed. Maybe that due to a lack of transparency. I admit that charter claims are oversold. So why don’t we require charters to publish the same value-added data that public schools report and let the best institutions win.
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Virginia,
VAM is junk science.
How should you be evaluated? What numbers can we use?
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So that’s a good question and it’s often hard to measure. But here goes. One could use:
1. The number of man-hours saved from my team’s automation of previously subjective and labor intensive reporting (automation of reports that used to be created manually. By documenting actual requirements, we added rigor to the process as well.)
2. The amount of funding saved (or costs avoided) because of our team’s analysis and due to our tools’ highlighting the true costs of programs/initiatives
3. The increased number of Congressional inquiries that could be answered resulting from our automated financial analysis tools
4. The difference in contract costs between what another team would charge and what our team actually charges
I could go on but I agree that in the non-standard world of consulting, it’s sometimes difficult to create a consistent metric. I tend to stay away from the more sales-y metrics like revenue generated. I prefer the actual output metrics that show value to the clients. But that’s just me. If we serviced the same applications year after year, a more reliable metric like “trouble tickets resolved” would lend itself to VAM-type analysis.
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Er, which charters use VAM? Websites and references, please. *Especially interested in charter chains.* That’s why the words “I would appreciate specific info” were included. And just to clear up a pointed plea for help with standard American English:
“Anecdote: an account regarded as unreliable or hearsay.” (one of several main meanings)
I know that reality is so much more uncomfortably annoying than rheeality, but a 13th has gotten someone a 90th percentile because the above does NOT read “Anecdote: a question regarded as unreliable or hearsay.”
I know it is all metaphysical and such, but a question is not an anecdote.
😱
So answering a question that poses the need to provide data like websites and references with a wishful and unsupported anecdote is, er, an assertion that is, er, anecdotal.
😏
And let’s expand our vision a little. I would be especially appreciative of examples of VAM/SGP used in Lakeside School or U of Chicago Lab Schools or Sidwell Friends or Spence School or Madeira or Delbarton School or any of the other schools to which rheephorm heavyweights send THEIR OWN CHILDREN.
Surely VAM/SGP, like the old song says about “love and marriage & horse and carriage,” go together with genuine teaching and learning.
Or are rheephorm initiatives like CCSS and its conjoined twin high-stakes standardized testing that feed VAMP/SGP not considered a necessary precondition for world class educational institutions?
Maybe the following link will be of help—
Link: https://dianeravitch.net/2014/03/23/common-core-for-commoners-not-my-school/
Hard data points. Anecdotes. Proof by assertion. Consistency. Logic. Facts. I know it must all get very confusing…
“I reject that mind-set.” [Michelle Rhee]
Now there’s someone that stands on self-serving certainty even in the midst of obvious self-wounding uncertainty!
😎
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My oh my how fast you jump to conclusions Virginia! First of all, I do not have an “entire class of above average students.” As I stated above, I teach heterogeneous groups of ESL students. I only teach students who are acquiring English. Your statement regarding “ESL students who likely have limited overall potential” is mind boggling. My students have plenty of potential. My lessons are designed and differentiated to challenge all of my students.
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Abigail, the quote was “I understand you want the entire class of above average students to co-teach your ESL students“. You see, you would have failed the reading comprehension CC test. You didn’t understand my statement you (Abigail) wanted advanced students to co-teach your ESL students. That is what you want based on your previous statements.
As to potential, read the Pew research polls about achievement of 1st, 2nd and 3rd generation immigrants. I’m not saying that all immigrants have limited potential as Asian and European immigrants outperform the average native-born American right away. Your students can and should dream, but you can’t sit there and tell me they have the same aggregate potential as the advanced kids you are holding back. Otherwise, I guess a teacher who graduated from Columbia has only the same potential as one who graduated from the local community college, correct?
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virginiasgp, I can’t figure out what your issue is.
You put great stake in VAMs as if you can somehow control for how a child’s mind develops and what happens at home. You somehow believe a fantastic teacher would have high VAMs when she is put alone in a class of 35 severely at-risk kids while a mediocre teacher in a class of 20 children whose parents are actively involved in their education could not. So many factors influence how much a child learns in any given year yet you think a teacher’s work can be measured separately. You want to bet I can’t send your “measured” best teacher into a large size class with disruptive kids, troubled kids, struggling to learn kids and give her no resources and make her look like a terrible teacher? You think she is “proven” to get better results than the principal’s favorite teacher in the next room who is given the best students and when one becomes disruptive or isn’t doing well on practice tests, well out that student goes to the class of the teacher you have “guaranteed” is the best via your so-called VAMs. You really think her class of the most disruptive students who don’t care about learning will “improve” more than the mediocre teacher who has the most motivated kids?
Charter schools have the students whose parents are actively involved in their children’s education. And even then, the “good” ones still can’t cope with any student that struggles and they “got to go” as soon as they can make that child feel enough misery. That way, no need to include that child anymore in their VAMs! Which you think is A-Ok, because you feel that if that former charter school child’s new public school teacher is charged with the VAMs, he should be blamed where the charter school gets a free pass. WTH?
Since you have such strong feeling about VAMs, I am sure you think we should look at doctors that way. Two patients with stage I cancer. Doctor #1 has one and Doctor #2 has the other. Oops, the one with doctor #1 gets worse and that doctor doesn’t want him anymore, so send him to doctor #2 who has to take him. But doctor #1 will happily keep every patient who responds to his treatment! 100% VAM! Meanwhile doctor #2 is spending far more time to treat her own sick patients as well as doctor #1’s hard to treat patients — only an idiot would think that doctor #1 was “better”. Unfortunately, we do have a lot of idiots in this world who would think that. Are you one of them?
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NYC public school parent: as I interpret your remarks, the self-proclaimed expert in “data analytics” seems unable to grasp even the simplest notions such as “when comparing groups, make sure the groups are comparable.”
But it all makes sense when you consider that when true believers in that mystical measurement called “IQ” encounter VAM it’s a match made in, well, pick whichever site in the afterlife you think fits.
In a more mundane sense, I am inclined to think it’s the online equivalent of a rheephorm dating site, where when insanity and inanity hook up, it’s love at first sight.
But to be fair, you have to understand the complicated mathematical foundations of the Marxist axioms that are so rigidly adhered to:
“My favourite poem is the one that starts ‘Thirty days hath September’ because it actually tells you something.”
Groucho. So. Proud.
😎
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I apologize for using the word idiot in my post above. I was wrong and I am sorry.
While I disagree with virginiasgp on a number of issues, the tracking issue is something I believe is much more complicated, although what it has to do with charters is beyond my understanding. And there is a vast difference between tracking 5 and 6 year olds and tracking high school students. I don’t think there are many high schools that aren’t offering “elective” honors or AP level courses which are de facto ways to separate students looking for accelerated learning from students who just want to do the minimum. I don’t think elementary schools need to track students; however if you are going to underfund them and put 35 kids in a 2nd grade classroom whose abilities range from Kindergarten to 6th grade in both math and reading, you are setting up a system where parents of the more advanced learners will want tracking. But there should not be 35 kids of different abilities with one teacher who is supposed to differentiate instruction for each of them and then get judged on how much they have “progressed”. It is a set up for failure. With smaller class sizes and other support for teachers, including a co-teacher if necessary, having a mixed range class can be great for all learners in elementary school grades.
