Remember the excitement about using test scores to measure teacher effectiveness? Remember Raj Chetty, who expected to win a Nobel Prize for his research on teacher effectiveness tied to test scores? Remember the heated debate about whether a single teacher could produce huge lifetime gains in earnings? Remember when reformers confidently asserted that they knew how to identify the best and worst teachers (by the rise or fall of student scores)? Remember the starry-eyed predictions that schools would get rid of all the “bad” teachers and would soon have only “great” teachers. The architects of Obama’s Race to the Top were so impressed by these claims that they required states to change their laws to require this method of evaluating teachers. Most such laws are still in force.
A new study by the Rand Institute finds that this initiative failed. The Gates Foundation spent $575 million to implement this policy and it produced nothing, other than to discourage teachers from working with the neediest students.
Matt Barnum of Chalkbeat reports:
“Barack Obama’s 2012 State of the Union address reflected the heady moment in education. “We know a good teacher can increase the lifetime income of a classroom by over $250,000,” he said. “A great teacher can offer an escape from poverty to the child who dreams beyond his circumstance.”
“Bad teachers were the problem; good teachers were the solution. It was a simplified binary, but the idea and the research it drew on had spurred policy changes across the country, including a spate of laws establishing new evaluation systems designed to reward top teachers and help weed out low performers.
“Behind that effort was the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which backed research and advocacy that ultimately shaped these changes.
“It also funded the efforts themselves, specifically in several large school districts and charter networks open to changing how teachers were hired, trained, evaluated, and paid. Now, new research commissioned by the Gates Foundation finds scant evidence that those changes accomplished what they were meant to: improve teacher quality or boost student learning.
“The 500-plus page report by the Rand Corporation, released Thursday, details the political and technical challenges of putting complex new systems in place and the steep cost — $575 million — of doing so.
“The post-mortem will likely serve as validation to the foundation’s critics, who have long complained about Gates’ heavy influence on education policy and what they call its top-down approach.
“The report also comes as the foundation has shifted its priorities away from teacher evaluation and toward other issues, including improving curriculum.“
In 2012,Melinda Gates claimed on the PBS Newshour that the Gates Foundation already had the knowledge to assure that there was an effective teacher in every classroom. She believed it. It wasn’t true.
Does the Gates Foundation ever learn or does it just break dishes and move on?
Diane Ravitch's blog 
It may break dishes, but it NEVER moves on.
The economic reasoning in the original Gates-funded Measures of Effective Teachers study was deeply flawed. There is no reason to believe that the Gates Foundation will learn anything from new ventures into education. The Foundation seems to be incapable of understanding that public education is an essential political, social, and cultural activity. It should not be treated as a hothouse for experimentation and playground for billionaire investors and the economists whom they regard as if experts in education.
How I wish it were possible to call for a moratorium on billionaires reinventing American education! Gates, Zuckerberg, Powell-Jobs, DeVos, Bloomnerg……
Yes! Let the experts make important decisions about education— the educators. Real ones.
Truest and most dangerous statement: “There is no reason to believe that the Gates Foundation will learn anything from new ventures into education.” So rich, so hands-off, so endlessly able to simply ‘move on.’
“A great teacher can offer an escape from poverty to the child who dreams beyond his circumstance.”
First of all, Gates assertion is based on a false assumption. Teachers’ efforts will contribute to students outcomes, but not to the extent Gates claims. When VAM was challenged, the analysis revealed that a teacher’s “value add” is somewhere between !% and 14%, not the main determinant as Gates claimed. Gates is also only looking at test scores in reading and math, and a teacher’s impact is so much more than a test score. More testing does not improve instruction. In fact, high stakes testing interferes with the delivery of quality instruction as it tends to narrow the curriculum.
Gates involvement is education has been based on his erroneous, narrow interpretation of what is important. Gates wasted his money on testing, but he would have had more impact if he had spent money to reduce class size or supports for community based services. Also, public schools would be in better shape if billionaires like Gates didn’t try to privatize a public institution, and if companies like Microsoft paid its fair share of taxes instead of hiding profits overseas. That would be a great value add!
This. Retired early due to this:
…other than to discourage teachers from working with the neediest students.
Lots of people have been victims in the education wars that Gates and other billionaires helped launch. I am sorry it impacted your career plans.
