Our frequent commentator who signs as Virginia SGP (Student Growth Percentiles) repeatedly argued on this blog and elsewhere that teachers’ ratings should be published. He sued in court, and guess what, he won.
Audrey Amrein-Beardsley, an expert on teacher evaluation who has warned that these ratings are fundamentally flawed, posted about his victory here. In her post, Beardsley explains the differences between SGP and VAM models. She doesn’t think much of either because teacher performance cannot be quantified or measured based on student tests; the scores are affected by many factors outside the teachers’ control. Not only are students put in the position of being able to fire their teachers by not scoring well, they also have the anxiety of knowing that a beloved teacher might be fired because of their test scores. We have yet to see a single district make big improvements because of the publication of teacher ratings. Both Los Angeles and New York City published the ratings, and nothing much has changed.
Nonetheless, Virginia (Brian Davison) has relentlessly advocated for the use of SGP and he initiated the court case to make his point. And he won. He posted here so many times that I limited him to no more than four submissions a day.
Beardsley writes:
In January, a Richmond, Virginia judge ruled in Virginia SGP’s favor, despite the state’s claims that Virginia school districts, despite the state’s investments, had reportedly not been using the SGP data, “calling them flawed and unreliable measures of a teacher’s effectiveness.” And even though this ruling was challenged by state officials and the Virginia Education Association thereafter, Virginia SGP posted via his Facebook page the millions of student records the state released in compliance with the court, with teacher names and other information redacted.
This past Tuesday, however, and despite the challenges to the court’s initial ruling, came another win for Virginia SGP, as well as another loss for the state of Virginia. See the article “Judge Sides with Loudoun Parent Seeking Teachers’ Names, Student Test Scores,” published yesterday in a local Loudon, Virginia news outlet.
The author of this article, Danielle Nadler, explains more specifically that, “A Richmond Circuit Court judge has ruled that [the] VDOE [Virginia Department of Education] must release Loudoun County Public Schools’ Student Growth Percentile [SGP] scores by school and by teacher…[including] teacher identifying information.” The judge noted that “that VDOE and the Loudoun school system failed to ‘meet the burden of proof to establish an exemption’ under Virginia’s Freedom of Information Act [FOIA].” The court also ordered VDOE to pay Davison $35,000 to cover his attorney fees and other costs. This final order was dated April 12, 2016.
“Davison said he plans to publish the information on his ‘Virginia SGP’ Facebook page. Students will not be identified, but some of the teachers will. ‘I may mask the names of the worst performers when posting rankings/lists but other members of the public can analyze the data themselves to discover who those teachers are,” Virginia SGP said.
Now that this information is publicly available, we can expect parents in Virginia to move to the most affluent districts, like the one Virgina SGP lives in, so they too can sign up for the “best” teachers and see their scores rise. And in two years, Virginia will no doubt outperform Massachusetts on the NAEP, as #1 in the nation.
Diane, with all due respect, I beg to differ on one point. Something did happen in Los Angeles after they published the ratings: Rigoberto Ruelas, described as being a ” teacher in an impoverished, gang-ridden area of South Los Angeles, (who) always reached out to the toughest kids,” committed suicide.
“Teachers union President A.J. Duffy said his staff was told by Ruelas’ family that the teacher was depressed about his score on a teacher-rating database posted by The Times on its website. The newspaper analyzed seven years of student test scores in English and math to determine how much students’ performance improved under about 6,000 third- through fifth-grade teachers. Based on The Times’ findings, Ruelas was rated ‘average’ in his ability to raise students’ English scores and “less effective” in his ability to raise math scores. Overall, he was rated slightly “less effective” than his peers.
“‘Despite The Times’ analysis, and all other measures, this was a really good teacher,'” said Duffy, who called on the newspaper to take down the database. Many parents also asked that Ruelas’ page on The Times’ website be taken down”
http://articles.latimes.com/2010/sep/28/local/la-me-south-gate-teacher-20100928
Thank you. I have often reminded people about Rigoberto Ruelas. He should not be forgotten. The point I was making was that publishing the scores was supposed to lead to a huge change, with bad teachers identified and banished, and replaced by the many good teachers hoping for their jobs. Not.
I wish this Brian clown had a conscience, because when the inevitable happens and another teacher is branded like Mr. Ruelas was a takes his/her life, that Brian would be haunted by that. He won’t be, but it will devastate a family, a school, a community. Is that what you want, Brian?
What’s your next battle Brian? It’s all about the fight isn’t it?
And here’s what you will soon find out. Parents will not care one whit about the BS teacher ratings that you post because they already know more about their kid’s teachers than you could imagine. Engaged parents attend PT conferences and back to school night and repot card night. They view grades on-line. They see the type of homework their kids com home with – and often help them with. They listen to the stories their children tell about their classes and their teachers. Who is boring. Who doesn’t know their subject. Who excites and inspires them. They talk to other parents about teachers. They get a great feel for the quality of the program offered by their child’s teachers. And in most cases, they moved to the community they live because of the reputation of the schools – and their teachers. They know way more about the teachers in their schools than any fraudulent number that you will post. A moot victory if there ever was one.
One small, petty stupid step backwards for mankind.
What a foul and vile individual this Brian Davison is. One can only hope they get their just desserts in this lifetime.
Parents versus teachers! Adversarial.
They set everything up as a war. I’m a parent and I think it’s utter nonsense. I’m NOT raising my children to blame everything in the world on their teachers. Students have a role in how well or poorly they learn something. They are not passive lumps sitting there waiting for an “excellent teacher” to impart “learning” as measured by these stupid VAM scores.