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virginiasgp, I also think your understanding of project based learning and critical thinking as needing LESS teaching is absolutely wrong. A student doesn’t learn how to do a project by doing an entire project and at some later point getting some feedback about whether it is good or bad. The PROCESS needs to be guided and taught. The feedback needs to be pointed with students going back to use that feedback to improve their project. Too often, a poorly trained teacher simply checks out and then has 35 “projects” that get little feedback that is irrelevant for the next project. That’s why private schools have very small student-teacher ratios and even then what you have is the parents (or perhaps the “tutors”) doing the real teaching if the teacher isn’t actively involved with directing and checking that the students’ work is on track – and that includes the advanced learners. There is a huge industry of tutors that work with those “advanced learners” to teach them the Algebra and Trigonometry that they aren’t comprehending even in the smaller class sizes of private schools. Imagine how hard the 35/class public school teachers of Trig have it. And very few students have the capability to be handed a trig book and “teach themselves”. If your definition of “advanced” learners are the students who can score 800 on the SATs, then those students are very rare. But there are many good students who – with a good teacher with time to help them when they struggle – can learn trig in school.
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NYC public school parent, no offense on any words. As Diane will attest, I am a big free speech advocate. And statements that patently aren’t true are simply ignored.
Here’s the problem with PBL and many experienced teachers will confirm this. Projects on their own are not bad. Many teachers have always given projects as a capstone toward the end of a topic or class. But projects often take a wide array of skills and knowledge to complete. It’s simply not an efficient way to learn concepts. Newton didn’t develop calculus in a few months. Yet, we can teach kids today (who are orders of magnitude less talented than Newton) the basics of calculus in a semester or two. Novice learners need to be taught skills/knowledge first and then allowed to apply them. Good PBL that teaches concepts/knowledge during the project is enormously intensive for teachers since the students often don’t know what they are doing. You won’t hear that from the advocates of PBL who claim that students figure all this stuff out on their own since they are “engaged”.
With respect to having students learn on their own, tracking requires separating students based on their ability levels and teaching at an appropriate pace. The reason why some kids struggle is either because the pace is inappropriate or the teacher is not so effective. Many parents want their own kids to be in the most advanced class even if the kid can’t handle it. That’s the genesis of the parent opt-out movement. These parents don’t want to learn that their Johnny/Sallie isn’t the best of the best of the best. My son is not the best of the best of the best. Fine. I work with him to maximize his potential and develop skills that will allow him to be successful. I don’t whine when his test scores aren’t at the top. Such parents will never accept the truth because they believe it somehow reflects on them. But appropriate grouping is essential to tracking.
I’m sure we’ve all seen a great teacher who can connect to her students when asked to teach at the appropriate level. They are able to communicate concepts including in a group environment. I liken it to my experience with Prof Bose (of the speaker variety) in college. He was able to articulate concepts in a relatively large lecture hall (maybe 50-80 students) so that everyone could understand. The data supports this view. High VAM teachers typically maintain these high VAMs in large class sizes. If what you are saying were true, VAMs of such teachers must necessarily fall when class size increases. But they don’t. How can you explain that?
I’m not saying that we should separate students in the first grade into low/medium/high. But tracking was used when most of us were in school. I’m not sure the general public understands that tracking has virtually been eliminated in lieu of this fanciful concept of “differentiation”. That is impossible for a teacher with varying ability levels and 25+ students. Differentiation is a marketing gimmick and an excuse not to track but nobody can show it can be accomplished consistently and effectively. But the pubic doesn’t even get to participate in the discussion. The administrators simply detrack without a debate. Often that’s because the administrators still hold a grudge that they were not selected for the top track and want to believe they were just as “gifted” as their more advanced peers back in school. Tracking should increase as students advance to higher grades. In K-5, a teacher should have specific groups of students (maybe a low and high group; or a middle & high group but not students from the whole spectrum). Or we should have teachers who specialize in math/ELA by 3rd grade rather than a generic teacher who teaches everything. Other subjects like history/art/music/PE would obviously detrack so kids get exposure to a wide array of cultures but math/ELA are linear and need to be taught at different paces.
As for the tutors, yes, I agree they are used. My Indian coworkers and friends acknowledge they plan to get tutors for their kids mainly because the quality of teaching is uneven (not all teachers are bad but rather than advocate to improve the overall level, they take it into their own hands).
Finally, with regard to the VAM analogies, I think you fundamentally misunderstand what I said and how VAMs work.
1. Note that I said we put larger numbers of advanced kids in a high VAM teacher’s class. I didn’t say overload a teacher with severely at-risk kids. I would be interested in how a very high VAM teacher would perform in that situation as I think it would turn out better than you think but it’s unfair to that teacher.
2. Once again, if we accurately accounted for how much money was needed to educate various types of students, it would be much easier. ESL and SPED cost more money. If funding and teacher ratios were doled out by the demographics of the students, the ratios solve themselves. In fact, most states require additional teachers to be on-hand for ESL and/or SPED so it often solves itself.
3. Disruptive kids shouldn’t be in the classroom of the diligent kids if they continue to disrupt. It’s that simple. Why would we sabotage the education of those who want to learn? Teachers should try to connect with them but if they refuse, they get a daily pass to visit the office. A few (1-4) low VAMs wont’ affect the overall teacher’s score when the rest of her students are able to learn effectively. That solves the disruption problem. I can’t speak to principals playing favorites but remember, VAMs are relative to similar students. The disruptive kids already have low achievement scores AND low growth expectations according to the VAM formula. If the teacher refuses to allow a few disruptive kids to ruin the environment for the rest of the kids (isn’t that a fundamental premise of charters?), you will still see growth in the other students. Until you show me data on this, I simply am skeptical about your hypothesis that principal favorites or a few disruptive kids are a huge concern. And the key finding in the Chetty/Friedman/Rockoff study was that when teachers switched schools (“favorites” wouldn’t continue across schools), the VAMs of specific teachers didn’t change. Thus, this “favorites” theory has little to no evidence of existence.
4. I don’t follow that the charter gets a free pass. I think you are still confused about how VAMs work. Let’s say initially a charter student is freed from disruption and makes great progress the first year. The charter gets the benefit in its VAM in year 1. But then, that student’s progress in years 2+ are compared against other kids who have similar score histories. If the child doesn’t continue to show growth relative to similar kids, the VAMs drop back down. The same applies to the student who you claim is booted out of the charter. His/her progress in years 2+ are compared to similar students, not the students who have great support at home and can “cope” as you say. Natural feedback occurs so that apples are compared to apples. If you are claiming that overall growth in the charter can continue at a higher rate because there are fewer disruptions, then I agree that’s the whole purpose of charters. We can measure the VAM of the entire school based on its policies of discipline and conclude it is more/less effective. The same can be analyzed among various public schools with different discipline policies. That is how VAMs are supposed to be used – to compare policies as much as comparing the effectiveness of individual instructors. The same analysis can be used to compare tracking/detracking policies. Even Amrein-Beardsley supports this type of analysis with VAMs.
