Mercedes Schneider discusses a study that was reported in Education Week. The study concluded that teachers from alternative certification programs such as Teach for America get students to produce test scores there are “marginally” better than traditionally trained teachers.
Mercedes thought this was a dumb study, although she didn’t use that word. Producing higher scores, even “marginally” higher scores is not a good measure of teaching. Getting higher scores from students is not, she writes, the same as proving a high-quality, well-rounded education.
“The fact that the JCFS meta-analysis finds that teachers trained via alt cert programs have students with slightly higher test scores than those trained in traditional teacher prep programs does not surprise me.
“What does surprise me is that the JCFS researchers not only fail to question the validity of measuring teacher job performance using student tests; they promote the idea as a means to gather useful data.
“It also surprises me that the JCFS researchers do not question the degree to which student test scores represent authentic learning. They do comment on “student achievement in the U.S.” as “still below average, in comparison to the rest of the world,” but they do not carry that thought further and question how it is that the US continues to be a major world power despite those “still below average” international test scores….
“There is a reason that no national testing company would dare include with its student achievement tests a statement supporting the usage of these tests to gauge teacher effectiveness: Measuring teachers using student tests is not a valid use of such tests, and no testing company wants to be held liable for this invalid practice.
“Certainly the pressure is on traditional teacher training programs to focus on the outcome of teachers-in-training “raising” student test scores and to use those test score outcomes as purported evidence that the teacher-in-training is “effective.” May they never reach the ultimate cheapening of pedagogy and reduce teacher education to nothing more that test-score-raising.
“Are teacher alt cert programs little more that spindly, test-score-raising drive-thrus lacking in lasting pedagogical substance? There’s an issue worthy of research investigation.
“What price will America pay for its shortsighted, shallow love of high test scores? Also worthy of investigation– more so than that of the ever-increasing test score.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
It seems to me that, taken to its logical conclusion, the goal here is to have every teacher get every student to get a perfect score on some test or every test they ever take. If the teacher is able to do this, s/he will be rated “effective” regardless of the plethora of differences, inadequacies, unfairness, etc. inherent in the whole process. it’s another way that we are bombarded with the idea that we must strive to achieve a perfection which, of course, doesn’t exist. I think we can all agree that it is impossible for any teacher and student to attain this goal. So, in that case, we should probably end this whole issue because it’s founded on an illogical and impossible idea. 🙂
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I UN-THANK the DEMS and the GOP.
Both parties ‘ganged up” against public education and for what? $$$$$ and perks.
https://www.alternet.org/money-talked-leaks-show-input-wealthy-privatizers-clinton-education-policy
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I UNTHANK the voters who should have known it was better to give Hillary Clinton a chance than Donald Trump. I UNTHANK anyone who could read this alternet article as anything but what the privatizers were DEMANDING of Hillary Clinton in 2014 without mentioning that she didn’t actually embrace any of it.
If we want to WIN, we must not accept the propaganda that articles like this say which would lead me to believe that Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren are secretly conspiring to destroy public education because their DFER staff members keep making them say harmful things about how great the “good public charters are” and then shutting up so that they don’t actually have to support the NAACP’s moratorium on ALL charters. If I were to believe the propaganda in this article, I’d be on Diane Ravitch posting non-stop about how corrupt Bernie and Liz are. I won’t do it. The right wing wants gullible Dems to repeat their talking points, but I won’t.
I won’t smear Hillary and I won’t smear Bernie and Liz the way this article does. Just because Bernie and Liz have supported this vioew of charters that this article says, does not mean we shoujldn’t still support them and keep pressure on them to resist their DFER friends.
Just like Hillary resisted them a year after this so-called 2014 memo by speaking directly to a DFER Dem and publicly explaining why Dems needed to support PUBLIC education. I am sure that eventually Liz and Bernie will have the same view.
So I refuse to accept the propaganda in this article trying to smear 3 good politicians – Hillary, Bernie, and Liz — because they are too pro-charter. I will give them all a chance. And I hope no gullible voters would vote against any of them if they were running against a right wing Republican.
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If I may riff off of your comments…
As is evident from the experience of the last few decades, the moment when “every student” in a public school gets “a perfect score on some test or every test they ever take” will never arrive. If public schools could somehow appear to be reaching that impossible standard then rheephormistas would [as they have done in the past] declare the standardized tests too easy and demand tougher ones. Their stance serves ends that are political, financial and ego-driven; education is a secondary and unimportant consideration. How do we know this? Because as is common knowledge in the testing industry—and such info is routinely passed along to the buyers of their eduproducts—pass/fail rates [with a margin of error] for said tests are known long before they are given to real students in real classrooms. [Read Daniel Koretz’s last two books.]
Hence, customer-driven failure is built in to the numbers & stats. The latest installment of the cartoon strip DILBERT makes this point about rigging results very well. Dilbert was asked by his boss to do a financial analysis. Dilbert was very reluctant to do so because he wasn’t qualified to do something of that nature. The pointy-haired boss [as he is called in the strip] insisted and got his way. Three panels. First, the pointy-haired boss says to Dilbert: “I can’t give you a raise because your financial forecasts were all wrong.” Second, Dilbert replies: “Financial forecasts are always wrong. You told me to make one anyway.” Third, the pointy-haired boss does a little victory dance proclaiming: “In other words, I nailed it and you failed it.” Last word in the third is by Dilbert: “Catchy.”