I completely understand why ed reform is so politically popular. It’s easy. It lets everyone besides teachers completely off the hook.
Ohio lawmakers are busy re-working the ranking scheme again. They have now wasted 6 years and tens of millions of dollars on this. It never ends and it gets more complex every year.
Thanks for making my day with this post.
My own child has learning challenges. We did not sit back and blame teachers. We found a cooperative, collaborate approach worked better with his intervention teachers than adversarial. Raising any child, let alone one with challenges, takes acceptance of that responsibility and hard work as a parent. Teachers are human, and a yelling, combative parent is instinctively avoided. No one wants to do their best and be swore at in a phone tirade.
Ed reform allows lawmakers to avoid responsibility for failing to govern and address the underlying causes of school problems – lack of good jobs, unsafe neighborhoods, drug use, declining infrastructure. Parents can offload their own problems on teachers. Business can blame a failed economic system on schools. Universities can point the finger at K-12 and claim incompetence. I tell my own kids, run, don’t walk, away from a teaching career.
Good post Chiara. In order for your Parental VAM Score (PVS) to increase to excellent you need to eliminate your usage of “measure” as in “. . . as measured by these stupid VAM scores.”
Contrary to what VSGP (yes, related to PVS) would have you believe, remember it is impossible to measure any aspect of the teaching and learning process and to suggest otherwise will always prevent your PVS from reaching the heights of VSGP now court sanctioned ecstasies!
Diane, I get that this qualifies as education news, but giving Brian any more of the publicity he so desperately craves? Ugh.
I can hardly wait to see him crowing, aka polluting the Comments Section, all over the Answer Sheet again. -_-
Can’t we let him enjoy his 15 nanoseconds of fame?
“Know your enemy and know yourself and you can fight a hundred battles without disaster.”
Sun Tsu
“The Squeaky Wheel”
If squeaky wheel gets grease
ECONOMAD is greasy
It’s errors never cease
And make us all feel queasy
Chiara, how is Ohio reworking the ranking system, AGAIN?
RageAgainstTheTetsocracy
May 1, 2016 at 9:35 am
Thanks for making my day with this post.
Everyone in the country hasn’t bought into this. My district is working on increasing attendance. Parents are grumbling about it and I know why- they’d much prefer to blame teachers. Apparently you’re also supposed to get my kid up and put him on the school bus or be deemed ‘less effective”. I have no idea why it’s your fault that OUR kids aren’t even THERE.
Blaming teachers for everything that happens (or doesn’t happen) in school isn’t good for children. I refuse to go along with this insanity.
Glad to hear that someone in your district “gets it”.
Until attendance issues are solved, all other bets are off.
It is not uncommon in high-needs schools to have students miss 20, 30, 40, or more days in a school year. Often students that are chronically absent, return to school with no signs of illness. The cumulative effect of chronic absenteeism is devastating and becomes an insurmountable obstacle to learning. By the time they are juniors in HS, a student may have missed over 300 days of school. And never be fooled by the attendance rates released by districts. A 95%attendance rate does not begin to paint the picture when it is the bottom 25% of the student accruing those missed school days. A few years ago I had 25 students with a combined 1,000 days missed from my science class. This brings up another attendance issue, and that is days ,missed from any individual class. It is very common for student who is technically “present” to be pulled out of school early or to arrive late.
But as always, you are right on the money: “I have no idea why it’s your fault that OUR kids aren’t even THERE”
I think we get all the blame because we are the one group, out of three (parent, teacher, student) that is getting paid taxpayer money.
I didn’t mean to expound on the attendance issue, it is just so often overlooked. Imagine if VASGP fought to have students attendance data posted with their test scores.
Thanks again for all you write in support of public schools and teachers.
Rage,
I am so glad my Honors section starts off the day, because even if they are late or absent, those students make up the work. One day out of four I have a non-honors class for home room, and on those days roughly 15% of my students are absent. Oh, they do eventually get to school, but they come in later and usually miss most of my class. They seldom come in after school to make up the missed instruction though. They show up late not because of sickness, just not getting up on time.
Guess which students are doing the worst in my class? Your comment made me think to quantify how much time they’ve lost. Four students in that class have collectively lost the equivalent of 83 days of instruction to date, and that’s just my earth science class.
Apparently neither the kids nor their parents nor see the connection between their grades and lack of attendance.
“it’s science, so it’s gonna be hard…that’s why I’m failing.”
Rockhound
I teach science as well and high rates of absenteeism are especially harmful in technical courses where students have no background studies to fall back on. If one of your students misses the lesson/lab on adiabatic cooling (Joule/Thompson effect), its almost impossible for that student to learn what he missed. There is no substitute for being there – both physically – and mentally engaged. Let’s not even talk about the daydreamers and distracted students. But as I said, attendance trumps all else. Or as Woody Allen once put it, “Ninety per cent of success is just showing up.”
On the lighter side:
On March 12, 2011, the North American tectonic plate and the Caribbean tectonic plate get together at their boundary to chat. The North American plate asks the Caribbean plate if it heard about the tsunami that struck Japan the previous day. The Caribbean plate respond, “Yeah, what a tragedy; I’m glad it wasn’t our fault.”
I think you need to comb through the PRWatch website. They have tons of information important to your cause. I get their newsletter and have seen much there that will help you inform others about the privatization of our schools.
http://www.prwatch.org/news/2016/04/13096/exposed-cmd-kipps-efforts-keep-public-dark-while-seeking-millions-taxpayer
PS , it this the only way to contact you? I could not find an email address. Thank you for all you do.