But I don’t give charters a free pass. I’m not willing to believe all the claims about charters “forcing” out students who don’t test well. I do believe charters pressure kids who aren’t willing to become diligent or don’t fit in with the specific culture of the charters. There is a self-selection issue but I think that benefits the kids who do fit it. You could say the same about the military who weeds out recruits that can’t/won’t perform. There should be some controls (charters show why kids should be dropped) and transparency (charters should show % of kids who are retained). But much of this can be solved with more accurate accounting since when more $$$ follows the more difficult-to-teach students, all schools will magically change their preferences.
5. Lastly on the doctors. I’ve explained before that Mayo clinic doctors generally have worse nominal outcomes because they take the harder patients. I have a friend who used their services mainly because other doctors were too afraid to treat her. But their reputation is impeccable despite the nominal outcomes. Their “effective outcomes” relative to the difficulty of the diagnosis are among the best in the world and everybody knows it. One reason I was a big proponent of transparency in medical outcomes (Repubs wanted that in the ACA bills in 2009 but Dems shot it down because they said only gov’t should be evaluating that, not the public – I listened to all the hearing on CSPAN) is because what you claim would happen should happen. The more difficult cases should be treated by more talented doctors. The easier cases should be treated by less capable doctors. That’s more efficient. As long as the complexity of the cases are included in the analysis, the public will not be fooled. It’s essentially a doctor VAM. The doctors would be judged on results of “similar patients” just like teachers are judged on the growth among similar students. It’s almost as if you believe we haven’t thought this through. I see why Gates gets so frustrated. Folks ask questions or make assumptions that the creators of VAMs consider in the early stages of its development. We would have to be idiots not to consider these issues. It’s fair to ask “how did you account for XYZ” but to assume that VAM calculations have never considered XYZ is pure fantasy.
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Virginiasgp, your understanding of VAMs is flawed, in my opinion. As I said, there is nothing stopping the privatization movement that Bill Gates supports from using VAMs to compare their teachers. There is nothing to stop the private schools that I am sure he donates to and sends his children to from using VAMs. They are not. There is nothing to stop a major hospital complex like the Mayo Clinic from using VAMs to compare the doctors. They do not. You think it is all to protect the bad teachers (and/or bad doctors) but it is to protect the GOOD ones. The ETHICAL ones.
It is impossible to compare two doctors when one doctor can get rid of any patient that fails to do better (maybe it’s the diabetic who stuffs himself full of sugar). Send him to the other doctor and then compare the “results” of the doctor who keeps ONLY the patients who compliantly follow all diets to see if they do better than the patients at doctor #2. Newsflash: The patient who doctor #1 dumped in doctor #2’s lap is not going to do better but guess who gets charged with the patient’s “progress”? You got it! Your contention that it is GOOD for doctor #2 to have the non-compliant patient because eventually he will progress more than the very compliant patients that doctor #1 keeps (as long as they DO progress – otherwise, they just get dumped later!) Lol at your belief that somehow this can be measured! Because both patients have the exact same income!
The ONLY thing that should be measured is the attrition rates, because that tells you whether a school is dumping kids who don’t improve. I haven’t seen any mention by Bill Gates OR you that you are concerned about attrition. You seem to believe is is irrelevant, just like you seem to believe that Cancer Treatment Centers of America’s cancer patients won’t continue to do well because of course, if they don’t, they get dumped onto another hospital that MUST take them.
Attrition rates. Is a school keeping ALL the kids or not? If a school has terrible results and parents are leaving in great number, that is understandable. If the school has FANTASTIC results and the students are leaving in great number, that tells you something very different. Just like it does with hospitals. When far more patients are “voluntarily” leaving Cancer Treatment Centers of America — with it’s 99% cure rate — we all know it’s not because they are “choosing” a far worse hospital with worse cure rates. They are leaving because in fact, CTC of America is a poor hospital, regardless of the fact that every patient who REMAINS continues to do well. And regardless of the fact that many of the ones who leave and end up at Mayo end up dying anyway.
Until I hear people like you clamoring to look closely at the attrition rates of the only randomly accepted kids — the entering Kindergarten class — I know that VAM is just a way to make sure the expensive students can easily be dumped by charter schools.
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I also don’t believe any measurement can take into effect a child’s progress, period. You can’t say “these two kids are the same” even if they come from the same socioeconomic background. VAMs don’t measure parent involvement (which may vary from year to year), a death or sickness in the family, a bully in the classroom, a child who misses a lot of school because that year he was sick 20 days even though he is usually only sick 4 or 5 days in a given year. Are you a parent? It happens. I don’t have a problem in seeing how children do, but having it done via high stakes testing during a single 2 or 3 day period and assigning his teacher the blame (or the credit) for progress makes no sense. It’s no different from taking five diabetics who both have the same education and income and saying that it is the doctor’s fault whether some do better than others.
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NYC public school parent, as for reporting the % retained in charters, see my comment at 5:12am on Jan 4 (second paragraph in #4). I’ve already advocated as much.
As per the “we can’t measure teachers on a single day of testing” excuse, I highly recommend you take a statistics class. We are not taking a single test on a single day and rating teachers. We are taking many samples of students taking a test and combining it with data from previous year(s). Btw, do you even know what a “median” is? How are medians affected by outliers in either direction? All teachers are under the same rules anyway and the standard of error is also provided. Are you seriously suggesting we can’t count an average score for a school district even if there is 10K scores? If you concede that 10K scores from a single day of testing can be reliable, then all we are really arguing about is what’s the min sample size for reliability,no?
In the end, the anti-VAM side just doesn’t want any accountability. They like the 99%+ effectiveness ratings. All of their “arguments” are just tactics to undermine an objective evaluation system. That’s all they are.
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virginiasgp, you are asking all kinds of disparate questions.
“How are medians affected by outliers in either direction?” Do you know what an outlier is? If you push out all the struggling kids — or even just the bottom 1/5 of your class — your median rises. If you GAIN only students who are at or above the median, you are also guaranteed to have a high median. If your teachers are only able to get improvement with students who have the ability and parental support that means they will improve with almost any teacher, why do you believe that is showing us anything if those teachers can push out the students who aren’t improving?
Do you believe that the doctors at CTC of America are better than the doctors at Mayo Clinic because their “median” patients do better? Do you want to bet me that the median patient at CTC of America is far more likely to “do better” than the median patient at Mayo? Do you think the “median” diabetic patient of a doctor who sends away all his non-compliant patients will not do better than the “median” diabetic patient of the doctor who must accept all those non-compliant patients as well as treat his own?
“All teachers are under the same rules anyway…” Nope. All teachers in the same TYPES of schools (i.e. charters, selective enrollment, etc.) are under the same rules. That’s why I am quite interested in why Bill Gates hasn’t pulled funding from all the charter schools who are not using VAM measurement to see how their teachers stack up AGAINST ONE ANOTHER! I am guessing that Bill Gates doesn’t really believe that those charter school teachers should be compared to other charter school teachers or he would be demanding it. Instead, he is obsessed with making sure public school teachers — who get those former charter school kids who “won’t add value” — need to be in the mix. Why? If you want to measure, measure! Do it with charter schools and show us all how it is done. Do it with PRIVATE schools and show us how it is done. Otherwise, we just called Bill Gates’ bluff. He doesn’t believe in VAM unless he can guarantee that schools who get the lowest performing students least likely to improve are in the mix. Which pretty much shows that he knows how flawed it is.