Thank you. It sure did. Broke my heart as well. BROKE it. 60-80 hour weeks for years and years trying to do the best teaching possible.
behind the scenes the rich cannot actually let poorest kids rise; the rich must keep plenty of students in poverty if they are to have a large supply of the lowest-paid workers they need for personal/business maintenance
Alas. 😦
The claim that opens your comment is a false hope but a great way to ignore these facts.
https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2018/06/alongside-rising-top-incomes-level-living-americas-poorest-fallen.html
Posted at https://www.opednews.com/Quicklink/Rand-Study-Gates-Foundati-in-General_News-Diane-Ravitch_Evaluation_School-Reform_Sold-180622-53.html#comment704168
with this comment, which has embedded links backs to posts here.
Dr Ravich points out
“The US is the only nation requiring standardized tests yearly from grades 3-8. The consequences attached to them stigmatize students, teachers, and schools. Teachers have been fired, &schools have been closed based on these test scores despite growing evidence that ‘test-based accountability’ is ineffective.There is a lobby that love$ testing — testing corporations & the Hedge Fund managers organization (Lots of money in test$!). The other is that our policymakers are still inhaling the stale fumes of No Child Left Behind. It is hard to break away from a practice, even a bad one that has become ingrained– and making money for privateer$ who take over ‘failing schools.’ Standardized tests should not be used for high school graduation or for firing teachers or closing schools. Yet they are. Obviously, they are misused on a regular basis. So, I have a modest proposal.
Big money from the Educational Industrial Complex https://greatschoolwars.files.wordpress.com/2015/10/eic-oct_11.pdf
which loved tests. poured into the states, and to the 15,880 school systems as an ignorant public looked on and the schools ‘failed.’
One example — The North Carolina General Assembly believes that the only thing that matters in judging the quality of a school is its test scores. As teacher Justin Parmenter explains here , public schools are graded solely by their test scores. The grades accurately reflect the income level of the families enrolled. The state could save money by just checking family income instead of giving tests.
With the real voices of learning GONE, look who now writes the curricula in North Carolina: https://dianeravitch.net/2014/12/05/north-carolina-plans-to-adopt-koch-funded-social-studies-curriculum
That’s reform, folks!
Oh my goodness yes. I’m a secondary reading specialist and teacher/ title I teacher. Or rather, I was. After decades of successful teaching and great evaluations?
This:
…other than to discourage teachers from working with the neediest students.
I retired early. This. This. This. Who can afford bad evals due to “working with the neediest students. “
Reblogged this on What's Gneiss for Education and commented:
Gate’s initiative turned out as good as his Windows Me(h).
And what does it say that our philosophy of “success” measures earnings and discounts those who enter a life of service, whether it’s the relative low pay of the military, cops, firemen, teachers, community organizers or the non-salary of clergy, stay-home parents or volunteers?
These VAM “researchers” ignored the many happiness indexes used the world over and erased every factor other than earnings.
>
so very modern-day neoliberal: it’s all about the individual getting ahead, not about caring for social equity or the happiness brought through communal connections
“A great teacher can offer an escape from poverty to the child who dreams beyond his circumstance.”
This is such a cop-out. A good-faith effort to reduce poverty involves a large investment of tax money in public health, nutrition, jobs programs, and all sorts of expensive social service programs. Look at northern Europe, they have much lower poverty rates than the US, their rich pay fair taxes, and the government invests real money in people and communities.
For the billionaires who tinker with public education, one of the most appealing aspects of a fix for poverty like “great teachers” is that it is free. Fire bad teachers, hire new ones, and tell all the teachers to have high expectations for their students and foster a culture of success. Teachers don’t need training or resources or smaller class sizes, children don’t need government-sponsored healthcare, parents don’t need jobs programs or low-income housing….teachers just need a (coincidentally free) attitude adjustment.
BINGO. It’s all part of the plan to deprofessionalize teaching, profitize education and ignore the needs of those on the bottom.
We all are acquainted with people who stubbornly believe that computers always make life better for everyone, that the artificial intelligence singularity is the future of human intelligence, that big data holds unbeknownst solutions to every problem, that internet providers and developers are benevolent guardians of their users, that big tech companies don’t really use slave labor, that robots will take over — any day now, and that we will all very soon ride autonomous Teslas to our new home planet, Mars, where tech utopia will unfold. Bill Gates is one of those fools. For him to learn from his mistakes would take an admission of fundamentally flawed thinking, that his and his friends’ products cause more problems than they solve. He’s not smart enough to get to that. He prefers his fantasies to reality.