Thank you, CPS. That article is scheduled.
It may get some attention, but in the end Davison’s victory will likely be hollow as most people who know their schools, already know their teachers. He could perpetuate the test and punish approach a bit longer or use the data as part of a personal vendetta in a power pay against certain teachers or unions, but on the large scale, all we’ll likely see is a strong correlation between low scores and teachers who tend to help the most challenging students. I would wonder if Davison publishing the scores targeting only a select few teachers would open up his actions to a lawsuit, but I’m not a lawyer. The people in Davison’s movement, at the core, have an anti-teacher motivation coupled with an amazing amount of hubris that their “solutions” are the correct ones – even considering they have a lack of actual classroom experience. People talk at and past teachers, but never with them.
In our State, Battelle for Kids in partisan accord with the Republicans, have tried to establish a VAM based, statistical model of teacher performance based on various parameters. All we have is confusion, irrelevance, and a loss of important instructional time. No one really understands the system, including lawmakers who oversee it by their own confession. There seems little direct correlation between the rankings and teacher actions and the scaled results most certainly fail to answer “how can I be a better teacher?”. Especially since they are not available until well after a class ends. It is bad data based on bad tests producing bad results.
Publishing flawed results also can easily backfire on Davison. I know my school and my teachers. I am involved and listen. If I see one of my kid’s teachers who I know is exceptional get a poor VAM rating, it is more than an outlier, it is discrediting the entire VAM model by contradiction. Extend that to an entire school (parents talk) and VAM quickly is ignored just like school rankings. If parent’s want to keep good teachers, VAM is not going to help them.
Great comment. I can’t help but notice that ed reform carefully avoids laying any blame on anyone outside schools.
It’s amazing to watch. Those NEAP scores came out and the entire ed reform “movement” blamed schools. Again.
How long do they have to be in power before they take responsibility?
It’s been 20 years. They absolutely dominate at all levels of government. They’re captured the Obama and Kasich Administrations. No one outside “the movement” is hired, let alone listened to. Yet bad test scores are still the fault of “government schools”.
Recall Buckeye Institute, the anti-teacher, libertarian “think” tank, published the salaries of all teachers and identifying information – often inaccurate. Other that a few anti-levy zealots from time to time, the public reaction was mostly a yawn no matter how much Buckeye Institute marketed their revelation. I mostly received comments along the lines “That’s all you make?” with clucks of pity.
If I publish a one or two star review on Amazon or Yelp, companies have a chance to publicly post a rebuttal. Often, I get an email basically bribing me into a better review (does VSGP want to negotiate grades for his kids?). The BBB and Consumer Reports go to great lengths to be fair and accurate. The current system for teachers is one sided and punitive. The intent is to demonize and punish teachers, not pursue high quality education.
If VSGP is not allowing rebuttals by teachers and/or his information and conclusions prove inaccurate or slanderous against an individual, that teacher should have a right to publicly response and seek damages from Davison.
As a parent in Virginia, may I just say that the vast majority of us put no stock in using Standards of Learning (SOL) scores to evaluate our children’s teachers. In personal conversations, or on any news article about the SOL tests, parents comment that they wish we didn’t have those tests. They don’t tell us, or our children’s teachers, anything we don’t already know about our kids. As a parent, every year I have parent-teacher conferences and I get four report cards, four interim reports, and graded homework, class work, quizzes, and tests throughout the year. I don’t look at one year end test that I don’t get to see as relevant to my child’s education or the quality of his teachers’ work. These tests are time and money wasters, and so are the lawsuits Brian Davison has pursued. Reading up on his various rants and diatribes one can easily ascertain that he got mad at his child’s teacher, the principal didn’t agree with him, the PTA asked him not to disrupt their meetings, and the school board didn’t side with him either, so he went on a witch hunt to “expose the bad teachers”. I have news for Mr. Davsion, a self-proclaimed “reformer”: By and large, parents support, respect, and care about their children’s teachers. Your lawsuit will not change minds or change education for the better. I know I speak for many Virginia parents when I say, I don’t trust you, I don’t admire your work in the least, and I believe you are all about self-aggrandizement and not about the education and well-being of children. You come across as mean-spirited and vindictive, not caring and concerned. It’s unfortunate that you’ve put so much time and energy into your fools errand, and I assure you, the release of the data will not have the effect you’d hoped for.
Here’s an idea.
Given that ECONOMAD just made $35k at the expense of the Loudoun school district, Diane could charge him by the word to post here and the money could be returned to their district.
At $1 per word, a couple days worth of posts should just about pay back the district.
PS
Even if ECONOMAD agrees to the terms, I’d suggest getting the money up front before the post goes up.
I think ECONOMAD should start rating parents on time spent with their kids versus social media and personal crusades.
SomeDAM Poet: by the standards set by VirginiaSGP himself, I think you have taken his example (rated at the 13th percentile) and countered with a proposal that is at least rated in the 90th percentile, if not higher.
And he did it without even a pesky co-worker to help. Rheeally! And engaged in the bullying (in a very public way) he claims to hate so much, albeit with a most Johnsonally touch…
Perhaps one day, in his own mind, he will eclipse (according to his own lights) even giants of the civil rights movement like Arne Duncan and Michelle Rhee.
After all, how many private citizens can claim to have sucked ten of thousands of dollars out of a school system on a fool’s errand in a time of austerity and cutbacks?