“In the end, the anti-VAM side just doesn’t want any accountability. They like the 99%+ effectiveness ratings.” WRONG. I am a parent and I want accountability. But what I don’t want is faux accountability that is designed to prove that privatization is good and unions are bad. If VAM works, then why isn’t the private school that Bill Gates sends his own children to using it to compare the results of their children’s CTP-4 exams with the results of the kids at the other private schools? Why aren’t their SAT scores compared? Why don’t the selective colleges even put much faith in SAT scores anymore (beyond meeting some basic criteria)?
Do YOU think that when a student’s SAT score is a 750 in math in one sitting and 2 months later is a 700 it is because his private school teacher has been poor during the ensuing months and his parents are wasting their $40,000/year tuition? When the student gets a 750 verbal, 700 math one time and then 3 months later gets a 700 verbal and 750 math, do you think that the math teacher added value and the English teacher was terrible? Not hardly. When I hear Bill Gates saying THAT, I will believe his belief in VAM is something more than a lie.
VAM is a way to make public schools so test-driven that any parent with resources will pull their kid out of public school for new private schools. Make the public schools unappealing and see what happens.
By the way, the MOST offensive thing you wrote is your belief (same as Arne Duncan’s) that it is public school parents who are “afraid” that their kid isn’t smart enough who opt out. Again — so wrong. Do you know why? Because those same parents are not opting their kids out of SATs. They are not opting their kid out of ACTs. They are not opting their kid out of PSATs. There is no huge Long Island movement of parents to boycott the SATs. So spouting your nonsense about parents being afraid is just that — more lies because you are desperate to dismiss the actual concerns of parents over the meaningless tests designed to prove to them that their child’s school is a failure and turn public schools into places no middle class parent wants to attend.
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I’m afraid it’s going to take a lot more in-depth discussion (and likely in-person white board review) to explain exactly how partial derivatives (and thus VAMs) work. So I’ll skip the technical arguments for now about medians, VAMs in years 2+, etc.
But the clearest example I can give that we are talking two different languages is when you use the anecdote of scores varying by 50 pts for a student to claim that average VAMs are unreliable. The concept of standard error just seems to be lost in that discussion. And since variance drops as the number of measurements rise, it’s meaningless to discuss a single score. Just understand the fact that a student’s score varies by 50 pts over a few months (or a few days) does not change my argument in the slightest.
Let me address your concern that VAMs are only intended to to show public schools are bad. I made a FOIA request to Virginia’s DOE to obtain SGP (VAM) data. After some lessons in court, I finally received it this past year. I had suspicions that my affluent county was not as great as they claimed. I was also rather tired of hearing how great Fairfax County (rather prominent county outside DC famous to Thomas Jefferson magnet school) was. I didn’t make proclamations before I received the data because although I had suspicions, I couldn’t prove anything.
I received the data and you know what I found? My district was pretty good but just about average in math (they claimed to be in the top 3 because of just achievement data alone). However, Fairfax was amazing. It had the top schools in the state. It was among the top 3 districts in every county. Not only did it teach advanced kids well, but when I isolated for the lower-achieving kids, Fairfax obtained great growth for them too.
Now, yes there was variation among the schools and particularly among the teachers. But you could see patterns. Another activist digged even deeper in the data. He was most concerned about his hometown of Richmond which is rather famous for having deep poverty and low scores. Their results were not so pretty. He found one teacher whose median SGP scores was a 1 percentile!!! Think about that, the median is 1 percent! The top SGP was about a 20th percentile. We also found amazing teachers who had a median SGP of 80+!! We looked at SGPs of teachers with low-achieving kids. We looked at SGPs of high-achieving kids (you’ll find a bubble chart showing teachers in my district of both variety on the Virginia SGP Facebook page linked to the avatar). Bottom line is there is a wide variety but some districts are better than others and some teachers are better than others.
How do you explain the teachers with high SGPs but low average achievement scores among their students? Is that a system designed to force kids into charters? Those teachers should earn more. I’m trying to get the names of the teachers partly so I can map longevity to the data. Numerous research shows teacher effectiveness has little variation relative to experience after 3-5 years in the classroom. I’d like to analyze the SGP data by longevity because I believe many young teachers are drastically underpaid.
Those same parents weren’t organizing to opt out until they learned that their favorite teacher would be held accountable for their effectiveness either. I realize many of the national leaders claim teachers are not part of the opt out movement, but parents’ ties to those teachers are what triggered the movement. And I’m not so foolish to believe the teachers are not intricately involved in that process either. I get it. Teachers and particularly administrators have learned the wrong lessons from objective test-based accountability. They hold “cram sessions” for days to attempt to game the tests. They don’t work. Not long term. Parents are frustrated that rather than developing effective prof development plans for teachers, schools take a recidivist view towards test prep and narrow the curriculum. Gates’ MET project showed them that was completely the wrong solution but the admins are too dumb to read the research.
Thus, the parents have come to blame Duncan, King, Gates and others when the schools never even took their advice. If they can’t get schools to listen, why do you think they turned to charters? It doesn’t have to be that way. I’m working to fix the public schools. But they banned me when I tried to make constructive suggestions simply because they opposed some of the politics of my message. I still hold out hope that public schools can be fixed but each day I become more pessimistic and lean more toward the views of Raj, Gates, Rahm and others. Maybe the Indian Americans have it right. They tell me you can’t fix the schools and just have to pay for effective tutoring outside of public school. Maybe they are wiser than I gave them credit for.
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virginiasgp you believe in VAMs. You claim Gates et al believe in VAMs. So why aren’t they proving it to us?
I don’t see them demanding that each charter school teacher be measured via the VAM against other charter school teachers. If you claim there is a value to it, prove it. I am calling your bluff and Bill Gates’ bluff. Show us how you can pick out the “good” teachers and the “terrible” teachers and rank every single charter school teacher in the state one against the other. The fact that I haven’t seen Bill Gates using his billions to do that — after all, no teachers’ union is stopping him — just proves that he doesn’t believe in it at all. He should get private schools to do it, too.
And your posts about “cram sessions” not working! LOL! Then why are the same folks who believe in evaluating teachers by their students’ test scores ALSO wildly supporting the charter schools that do the most test prep, including required Saturday schools? Why is there an entire test prep industry for every standardized test? You claim that the public school parents are deluded but in fact, the private school parents spend far more on test prep for the SATs and every other standardized test their kids have to take. Except for the CTP-4 scores which are kept quiet and never used for anything but internal use, and no outside agency will ever know your child’s score. AP exams? Prepped (or in the case of some of the richest private schools, kids are now discouraged from taking them under the guise of them being ‘too easy’!)
How much do you want to bet that Bill Gates’ kids did NO outside prepping for the SAT, SAT II subject tests, AP exams, and any other college entrance exams they had to take? I bet they did. I bet their best friends at their expensive private school did. Why do public schools need to be “fixed” according to Bill Gates when his own child’s private school can’t properly prepare their kids for college without most of their parents hiring tutors at upwards of $400/hour to prep their children? You want to insist that isn’t the case? So the farce of you sitting here insisting that test prep doesn’t work to improve test scores when the SAME people who claim it doesn’t work happily pay thousands to prep their own private school educated kids – it truly defies logic.