The bottom line: the use and misuse and abuse of standardized testing by the enablers and enforcers and beneficiaries of corporate education reform is no accident— it is deliberate and their default mode.
Thank you for your comments.
😎
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And, TA, even if every student did get the perfect score, so what? What do the tests actually measure, and can they measure what is important to either the future life of an individual or the society?
The ‘tests’ are bogus. Even my tests were bogus, however I was force to give a ‘grade’ depending from tests.
My response was to develop three different physics courses (one for future engineers and physics majors, one ‘rather traditional’ high school stuff that was algebra based and thin but extensive, and one for ‘English and Art majors’, that focused upon scientific concepts rather than mathematical equation.
The latter of these three became so popular as to force me into teaching only Physics in my small school (roughly 400 in high school). Physics was an ‘elective’, and we had only a three year science requirement, so it could have been avoided entirely with ease. And yet, given the range of course offerings, virtually every student passed through my classroom.
But, here’s the amazing thing.. Many, many of my students in the ‘conceptual’ (almost zero math) classes demonstrated the iconoclastic thinking that is found in the most venerated of scientists. Standardized testing would have given these kids an ‘F’, but some of them were brilliant.
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Wow! John, were you teaching at some amazing high school? Being ableto teach three different approaches to a subject and to have time to Taylor a course to three types of student who,had to be placed correctly in your classes? This seems like utopia.
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I had an excellent education in California in the 50’s and 60’s. I became an RN in 1970 but returned to college to major in secondary math education. Today I am a substitute teacher and tutor. What I have witnessed, without exception, is that students who hate math (from elementary to high school) have never mastered their math facts (4×8=? 5+7=?). Those were mastered by 4th grade, back in the days….
With the stupid ‘no child left behind’, education has been dumbed down furthered, students are ‘taught’ to the test. Critical thinking is not fostered. Maybe it’s different in expensive private schools, I don’t know. What I do know, is that, by in large, our population is not well educated, nor informed enough to be really responsible citizens. Ever since GW said “go shopping” we have gone downhill.
And test scores will change nothing.
When I went back to college in the 80’s for math, I had to take a standardized test for ‘placement’ purposes (do I need remediation in any areas?). When test results came in I had to see advisor/counselor and he commented that he had never seen such high scores. I replied, “That’s really a shame, they had questions like “He (don’t/doesn’t) ride a bike. Choose the right verb.”. This is the absolute truth. And it hasn’t gotten better.
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Chris Hedges former NYTimes reporter and Pulitzer Prize winner has stated that he will tell the principal of his child’s school that he will opt out his child from all standardized tests. He furthermore stated that he will organize parents to do the same.
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I wonder if the study took into account that so many TFA interns are in charters, and therefore teach student populations that are not representative of public education. Charters weed out students unlikely to produce high scores. Not a fair comparison! I’d be willing to bet that if alternatively certified teachers were compared to truly certified teachers ONLY in truly public schools, the alt-teachers would produce significantly lower scores. (Of course, all of this “study” and hypothesis is reliant on the false premise that teacher quality can be measured by student scores on standardized tests. False, false, false.)
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It would seem to me that this article is based on a rather insufficient number of studies. When I took basic stat class years ago, I recall a rule of thumb about how many repititions of a statistical sampling were necessary in order to produce reliability. That being some thirty three years ago, I would certainly not weigh in as an authority. But my memory suggests that the rule of thumb was 36 repititions. The sampling was in reference to scientific experiments on things like industrial objects and chemicals having measurable characteristics or properties.
Educational research, it would seem to me, is a bit short of this rule. I recall thinking at the time that testing students was like an experiment. You were trying to see if a student knew something. Before it could be legitimate, you should then have to ask the student to produce the same idea in exactly the same way multiple times. My conclusion, all this before I actually began a regular teaching position in a high school math class, was that we could never really do this due to time constraints.
In my mind, in order to be legitimate, a testing program would have to first identify precisely what it meant in student behavior to know that Andrew Jackson opposed Nicholas Biddle in the Bank of the United States issue during his presidency. Having identified precisely what this meant, a teacher would have obliged to ask the student the same question multiple times to see if that idea was possessed of the student. I came to the conclusion that testing as I was experiencing it in college, and testing as I anticipated administration of it in my career as a teacher was suspect at best. Andrew Jackson and the BUS cannot possibly consume more than a few minutes of a survey class in American History, or you will never get to the rest of the story.
Of course, when I began to actually teach, I figured out quickly that grades grew up as a tradition to track a whole list of behaviors, not just narrowly focused parts of the student behavior relative to a small part of the puzzle. In math, for example, even the simplest of concepts like basic percents requires layers of understanding pulling together ratios with logic and adding a good dose of being able to read or listen. It became quickly the focus of my grading to factor in ways to reward responsible behavior, my perceived observations about how close the student was to understanding, and character that presaged the social and intellectual development of a growing individual.
All of which returns us to the study mentioned above. The issue of whether a student knows simple stuff is hard enough for the teacher who sees the students every day. Deciding whether some technique is effective seems way harder to verify. 12 studies is certainly insufficient. Even 12,000 studies would be questionable in light of some of the issues facing “measurement” of learning. As many here have pointed out, you cannot really collect data with test scores. But even as a college kid, I was aware that testing was suspect. If it is obvious to a kid, why are so many smart adults going down this primrose path. We all know. $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$
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Reblogged this on David R. Taylor-Thoughts on Education.
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