I await his response to what, by his own most sacred and inviolable principles, is an eminently fair and reasonable suggestion. After all, the money will go to the district and like all rheephormistas say over and over and over again—
It’s all about the kids.
Guess it’s time for him to put up or shut up.
😎
Brian Davison is either a fool or he is in the pay of the oligarchs and/or the for profit, autocratic, opaque and often fraudulent, cherry picking corporate public education reformers, and if he is a fool, he is a perfect example of some of the fools that Abraham Lincoln mentioned in his famous quote:
“You can fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all of the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time.”
There is absolutely no evidence that using high stakes test scores to judge if a teacher is effective or not works except for the opinions of fools and the lies of frauds who worship at the alter of avarice. Thinking that student test scores reveals incompetent teachers is the same as thinking that carbon emissions are not contributing to global warming.
Will Virginia appeal the verdict like California did in the Vergara case? The verdict from one corrupt or stupid/foolish judge does not mean this is over.
Well typed!
“You can
foolpay all the people some of the time, and some of the people all of the time, but you cannotfoolpay all the people all the time.” (Not even if you are Bill Gates)Updated for this century.
It is a misguided, awful, petulant, disturbed, vendetta-minded thing. It routinely is thrown off of comment boards all over the net, and it routinely sulks and insults everyone else’s integrity. It is an awful thing; one can only feel sorry for its children. It. A thing. Now, its name is known, and it can no longer hide behind its pitiful moniker. Perhaps now that its dirty deed is done, and it thinks it is victorious, it will slink into the woodwork, because it, and only it, care about its hollow victory. Shame on it. It must be very disliked.
If VAM and SGP are flawed, which I believe they are, (and many highly qualified experts attest to) why can’t teachers sue for defamation of character, or something like that?
These rating systems certainly impact a teachers professional character.
That courts have to find that there are seriously flawed by a tough standard, as government agencies (dept’s of education) have wide latitude for stupid methods.
We’re still waiting for the Lederman decision.
There is a lawsuit in NYS regarding VAM scores. The Lederman case is still pending. Not sure why the delay, but if it is ruled in favor of the plaintiff, it could set a precedent for teachers mislabeled by this fraudulent VAM/SLO/SGO system.
Sheri Lederman’s husband is the lawyer fighting the case. You would think that our union leaders would have filed the class action lawsuit instead of relying on the efforts of these two individuals.
Bottom line is that any lawsuit has to PROVE that HARM was CAUSED by the VAM score or SLO score. Not so easy to do. Try to remember that justice is very different from the law.
The courts have to find that they are seriously flawed.
There’s wide latitude for stupid methods.
Still waiting for Lederman case.
(Thanks so much auto-type!)
Why are economists running public school policy? For God’s sake, they can’t even make accurate models for the economy let alone rank a whole profession.
Our political leaders are absolutely in love with these people. It’s as if you say “Harvard economist” and they all swoon.
Chiara, because we are a society in love with money.
Chiara
This very deep and slippery hole was dug by the USDOE and Arne Duncan, circa 2012.
Under NCLB, all Title 1 schools were held accountable through AYP.
It was school evaluation system every bit is contorted and fraudulent as VAM and SLOs/SGOs. Force many, many schools to walk on eggshells, push test-prep and AIS, and jump through a ridiculous assortment of hoops. Not to mention the stigma attached to being rated a SINI school.
The federal requirement under NCLB for 100% proficiency in math and ELA had a deadline of 2014. Of course virtually no school in the country could comply, and they were all about to be subjected to the punishments for failing to meet AYP. Enter Arne Duncan and the NCLB waiver plan (and RTTT). It was an offer that states/school districts could not refuse (read: institutional extortion).
It included five requirements:
1) Adopt Common Core standards
2) Implement annual Common Core testing (grades 3 to 8)
3) Establish a system of mining student test data
4) Lift charter caps
5) Evaluate teachers using test scores.
Number 5 was the deepest and most treacherous hole they dug.
It was a blatant effort to force “fidelity to the Common Core”.
However, the devil was the details.
About 70% of school teachers did not teach math and ELA in grades 3 to 8. Many teachers taught physical skills (art, music, shop, phys-ed). Not to mention, exactly how could student test scores translate into a number that represented teacher “efficiency”. An idea so absurd that there was nothing in the annals of education history to fall back on. So, the USDOE turned to the economists and the their voodoo formulas to solve the problem. It’s not the case of wrong tool for the right job. There is no proper toll, and the job is wrong.
If I may adjust your first though Jonathon:
“SINCE VAM and SGP are FATALLY flawed. . . “
“You would think that our union leaders would have filed the class action lawsuit instead of relying on the efforts of these two individuals”
You’re really on a roll with the humour Rager!
Chiara – I found myself nodding in recognition at this explanation of the phenomenon you mention:
“In Frank’s view, liberal policy wonks are part of the problem, members of a well-educated elite that massages its own technocratic vanities while utterly missing the big question of the day. To Frank, that question hasn’t changed much over the last few centuries. ‘It is the eternal conflict of management and labor, owner and worker, rich and poor — only with one side pinned to the ground and the other leisurely pounding away at its adversary’s face,’ he writes. Today, polite circles tend to describe this as the issue of ‘inequality.’ Frank prefers an older formulation. ‘The 19th century understood it better: They called it ‘the social question,’ he writes, defined as ‘nothing less than the whole vast mystery of how we are going to live together…
Echoing the historian Lily Geismer, Frank argues that the Democratic Party — once ‘the Party of the People’ — now caters to the interests of a ‘professional-managerial class’ consisting of lawyers, doctors, professors, scientists, programmers, even investment bankers. These affluent city dwellers and suburbanites believe firmly in meritocracy and individual opportunity, but shun the kind of social policies that once gave a real leg up to the working class. In the book, Frank points to the Democrats’ neglect of organized labor and support for Nafta as examples of this sensibility, in which ‘you get what you deserve, and what you deserve is defined by how you did in school.’ ”
Why didn’t Brian use his name all among? What’s with the moniker?