By the way, ask your pals how many top private school juniors are being advised to take the ACTs this year and not the “new” SATs because “no one knows what will be on the new SATs”. They can’t prep! That is what the most connected private school guidance counselors who specialize in getting half their class into Ivy League schools are advising students. Please – they can’t prep for the test so they are telling kids not to take it! Can you imagine if those private schools were forced to be like public school students and take whatever test the state decides will prove how poorly the kids are educated? Not a chance. THEN you’d have Bill Gates quickly walking back on his insistence that VAM is significant. The parents who believe in private schools — Bill Gates among them — would never trust the education they just paid about half a million dollars for to be enough when it comes to their child taking a high stakes standardized test. We both know it.
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I don’t have Bill’s phone number so I don’t actually know what he recommends. I imagine he would suggest the MET study’s recommendations be implemented across the board. That includes VAMs. I would certainly recommend it. As Tim pointed out here many times, the private schools do take standardized tests regardless of what you may hear.
I assume by referencing charters with the most “test prep” and Saturday classes you are referring to the more regimented approaches. I haven’t seen the data on those but I would not be their biggest fan. I can attest to repetition having value. The military and sports make good use of that principle. Your mind learns to perform tasks unconsciously so your conscious mind can focus on other, more complicated tasks. I also wouldn’t equate extra class with test prep. Sounds like discipline and greater instructional time to me.
As for the test prep working, I disagree. Yes, students need to become familiar with the format of the tests. Most test makers acknowledge that. But after familiarity, there is limited to no gains. I taught Kaplan so I’m pretty familiar with the whole process. That said, much of what is taught in “test prep” is simply logic and prioritization – two of the most important skills one can learn. You don’t need tests to teach that but it’s efficient to teach them in that context. What you call learning the “test tricks”, I call logic or more accurately “critical thinking”. Breaking down a problem and looking for clues to the answer is a hugely valuable skill. A college professor told us that his first job was related to rocket trajectory calculations. His boss gave him two formulas that would describe the path of a rocket. Both were plausible since much of engineering comes down to determining which set of assumptions hold. But they resulted in significantly different “answers”. He had to determine which one applied but he didn’t even need to come up with the formulas from scratch. How is that any different from being given 4 answers on a multiple choice test and asking which one is correct? Listening to the opt out crowd, you would think nobody has ever, in the history of the world, had to determine which rocket trajectory formula is correct.
As to paying for test prep, lots of people are getting conned. People buy all sorts of diet pills and expensive golf equipment but it has no difference on their physical condition or golf game. And presumably many of those are successful, intelligent individuals. I cannot explain the psychology behind why folks make irrational decisions in purchasing “test prep”, but I can tell you there is lots of research (including from the college board) that such prep makes little difference after initial familiarity.
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“As Tim pointed out here many times, the private schools do take standardized tests regardless of what you may hear.”
Every single private school in NYC is free to opt-in to the state tests. In fact, in NY State, some do. Here are their results: “Statewide, nonpublic schools that took the state tests did better in English than public schools (33.9 percent passing vs. 28.4 percent) and worse than public schools in math (33.3 percent vs 37.0 percent passing.)”
If Tim wants to acknowledge that private schools with the ability to pick and choose students, get rid of anyone they don’t want, AND charge tuition cannot manage to get more than 1/3 of their students at grade level standards for math — far less than public schools — and 2/3 of the kids at private schools don’t meet grade level standards in English, then I’d like to hear him explain how that can be. He thinks parents in private schools are all idiots who pay high tuitions for substandard education because he just can’t believe that the tests are not accurate representations of how poorly educated more than 2/3 of the students in private schools are.
http://www.syracuse.com/schools/index.ssf/2015/08/nys_ela_math_test_scores_for_private_parochial_schools_2015_look_up_compare_any.html#incart_story_package
There are many fancy private schools that won’t touch these state tests with a 10-foot pole because they know how worthless a measurement they are. Are you telling me that Bill Gates’ kids private school takes the SAME standardized tests that public school students take? Is Tim saying that private schools in NY take the SAME standardized tests that public school students take? (The few that do have horrible results.)
So, what Tim means is that many private schools “opt in” to DIFFERENT standardized tests. Just like the PARENTS in Long Island “opt in” to DIFFERENT standardized tests (The AP exams, SATs, etc.). The private schools that opt-in to the state exams have terrible results. The private schools that choose NOT to opt-in to the state exams when they absolutely could are just like the parents that Tim thinks are so stupid.
Again, when Bill Gates’ children’s private school and every other private school “opts in” to the state exams you keep trying to convince me are so valuable, then I will believe that Bill Gates believes those tests are valuable tools to measure a teacher. Nothing is stopping those schools except the belief that these state tests are worthless.
LOL that you think private schools are taking state tests! They CAN take the state tests — they just “opt out”!! But when you show me the results of top private school kids on the same state tests my child has to take, then we can talk about how valuable a tool they are.
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NYC public school parent, maybe Tim and Raj can join us and give a little more information about the tests given in those famous private schools. Note that the reason that schoools are private is so they can provide education based on their own methods and priorities. I’m pretty sure none other than the US Constitution requires parents be given that right (yes, that’s one of my arguments in my federal claim against my district).
However, let it be said that I encourage all charters and private schools to give standardized tests to their students such that they can be compared against any and all other schools. Even if they choose to give their own tests, why not give the PARCC or SBAC too. It’s just a few days and the kids would learn from the practice.
When you make statements like “nonpublic schools did better … and worse…”, you simply lose all credibility. You know those are average achievement scores that are related to ability (i.e. SES). They are not based on the effectiveness of the school. They are not VAMs. So why even throw that nonsense out there. It shows that you are either 1) still completely ignorant as to what VAMs are or 2) determined to mislead and misrepresent stats in your advocacy. Neither one is good.
And child, the parents on Long Island would opt out of the SAT in a heartbeat if they could. Don’t let Duane get started on here. But many of the other commenters want to do away with that one too. If Connecticut is using the SAT as their 11th grade CC test, then don’t you think they are one and the same? Those parents simply know their students must take the SAT to get into college. They are happy to stand up and opt out when it doesn’t hurt their own kids. Come on, you don’t really believe those statements, do you? Once again, the credibility of so many on this board is shot because you just throw stuff at the wall to see what sticks. As long as it prevents teacher accountability, you’ll throw it.
2old2teach, my daughter only has to perform 2 hours of math drills on Sunday. I think that’s too light but I was feeling a little guilty. How is that any different than sending a child to Sunday School at church followed by service from 9-12 noon? Aren’t you being a little hypocritical for not calling them out?
In case you haven’t figured it out, I am kidding about the Sunday drills. The Saturday Mandarin lessons were 1.2 hrs/wk which is much less time than many kids spend in church. I guess you would be ok if my elementary school taught Mandarin during the school day (which is only 6 hrs long) but Lord help us if I wanted my daughter exposed to Mandarin while she was still young and could adopt a native accent. Whatever public schools/teachers do -> good, whatever parents do outside school that you don’t approve of -> bad.
As for the 1st grade teacher, you fail to even acknowledge that she could just be a poor teacher. Part of this goes to how tests are used in the past. While 1st graders don’t take a statewide test (SOL), the teachers did perform batteries on them at the beginning and end of the year. Teachers have been trained (by lousy admins – the same principal who banned me for asking such questions as “can my child have a textbook” and “can you give me a detailed copy of the online learning report”) to focus on the kids at the borderline of passing/failing. Thus, just a small portion of the class gets most of the attention. VAMs end that. Each kid has a score. You can no longer ignore the guaranteed failures or the guaranteed passers since their growth still counts. That’s part of the benefits of a value added measure.
Note that I have also never said elementary kids should be left alone in independent study. I am ok with the more advanced kids getting some independent time but it should increase with age and the teacher should always be engaged in the primary grades (even if they use online lessons for part of the time). I did send worksheets (that I made up with concepts not rote drills) with my daughter so she would learn something and not get bored. The 1st grade teacher even refused to send home each week the “Sunshine math” worksheets that have 4-6 problems of varying difficulty. I had a better experience in the 2nd grade and then got a first-year teacher in the third. Somebody had to have her so I didn’t complain. But I wanted to ensure I could send work with my daughter so she didn’t get bored. They never really allowed it but I think my daughter would do some in her free time. Mainly, she does them on holidays (and writes some of her own stories) instead of playing video games all day. But most parents are not going to be able or inclined to create their own worksheets for kids. And since our district doesn’t even distribute textbooks/workbooks (they are so afraid of the word Common Core, they refuse to buy Common Core textbooks and instead issue single page Common Core worksheets day to day), kids have no other means to learn independently.
Bottom line is the detracking has seriously undermined challenging all of the students. There would be no 1st grade study halls if the kids were appropriately grouped. If we don’t require the administrators to defend their policies and publish the student growth of all kids, you will have kids who get abandoned, be they at the top or bottom.
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” I guess you would be ok if my elementary school taught Mandarin during the school day (which is only 6 hrs long) but Lord help us if I wanted my daughter exposed to Mandarin while she was still young and could adopt a native accent.”
Lord, help us (although apparently not you) if you ever stop putting words in our mouths. I’ll admit my choice of words was a little inflammatory. My issue was not with Mandarin lessons. You made a choice as a parent to provide language lessons, just as others do to attend church. The image I had trouble with was you scribbling math problems in the back as well. You do not create the image of a child who is being encouraged to explore learning but of one who is being micromanaged by a “helicopter” parent. Is there any joy in just doing without a continuous push for mastery? If left to her own devices, what does your daughter do for enjoyment? Learning Mandarin is great. I had a friend who taught himself Mandarin. He also wrote short stories, studied history avidly, ran a well-respected computer technology lab, and flew a plane. I will allow that he was an extraordinary guy who loved learning for the sake of learning. I’m sure he surprised the get out of his blue collar parents, but they loved him and supported him to the best of their abilities. I know you love your daughter fiercely; you wouldn’t be so engaged with her development if you didn’t. You may be providing her exactly what she needs; just don’t assume that your way is the only way or the best way for others.
“Not that I agree with how your daughter’s teacher ran her class…” Yeah, I refuse to make a decision on the quality of your daughter’s teacher on the basis of what you said beyond the above quote. Nor would I make such a decision on the basis of VAM. When major, well-respected, statistical associations are warning against using them for high stakes decisions, I sure am not. Any administrator worth their salt knows who is doing a credible job and who needs additional support. Given the high attrition rate for beginning teachers (1-5 years) even before the reform nonsense, the complexity of teaching weeds out those who need to pursue other interests pretty well. Yeah, there are less than inspiring teachers left behind and a few downright incompetent ones. VAM is not ready to weed those individuals out and I doubt it will ever be as reliable as a competent administrator. Poor teachers are easy to spot without assigning a number to them. I have yet to work in a school system that was unable to get rid of teachers they didn’t want for whatever reason without resorting to SGPs.
” And since our district doesn’t even distribute textbooks/workbooks…, kids have no other means to learn independently.”
Textbooks/workbooks were not a constant in my home school district either, and the children had little homework until they hit middle school beyond independent reading and an occasional project. As a matter of fact, they had so little homework in the early grades (1-3) that homework was exciting. Amazingly these kids entered high school overwhelmingly ready for a challenging, high quality program that sent 95+% of its graduates to college. (They need to work on providing better programming for those who choose not to go to college.) They found plenty of ways to learn independently without the ubiquitous workbook.
” If we don’t require the administrators to defend their policies and publish the student growth of all kids, you will have kids who get abandoned, be they at the top or bottom.”
Nope, unless you disconnect defending policy decisions and SGPs. I still prefer conferences with the teachers. Report cards with letter grades really don’t tell us much just like growth scores are pretty useless unless they are paired with what we know about a child beyond the tests.
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2old2teach, so you just make negative assumptions about parents and admins but despite evidence to the contrary, all teachers are good. Despite rarely even covering math in 1st grade, I should have been content to see my daughter ignore the topic for the whole year? I am too old (and maybe too lazy) to learn Mandarin. Parents generally stuck around. So rather than watching ballgames on my phone, I created conceptual math problems to teach my daughter math intuitively while I was waiting. She could then take those problems to school and work through them while the teacher was ignoring her. The interesting part is she actually had somebody who could explain the problems to her if she ran into any issues. Imagine that!
You don’t make any negative conclusions about the teacher despite being presented with evidence. Yet when I merely present one extracurricular activity, I am condemned as a horrible parent, a “helicopter parent” to be exact, who pushes his child way too hard. I guess if I explained that we went to the park every weekend, to the library, to museums, she had one swimming and one tennis lesson each week (I would play tennis with them during the summer evenings as well), wrote short stories about her favorite cartoon characters, played board games, bicycling, get-togethers with her friends, and detailed every exact thing I did outside academic enhancements, then maybe, just maybe a teacher would not conclude that I am a horrible, overzealous parent. Is that what it takes to get opinionated teachers to back off their silly conclusions? I should not have to mention any of that. And I didn’t. That’s why Common Core questions ascertain what is in the text vs what is not mentioned in the text. To get illogical teachers to stop indoctrinating our students will their “perspectives” on everything despite having no proof whatsoever.
Let’s see you reference the “high attrition rate” for teachers in the first 5 years. Did you mean the astronomical 17%? That 50% estimate was nonsense and was just debunked last year with hard data.
You mention it’s “easy” to “weed out” bad teachers. Then why does every single district in Virginia rate 99%+ of its teachers as effective. I must have an exceptionally great district because we have 99.51% effective teachers. I’m sure you believe that “stat” even though you don’t believe 3 Harvard/Stanford/Brown professors who proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that VAMs are reliable.
So your district sent 95%+ of its kids to college. Do you think that’s because the “great teachers” took downtrodden kids and lifted them up on high? Or maybe you lived in an absurdly rich area where parents filled the gaps when their high-aptitude kids had a bad teacher? I guess the fact that some kids hate math when they hit middle school because they’ve never been taught how the number system really works or how to understand multiplication/division/fractions is ok by you too. We wouldn’t want to send home any math homework but it’s ok to assign 30 minutes of reading each night. Maybe when they grow up, they can just read for a living, right? Or teach math? No need to actually understand math to teach it, right?