One more bloviating buffoon who never spent a day in the classroom.
His degree of spin beats antimatter.
I thought he was a person named “Virginia” 🙂
This is a great piece on how DC (and Loudon VA) is absolutely booming as a result of lobbying and contracting:
http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/how-wartime-washington-lives-in-luxury/
They really are out of touch. They may as well live in a different country.
Cha-ching. Everybody’s making money. 8 billion on campaigns alone.
His name?
You mean ECONOMAD?
Linda: have a heart.
You just went and associated bloviating buffoons with VirginiaSGP aka Brian Davison.
There was no need to do that. The typical bloviating buffoon will get her/his comeuppance in due course, but this sort of wild and reckless charge adds insult to the injury such folks already suffer on account of their patently self-wounding foolishness.
VirginiaSGP is in a class all by himself. After all, consider the quality of his “thinking” that he can worship at the feet of Michelle Rhee when he (quite literally) eviscerated her one and only claim to divine education fame that she had taken “her” (forget that pesky co-teacher!) students from the 13th to the 90th percentile. This from the Mean Queen of Hard Data that could only come up with a vague memory of being told same by her principal at the time, never ever verified by said principal or co-workers or backed up by the data files of her worksite.
Just sayin’…
😎
Virginia Ham
Yosemite Sam
Fodder of SomeDAM
Son of SGP
Brian’s a lot like Ahab – obsessed. The relentless search for that one Bad Teacher.
“I know she’s out there, because I got a glimpse of here back in elementary school.”
“And I’ll stop her if it’s the death of me.”
Moby Dick was based on an actual event: the ramming and sinking of the whaling ship Essex by a large sperm whale.
the captain and a few others ended up sailing over a thousand miles over open ocean in small boats and resorting to cannibalism to survive.
The captain eventually went insane from the experience and resorted to squirreling away food in the attic of his house.
I suppose one could view that as a little like squirreling away SGP scores on one’s facebook page.
Wait wait wait. This guy spent $35,000 to put some teachers’ names on his Facebook page? Not on a major news site, not on a celebrity’s page, but on the Facebook page of some guy named Brian Davison?! Some nobody spent hours and days and money to put the worthless scores on his obscure page, out in the middle of nowhere in cyberspace?!? I’m sure his readers, both of them (his mother and that guy with the sticky handshake he met outside the convenience store) will appreciate his efforts! Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!!!
If only we made a bigger deal out of posting the “ratings” of politicians that create affluent polarized schools to the detriment of other public schools. Now THAT might actually help to change the inequality among good and poor performing schools. It makes things so easy for politicians to point to the teachers as the problem for…kids that are too hungry to think straight, kids that are behaving badly from issues at home, kids that see their deconstructed community and the lack of hope for doing any better than their parents in the future, kids that were never psychologically evaluated or treated due to denial of family members or lack of money, kids that hear on the media how pointless politicians seem to be since nothing in their community changes…ever.
I’m just saying, maybe we need to put different public servants on the hot seat if their goal is to ultimately improve education for all kids. Instead they create a pointless witch hunt to give the false impression that if we just place teachers from affluent schools into economically and culturally diverse schools, it will fix all the other problems listed above.
Seem a bit fishy to you? I’m gonna go ahead and thank corporate america for making it seem like public school teachers are why kids aren’t progressing in life. After all, having charter schools will fix all those problems listed above too right? Nope,but hey…at least they will make a profit and control what’s being taught. 1 point corporations and the politicians that support them…the rest of society 0 points. Game over.
It doesn’t have to be this way. Make your ELECTED officials accountable for their actions. Write letters, call, vote…after all, even if you don’t have kids of your own…this is the generation that will be taking care of you and your family when you need it most. Don’t roll over and think this doesn’t matter…it does!
“1 point corporations and the politicians that support them…the rest of society 0 points. Game over.”
Speaking of a 1 to nil score and Game Over:
(sorry couldn’t resist posting this again)
Thanks for the clip! I had totally forgotten about it.
Wouldn’t it be interesting to have a new clip just like this but with corporations, politicians, teachers, parents, students (a fake game can have multiple teams right ;)…
…and the corporations are throwing their money at the politicians…wait!…here comes Ms. Smith from room 209 to attempt a block…she gets an assist from joey’s mom!…ok that delayed things, but look…now double the money is being thrown…they can’t block it all!…oh and the students are on the sidelines waiting to see their fate…
something like that 🙂
Here’s the viewpoint of one frustrated letter-writing NJ voter: my senators. Cory Booker, even tho I sat out the special election in protest much to the consternation of friends pointing out his rival was a tea-partier. And Bob Menendez, who heartily supports my viewpoints awaits appeals court decision on activity sanctioned by Cit United & practiced by all incl Hillary Clinton. And my congressman Leonard Lance who charmingly disagrees w/ my every email & pretends to be a mainstreamer but votes w/TP, is a local institution who will be in office forever.
Rest assured, far greater will be the backlash against this sort of stupidity.
It gives me great satisfaction knowing that the academic achievement of Brian’s children reflect on him. That’s poetic justice!