Your response just proves my point. Unless you came to the teacher’s classroom and personally decided she was beyond hope, you believe every teacher is great and just not supported by those lazy, irresponsible parents. But if a parent mentions one thing that might possibly be associated with some bad parents, then you are ready to jump to conclusions. Sounds about like every teacher I’ve ever encountered.
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Virginia,
Maybe there is an economist who proved that VAM works in theory. But it doesn’t work in the real world. It is a dead issue for everyone but you
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I don’t know if you have the same problem I do virginiasgp, but I find I have to go back and reread what I wrote to connect with what you say I said.
“…so you just make negative assumptions about parents and admins but despite evidence to the contrary, all teachers are good.”
I couldn’t find any indication of unequivocal support for teachers or automatic negative stereotypical decisions about parents. Perhaps my image of you as a helicopter parent is unfair, but by your own account your presence does not appear to be welcome in the local schools. I didn’t ask what you do outside of academic enhancements for your daughter. I could have listed most of those activities without your input. I live in a community where parents have the ability and the privilege of doing the same. I asked what she does for enjoyment if left to her own devices. None of this, of course, is any of my damn business, and I apologize for such intrusion. Both of us face the danger of more personal comments than we want when we use personal anecdote to make a point.
Let’s not get into a war of statistics. Apparently there are plenty of highly competent statisticians who do not bow down to three professors from Harvard/Standford/Brown. the peer review process has not worked out in their favor at this point in time. Whether you choose to believe that beginning teachers leave the profession at a high rate or not, you will not find much support for your position here. I don’t know how long VA takes before they give teachers due process rights (or even if they do). In my home state, districts have four years to remove teachers without cause. If they award due process rights/tenure after four years, then they have to terminate teachers for cause. I imagine that your district is quite a high performing district. Yes? If you have high quality administrators, they take great care with hiring and draw high quality teacher candidates. They should not need to fire many teachers.
Yes, I live in an absurdly wealthy area although not everyone is absurdly wealthy. The schools are very good. They draw on a wealth of pedagogical traditions at the elementary level, and several communities feed into the high school. You are right that most parents are able to fill in any gaps that they see in their children’s education that are not addressed by the schools. I took the liberty of not mentioning math homework as during the earliest grades it was minimal. Reading took a more prominent place in my own household since we read together every night before bed. From grade four on math and reading homework was typical although far from heavy. (Yes, they can all grow up and be professional readers. Who needs math, right? Can we now dispense with silly assumptions?) Incidentally, I actually agree with you about math instruction being light on concept development at the earlier levels in particular. Instruction doesn’t always have to be explicit, but there is a tendency to settle for rote learning which is dangerous on its own. I worked with too many students who were used to memorizing formulas and had reached a level where rote was no longer even partially meeting their needs. Math is a wonderful, rich language of patterns that too many students never see.
I fail to see where I suggested that I would personally have to observe your daughter’s teacher to decide on her merit. I think I suggested that competent administrators are qualified to design evaluation protocols that are fairer than VAMs. I favor an embedded peer review system because they can provide a layer of support that is too often missing especially for new teachers but valuable for more experienced teachers as well. I NEVER even suggested that lazy, irresponsible parents who failed to support teachers were to blame (for what I’m not sure).
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2old2teach, yes I do have to re-read my comments sometimes. This is not one of them. Let me address these in order. As you can tell, I am pretty worked up and you will see why.
1. You essentially I was an autocratic father who didn’t let my child have any fun. I never defend my own actions on this blog but I merely state these facts to prove the uninformed assumptions you make. I nearly force my kids to go outside everyday to play for 1-2 hours at least. I don’t intervene in the that play if possible since research shows kids learn best when they make their own games/rules. I encourage my kids to draw, to write their own stories (whatever topic they choose), to act out skits, to read, you name it. But based on nothing more than my efficiently using time while my daughter was learning Mandarin for about 1.5 hrs/wk, you wrote:
“I realize there are young children who would enjoy Saturdays spent studying Mandarin while their father peppered them with math problems, but, for the life of me, I have never met one. Is Sunday a free day or does she spend it on extra worksheets? I’m sorry, but you see life and education through a lens that is foreign to most of us.”
“The image I had trouble with was you scribbling math problems in the back as well. You do not create the image of a child who is being encouraged to explore learning but of one who is being micromanaged by a “helicopter” parent.”
Even after pointing this out, you refused to admit you were 100% wrong in every assumption you made. You are typical holier-than-thou teacher who thinks parents should shut the **** up (sorry Diane) and seek counsel from the omniscience teachers.
2. You then make assumptions for which you have no evidence whatsoever. I was banned from my kids’ school because I:
a. Highlighted their fraud of US DoE. The district has never even given growth data to teachers much less used them in evals. Can you name a single state that received an ESEA waiver that got away with this?
b. Took the chairman of the school board to court because he violated the conflict of interest act (his boss runs Imagine Schools – largest network of charters schools in US, but he never so much as disclosed any of that). I even got a BS fine of $6800 because I dared to take him to court. All of you take a big game about opposing charters but would never put your money or time where you mouth is. The fine will be overturned because the judge is … well, read my FB page.
c. When the 3rd teacher teacher told my daughter’s class that 1 kid failed the SOL test and then had the kid leave the class a few days later to retake the test, I pointed out this violated FERPA. Most teachers on here don’t want kids to take one SOL test, much less be coerced into retaking it for no benefit to the student. In our high schools, they make a PA announcements for the failures to report to the library to retake the test. I spoke about these FERPA violations before the school board and in front of 40 other parents at my school’s PTA meeting. That night, they wrote the letter to ban me. They still have yet to investigate their obvious FERPA violations.
d. I also asked the teachers why they don’t use textbooks in front of other parents and asked if the school would provide detailed student progress data (by law, such educational records must be given to parents if asked) to parents. Why would any principal not give parents their students’ detailed reports before summer break so the parents could assist the kids in weak areas over the summer? The principal has refused to make other parents aware of its existence. However, the newly hired Asst Supt (an honest lady from SC) said it was certainly “appropriate” to give that to all parents.
This is why my school system is retaliating against me, but you imply that I am being banned because I tell teachers what pedagogy they should use. You express amusement that I don’t realize I should be banned for telling teachers how they should teach, not that I blew the whistle on their violations of federal law or that I alerted parents to some of the indefensible policies of the principal:
“[you are] puzzled by your apparent ostracism by your own school system”
3. Lastly, you defend the teacher, or at the very least, refuse to admit that I have any legitimate criticism of her. Knowing the single fact that I took my daughter to learn Mandarin didn’t preclude you from labeling me a helicopter parent whose views about raising children were “foreign” to all of you.
“Yeah, I refuse to make a decision on the quality of your daughter’s teacher on the basis of what you said beyond the above quote. Nor would I make such a decision on the basis of VAM. When major, well-respected, statistical associations are warning against using them for high stakes decisions, I sure am not. Any administrator worth their salt knows who is doing a credible job and who needs additional support. Given the high attrition rate for beginning teachers (1-5 years) even before the reform nonsense, the complexity of teaching weeds out those who need to pursue other interests pretty well. Yeah, there are less than inspiring teachers left behind and a few downright incompetent ones. VAM is not ready to weed those individuals out and I doubt it will ever be as reliable as a competent administrator. Poor teachers are easy to spot without assigning a number to them. I have yet to work in a school system that was unable to get rid of teachers they didn’t want for whatever reason without resorting to SGPs.”
Note that 99.5% of our teachers were rated effective. Thus, you imply that since the administrator rated the teacher satisfactory and the teacher wasn’t weeded out, then she almost certainly must be fine. In your follow-on posts, you refuse acknowledge the attrition rate in the 1st five years is 17%, not the speculative 50% previously touted.
“Nope, unless you disconnect defending policy decisions and SGPs. I still prefer conferences with the teachers. Report cards with letter grades really don’t tell us much just like growth scores are pretty useless unless they are paired with what we know about a child beyond the tests.”
I am claiming both the administrators AND some of the teachers are ineffective. The principal wants to hide the true data from the parents, who often aren’t clever enough to analyze it. My school is affluent. We have lower FRL rates than the affluent county. Our SOL scores are higher on average than the county so the parents thought the school was great. When I removed FRL students (apples to apples comparison), our school’s average scores were lower than the county average (sans FRL students) in every grade and in every subject. This confirmed the low SGP scores of the school. The principal did not want this published. She nearly banned me in the spring when I wanted to discuss the poor SGP scores of the school. I have an internal email from her to the PTA president in which she says it was not appropriate to discuss SGPs at the PTA meeting because it would “reflect poorly on the school and the district”.
How exactly does one determine that high-scoring, affluent kids are being poorly served when their scores are above average? I thought I knew right away in the first grade. But unlike you who just wants to chat a couple times with the teacher (btw, the admins monitor the teachers for 30 minutes/year and give them all a glowing observational evaluation) during a conference to determine her effectiveness, I wanted to get hard data before I extrapolated my limited interaction with them. The other parents have no clue. They go to PT conferences where they are told their kids are doing great and they just beam with pride. They are clearly not qualified to evaluate the teachers. SGPs/VAMs allow us to see how teachers affect the learning of ALL students, both disadvantaged and gifted without being blinded by SES alone. You claim that it’s possible for admins to do this by observation. I agree. You then claim that any admin worth their salt does it. Who determines if the admin is “worth their salt”? The one that banned me is not. She banned me because I pointed that out. I would allege that you are simply naive about such things but having seen your approach over and over again by others, I am quite convinced you are happy to have admins that rate 99.5% of teachers effective. Proud, actually.
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Since I see very little evidence in your response that you paid much attention to what I said, It is probably past time for me to stop responding to you. I know you feel deeply about what you are saying as I do about my own thoughts. I apologize for all the times I crossed the line in assumptions I made about you based on very little information. We are not going to agree. Our understanding of what constitutes solid information for making high stakes decisions differs and isn’t likely to change.
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Eli Broad did take on existing low-performing public schools. He and his foundation were a prime force behind the creation and early implementation of the Education Achievement Authority in Detroit. (See pages 9, 31, 34 and 39fn in the working paper by Mason and Arsen at http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2536702) More than four years later, the current administration, led by the Chancellor (a recent Broad Academy graduate) is still trying to clean up the mess. I don’t know if Broad is still in the picture.
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One of the biggest issues from the parent-choosers perspective is exactly this, the “peer effects”: “If a student is enrolled in a school with other higher-performing students–and if the students with behavioral problems and the unmotivated students are not present–the students learn faster… In a school where everyone is motivated, well-behaved, and ready to learn, students get higher test scores.”
So even while we may care about all students in the abstract, most parents aren’t willing to take the “risk” with their own kids. And as long as we keep repeating this kind of analysis, I can’t imagine much will change.
The conversation must keep returning to what makes a school “good” (and what makes a “good” adult!)– beyond these test scores. And integrated schools actually DO work… for middle class kids as well as poorer kids.
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Virginia,
You use broad generalizations as if they were facts. I would like to reiterate that I only have English Language Learners who generally perform BELOW grade level due to the challenges of attaining English skills. I have no cadre of advanced proficient learners, nor am I seeking them despite your presumptions to the contrary. I do not utilize my better prepared students to co-teach. I am amazed to be failing close reading on your rubric.
For the record, all four of my grandparents, as well as some of my older aunts and uncles, were immigrants. We are doing very well thank you very much. There are too many family members with advanced degrees and successful businesses to make a proper count. In addition, we have published authors in various fields. America has been very good to us and I am eternally grateful. Of my ESL students, there are several who have completed challenging NJIT programs. One of my former students is an executive for an American telephone company in the Dominican Republic.
Virginia, community colleges only award Associate degrees. Bachelor degrees are required for teachers. Are teachers who hold Ivy League degrees better than those who attend state universities? One of the most important qualifications for a teacher is to have a good heart. Which standardized test measures that aptitude? Children know right away when their teachers care about them and when they do not. I have lived it.
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Abigail, if you have only ESL students, then tracking likely doesn’t apply to your situation. If the admins insisted on mixing the ESLs with all different ability levels of native speaking students, then that might be different.
As to immigrants, they have historically outperformed native-born citizens within a generation or two. That has not been the case recently with certain populations. It has nothing to do with race. But whereas immigrants from certain parts of the world self-select based on advanced ability, we are now in a situation where the opposite is true for certain regions. The data is quite clear in the Pew research data. Also, have you ever heard of a Russian ESL or Chinese ESL class? Why do you think that’s so? Have you ever known a Russian or Chinese student to not be taking regular courses within 1-2 years of entering an English-speaking school? There are differences in the potential of immigrants but we still want to maximize the potential of each student.
Lastly we completely agree on the skills needed to be a good teacher. While content mastery is a factor, there are many other factors including communication skills, emotional intelligence, etc. Even Hanushek said you can’t predict which teaching candidates will make good teachers. If one could, whoever develops that test/screening will make a killing. But that’s why we must evaluate teachers to see which ones are effective. I couldn’t care less what their piece of paper says (credentials), I only care if they can teach.
Question, how many folks have told you they desperately wanted to have kids and be a stay-at-home-parent? But when the kids were born, they realized that maybe the stay-at-home role wasn’t for them? Not everyone but it happens frequently. Why can’t that happen in teaching? Maybe some need assistance in finding jobs for which they are better suited. It’s not a negative, just reality.
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To be fair, if I had the choice to put my brilliant grandkids into a school where they would thrive, I wouldn’t think twice.
That said, the only thing our schools needed was proper funding, staffing, organization and programs that help our less fortunate kids to b the best that they can be.
ihae tuaght in some pretty rough schools, and when the administration supported learning, all the kids knew that bad behavior would not be tolerated.
Smaller classes allow teachers to deal with all the children, and support staff for discipline problems and kids with behavioral issues is a must. Throwing them out is not an option in a public school…thank goodness. We save lives and help kids to be productive citizens.
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Wow, what a discussion I’m looking forward to perusing. In the meantime, I want just to note how hysterical it is to assert that Eli Broad doesn’t tell painters how to paint. He famously completely gets in the way of painters, curators and all things artistic. The NewYorker (or maybe NYT Sunday section?) had a long article sometime in the mid-oughts about how Broad had completely f’d up the whole arts scene in LA with his meddling and micromanaging and fantasms about his artistic managerial prowess. lmao. They kicked him out of that sector into Education. btdt.
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