While I obviously cannot psychoanalyze Brian, I recognizer a lot of a STEM ego in Brian’s diatribes. As a recovering STEM- a-phile, I recognize the inability to recognize that not everything that matters can be numerically measured.
Dealing with humans rather than machines, or in my case, neutrons, is very different and more complicated. Neutrons follow the laws of quantum physics. Neutrons make no decisions. They are consistent. Humans follow no laws of the physical world. Humans make decisions every moment of every day and those decisions are based on a myriad of factors that are not limited to whether they have eaten that day or gotten enough sleep. None of those factors can be measured and put into a VAM or SGP model.
Coupled with the STEM ego is a denigration and misunderstanding of social science research. I have done both types of research. STEM research is cleaner. It is elegant and mathematically beautiful. This is the Gates MET study that Brian consistently quotes. Social science research is messy and depends highly on the assumptions made and the model used because all of these focus on a different aspect of humanity. It cannot be anything else and be of any use to educators. But it looks less “rigorous” than STEM research. But those of us in the field know the rigor.
Thank you, Alice.
Many people (even those with STEM degrees) make the mistake of assuming that having a STEM degree makes one a ‘scientist’.
Far from it.
First, only the S stands for science and even things like “computer science” are not really science in most cases but engineering (an exception is the computer materials scientist, who is actually doing experiments on semiconductors and other materials related to computers.)
Second, in order to be a scientist, one has to behave like one.
One of the things that sets real scientists apart form others is that the scientist is honest (with him/her-self and with others) about the uncertainty attached to his/her claims.
A scientist always takes this uncertainty into account and does not make unsupportable claims when this uncertainty (noise) is large relative to the “signal.”
And a scientist never (ever) tries to downplay or even hide the uncertainty through averaging and other statistical tricks.
The Gates MET study results were put together by people who are most certainly not scientists.
Thank you Alice and someDAMpoet for reminding us what science is (and is not). I worked in an engrg co for yrs & find that folks practicing applied mechanics etc do not & cannot approach human endeavors in a rigid ideological manner. Theories must be adapted to the everchanging environment & the humans who will use the structures. I think STEM is misinterpreted and mis-sold by programmers and eco-stisticians whose pseudo-sciences allow them to imagine that the world is as logical as their algorithms.
From Brian’s Facebook page:
“I just sent this letter to The Official Loudoun County Public Schools board members along with other LCPS officials involved in banning me from my children’s school – Seldens Landing Elementary School. I would strongly advise LCSB members to seek outside advice as multiple cases (including in the 4th circuit covering Virginia) have awarded $100k’s to citizens who either had 1st Amendment rights infringed or were the target of retaliation by school boards. There can be no doubt that LCSB members and officials (including Stephens, Patterson and Williams) were advised of the legal precedents and undeniable laws prohibiting retaliation for critical speech and restrictions on fundamental rights.”
“Doesn’t play well with others” comes to mind. How obnoxious and arrogant and obsessed does one have to be to get barred from their child’s school? What does his child think of what his father is doing? How is this adversely affecting his child?
Anti-social personality disorder?
I knew he would be looking for the “next fight”
He’s just a naturally confrontational a-hole.
Yes, the saddest aspect of this man’s “advocacy” is the fact that the children most hurt by it will be his own.
The school may have felt threatened or his behavior was concerning. I’m not sure how a parent is banned from an elementary school, but the safety of the students must come before any “free speech” claims. Let’s hope the courts throw this one out – way out. I get an uneasy feeling.
I taught for 42 years. During that time I was aware of only one parent who was banned from the school. That parent was a threat to teachers and students.
On a personal and admittedly anecdotal note, it has been my experience that the teachers who get the really high Regents score results are often not the most competent or ethical teachers, to put it mildly. They often are teachers who coerce, bribe, “hold feet to fire”, threaten, test inappropriately, lie, etc. Sometimes you can even see a ghostly wisp about them in the vague form of Eva Moskowitz trying to give them a hug, or a pat, or shaking a finger as if to say, ‘You missed a ploy!’
Most of the Regents teachers I know run year long test-prep sessions. AP teachers too. Regents tests are way too predictable and way too easy to game. And yes the pressures to produce high scores from administrators and parents don’t help teachers move beyond the confines of “the test”. If its not tested, its not taught is the mantra of every Regents and AP teacher I have ever met. The most test obsessed of the lot push the envelope beyond its limits.
Hasty generalization with a dash of ad hominem.
The few I knew who were really gung-ho actually bucked the local system a bit to do their thing. They weren’t pressed by their admin. It was about status and ratings.
*What Laura Bowman said.
Chins up, Fellow Teachers: Haters gonna hate. We didn’t get in this for the money or prestige; we get to sleep well at night knowing we made a difference in a child’s life.
I’m grateful for this blog and the supportive network being built for teachers in the trenches. We need it more than ever.
Dianne, you might do your readers a service and just delete the entire post b/c a) we know and b) its giving “VIRGINIA” longer than 15 minutes of sickening fame. On its FB page, it is telling stories about you. It has so much envy that you are loved and revered, and it is looked on with disgust and distain.
Donna,
Pride goeth before a fall.
I seldom delete posts.
I won’t now.
Understandable Dianne. You have integrity.
Diane….sorry… the 2nd n was a typo; I type too fast for my own good.
This Brian guy seems kind of crazy and weird–a useful fool who doesn’t realized he’s being used when he is goaded on and cheered.
Banned from his own child’s school?
Instead of seeing that for the giant red flag that it is, he probably considers it a badge of honor.
What kind of person wants to publicly shame individual teachers? Shouldn’t he be shaming the principals who are failing to fire these terrible, horrible teachers? Shouldn’t he be shaming the superintendents who fail to fire the principals who fail to fire the teachers?
Where I come from, a parent can request the APPR scores of any teacher and probably the scores of the students having that teacher (with names and genders of students redacted), but requests are made individually and a parent has to fill out a form and go through a reasonable protocol to obtain the information. Of course, a parent can request the scores of their own child and with which teacher the child earned those scores.
So far, it is very rare when parents ask for such information. They mainly care about what is going in in their child’s learning with that teacher, and that type of communication can be handled back and forth between teacher and parent. That’s normal and healthy.
It goes without saying that nothing per the First Amendment can stop a parent from sharing the information, but we do not ever post public lists of teachers with scores and rankings nor do we release such lists. It is not necessary because the right to secure information is already there and a clerical process is in place.
I could be wrong, but I believe that in NY State, a parent can research school’s report card and look up the number of teachers receiving 1s, 2s, 3s, and 4s or Hs, Es, Ds, and Is. The teachers names are redacted. The viability of a teacher’s overall composite score based on test scores is now in the thick of heated and passionate debate.
Of course, one can and should have a discussion about balancing the interests of tax payers and the privacy rights of employees, even if they are civil servants. Like everything else “American”, rights are always slanted heavily in favor of the ownership class . . . .
Robert,
Just a guess, but I’d say that there is much more going on here than simply making data available to parents.
If parents really want to know what kind of teacher their child has, all they need to do is spend a few hours volunteering in their child’s classroom.
This is not any great secret. Any fool knows this.
Well, most fools anyway.
Poet,
I think the best and most productive information is one that is derived from forging bonds between teacher and parent. I agree!
In addition, it could be the case that in NY State, parents can only research the ranking of the teacher their child has or had for instruction.
We teachers seem to have a high degree of confidence that it is wrong to “measure” teachers, and then make those ratings and ratings public.
I hope our next consensus will be that neither should STUDENTS be quantified — and then, their ranks and ratings released publicly.
You may agree, thinking I’m talking about test scores. But I’m also talking about grades.
meant to say “ratings and rankings”
That model would eventually appeal to the ownership class to see who is more and less qualified to enter the “production” force.
Still ALL data on students and teachers is valuable in my mind, but HOW it gets used and it purposes are being abused . . . for the last 20 years, and it’s accelerated in the last 10. We have to continue to push back against the wrongful use of data.
Ed D
NO standardized testing K to 8.
Report Cards:
NO number grades K to 8. NO letter grades K to 3
Comments only K to 3
Letter grades only 4 to 8
Robert, I agree there are better and worse ways to use data. I go full skeptic anytime we claim to be “measuring” teaching, learning, intelligence, character — whether it is in absolute terms, or a measurement of change. Why do these things have to be “measured” rather than “described?” Measurement serves the meritocracy. Description serves teachers and students.
RageAgainst, that would be a step in the right direction, but here’s my vision:
No letter grades ever.
No number grades ever.
Considering their ill effects never cease (educators must review a section of educational psychology which could effectively be titled “grades destroy”) and educational philosophy (“grades control”). Nor can they (or do they) ever tell the truth about a student, or the contents of their course, or the quality of their institution, or the makeup of the discipline being studied. No matter how we spin it, grades are subjective ratings that dangerously masquerade as objectivity, and will always pull us toward a hierarchical model.
It is difficult to use things “for good” when the very purpose of that thing is not good.
Ed Detective,
Showing pure motives and using them to mask a bad one is nothing new in this reform movement. Many have jumped on the “civil rights” bandwagon to justify charter schools and vouchers, all in the name of equity, but those jumping on are the same ones who greatly cause, grow, and perpetuate poverty . . . .
It’s like the doctor who administers a really bad drug to hundreds of patients because he claims it will help them . . . . . All the while when he owns major stock in the company producing that drug and has been wined and dined by the company to push the drug in his practice . . . .
“Why do these things have to be “measured” rather than “described?””
This question makes no sense, since those things you mention cannot be measured. The question makes as much sense as asking
“What was team Gryffindor’s score on yesterday’s Quidditch game?”
It just appears, we are asking about some event in real life, but that’s just an illusion.
When I read stuff like “last year’s star teacher VGSP scored very low on this years’ teacher effectiveness competition, and so she lost her title” I feel like I am at Star Trek convention, where grown men and women discuss nonexistent events.
Those things may not be measurable, but that doesn’t stop people from measuring them… 😉 Not that the measurements are meaningful in reality. You can measure a spoon with a fork, which is a tad more sane than measuring students with “points.”
It is reassuring that “flawed and unreliable measures of a teacher’s effectiveness” will be published in the newspaper. I guess two wrongs make a right. We will all sleep better tonight, and democracy is saved to fight another day.
What will Brian do if other states follow the courts in New Mexico and put a halt to VAM and SGP use in teacher evaluation? Think he’ll demand a refund when he has nothing to publish? Maybe he will just go away.
It’s not an “if.” Utah just passed a law banning test score use in teachers’ evaluations.
This from an article in the Washington Post:
Virginia pushed into debate of teacher privacy vs. transparency for parents
By Emma Brown and Moriah Balingit March 16, 2015
https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/parent-suing-state-officials-to-make-teacher-evaluation-data-public/2015/03/15/9b441a58-c98f-11e4-b2a1-bed1aaea2816_story.html
“Davison has used the data to argue that the high test scores in Loudoun, one of the most affluent counties in the United States, might be more reflective of student wealth than of good teachers.
“We have great SOL scores,” Davison said, referring to Virginia’s standardized tests, known as Standards of Learning exams. “But are teachers teaching that, or do we just have a lot of smart kids and rich kids who are going to score well?”
It would seem that the relationship between family and community wealth and student achievement has been mentioned more than a few times in this blog, but it is his question that puzzles me as the article notes that:
“And unlike value-added models used by other states, Virginia’s model does not attempt to control for the effects of poverty or other demographic characteristics. Critics of the growth percentiles say that disadvantages teachers who work with the neediest children.”
how would releasing the SOL scores differentiate the teacher’s impact on student performance from that of family and community affluence?
More from that article:
Despite pledging to use student growth percentiles in their application for a waiver from No Child Left Behind, state education officials now say that the approach is problematic and have moved to scrap it.
Growth percentiles cannot accurately measure growth among the highest- and lowest-performing children, officials say, and they warn that in some cases student scores might be erroneously assigned to teachers who never actually taught them. In addition, they rely on consecutive years of test data that might not be widely available in schools serving transient populations.
SGP’s were NOT intended to be used for evaluating individual teachers
Using them (or posting them on one’s website with the idea that parents will use them ) for that reason is either woefully ignorant (at best) or just plain dishonest.
Thanks for the informative link. Being a cynic, I might be inclined to think Davison to a disgruntled parent seeking evidence to discredit one of his children’s teachers or worse, a reason to have that teacher terminated. Or he could just be a gadfly.
My reading of Virginia/Davison is that he has gotten so hooked on eliminating the bad teachers — which do exist — that he has zealously adopted the methods he truly believes will tell us which ones are good, bad, and in-between. His sense of “fairness” may initially have driven this effort, but his ambition has eclipsed the effort for fairness, corrupting it in the process.
His effort has become self-defeating, since his initial drive for “justice” and “educational quality” is actually bringing injustice and educational stupidity.
I may be wrong about VirginiaSGP/Brian Davison, but I’m pretty good at putting together the puzzle pieces. I have not dismissed the possibility that he is simply paid to do what he does. In that case, he would be a very good faker.
What a travesty! Hopefully there will be an appeal. Thankfully, this is not a measure used in VA or Loudoun County to evaluate teachers. So publicizing this information will not result in any punitive measures….just part of Mr.Davison’s ongoing sad entertainment. And with ESSA becoming the new law, teachers will hopefully hear less and less about evaluations being linked to test scores in general.
Leah, thanks for pointing out that ESSA no longer requires VAM or SGP, so schools, districts, and states should no longer collect it.
A few years ago, a friend of mine received a devastating medical diagnosis. He traveled to a premier medical treatment. They sent him home w/o treatment. His local doctor explained, the medical facility and the doctors’ decision, was based on ratings. My friend’s high risk case had a greater chance of adversely affecting the published numbers.
It would be karma, if VirginiaSGP or, his family, experienced similar unintended consequences.
Linda: you have pointed out a devastating, and in some cases potentially fatal, flaw of the sorts of ratings systems loved by rheephormers.
When pressed to meet ManagementByTheNumbers, individuals and organizations will try very hard to measure up.
Even when it eviscerates their core mission.
Thank you for your comment.
😎
I think Brian Davison ought to donate his ill gotten windfall to NPEAction. He posted here often enough that he owes at least that much.
Beardsley is so right!!!!…”teacher performance cannot be quantified or measured based on student tests; the scores are affected by many factors outside the teachers’ control…”
The variables are countless. Besides standardized tests being invalid, unsatisfactory results of a test could be due to fear. If a student is unduly fearful of taking a test, the results are invalid.
There are valid assessments of students’ progress; standardized test is not one of them. Plus, no two students are alike; they learn at different rates and ways as well have different backgrounds/experiences to draw upon. CC expects all children to fall into one mold totally failing to recognize Gardener’s findings of Multiple Intelligences.
Then there is the personality aspect. If the person who sets up the rosters doesn’t like a specific teacher, that person can stack the classes.
What do judges and parents know about what makes a good teacher? There has to be more qualities than just being friendly, caring, and enthusiastic. A good teacher uses an in directive approach to teaching-contrary to the teaching style CC forces on the teachers. A good teacher needs to know the cognitive level of her students which is acquired via various assessments – not from standardized tests nor is dictated by the designated grade level.
How cruel to unjustly punish a teacher! In every institutions there are people who do not belong but there a proper channels to dismiss a person – not the lynching method.
On the plus side, he might be so busy with his project that he stops following everyone around on various blogging platforms and boasting about how much more he knows than anyone else.
VSGP claims, Diane blocks him here.
Shame on VSGP. He knows he was never blocked. He is “moderated,” which means I review his comments before posting them. He is moderated because he was flooding the blog with 5-10 or more comments daily. I limited him to 4 daily. I deleted comments where he attacks me.
Thus he’d score high on the craziness test if craziness was measurable.
Don’t know about “Diane’s block” but he sure doesn’t have “writer’s block.”
Reading VSGP’s facebook, there’s no doubt, she went crazy. Isn’t she teaching in some kind of military school?
So if she posts teachers’ ranking and then the ranking gets invalidated, will she gets sued for publishing invalid data? Or she is protected somehow?
Mate,
VSGP is a man, not a woman. He served in the Navy on a submarine. He has an engineering background and believes in measurement and quantification.