The focus is always on how much Gates spent and not on how much his hairbrained schemes have cost everyone else.
Gates was actually very shrewd in his aporoach: he paid the waiter’s tip and left the public to pick up the vast majority of the bill for the ten course dinner.
If Bill were made to pay the full cost of all his schemes, he’d surely be broke and probably in debt to the tune of tens of billions of dollars.
And Melinda would undoubtedly have divorced him since everyone knows she married him for his billions cuz why else would anyone marry him?
“Courting Bill Gates”
If Gates were made to pay
For every teacher fired
He’d have a date each day
In court he would be mired
We knew it but…wow.
FANG companies: Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix, and Google. As much as I despise Bill Gates, I think we really do not award enough vitriol to Zuckerberg-Chan, Powell-Jobs, and Hastings.
Shocking!
Tests that only counted for teachers.
Tests that only covered two subsects in six grades.
Tests that left 70% of teachers out of the loop.
Tests designed to produce super-failure rates.
Tests that Bill Gates kids never took.
One of the real tragedies of the test-threaten-punish reform has been the misdirection of money, time, energy, and ideas. What a colossal waste.
Diane, I’m sure you don’t realize that Matt Barnum: 1) was a typical TFA-to-law school cliche, 2) is a current The 74 contributor, 3) was/is a VAM advocate, 4) was a director for Educators for Excellence.
In short, he’s a reformist who has not reformed (still hasn’t retracted his stance on VAM) and who brings a very, very subtle reformist slant to his Chalkbeat pieces. Sure, you won’t detect much partisanship in his articles, but you’ll notice that he never says anything negative about charter efforts.
Color me not fooled.
I wonder how many have read ‘The Great Gatsby’ lately. I think it gives the answer.
Finding ‘the’ great American novel is a difficult call. For me, it’s a tossup between Gatsby and Moby Dick. There are, however, many not far behind.
“The Grate GatesB”
The “Gilded Age”
Was full of “Greats”
But “Gated Age”
Is full of Gates
Age of the Great Gatsby
Age of the Grate GatesB
I suppose it must be nice to have so much money that you just don’t know what to do with it. Bill Gates has spent a TON of cash poking and prying into every educational nook and cranny trying to force his view of education “reform” onto public schools. But there’s just no there there.
Gates has said that his spending on teacher evaluation “focuses on how important it is to set clear goals and measure progress in order to accomplish the foundation’s priorities.” Uh huh.
Gates has lauded “the power of measurement,” and claimed–– incorrectly –– that “schools have lacked the kinds of measurement tools that can drive meaningful change.”
Perhaps Gates has never heard of the Eight Year Study. Or the Sandia Report. The Eight Year Study made clear what “meaningful change” looks like. And the Sandia Report undermined virtually all the wildly speculative claims in A Nation at Risk about a “rising tide of mediocrity” in American public education.
Nevertheless, Gates’ foundation has not provided any “meaningful” measures. Gates says that ” a strong” teacher evaluation system would only cost about 2 percent (surely a lowball estimate) of a total compensation budget, the most significant part of any school system’s spending. In small school divisions, that easily translates into $2-3 million per year in additional costs at a time when funding is tight, and some school divisions are still not spending what they did in 2007, prior to the Great Recession.
And what does that extra cost actually bring?
Here’s the crux of Gates “strong” teacher evaluation plan, described in the MET project’s Feedback for BetterTeaching (Nine Principles for Using Measures of Effective Teaching):
“MET project teachers’ classroom observation scores were bunched at the center of the distribution, where 50 percent of the teachers scored within 0.4 points of each other (on a four-point scale) using Charlotte Danielson’s Framework for Teaching. Teachers at the 25th and 75th percentiles scored less than one-quarter point different from the average. Only 7.5 percent of teachers scored below a two, and only 4.2 percent of teachers scored above a three. This would suggest a large middle category of effectiveness with two smaller ones at each end. Rather than trying to make fine distinctions among teachers in this vast middle, efforts would be better spent working to improve their practice.” Huh?
In other words, this is much ado about not very much. Most teachers and administrators already know where the stronger and weaker links are in any school faculty. And there are plenty of ways to create a high-performing school culture without resorting to the complex and costly evaluation and “reform” plans envisioned by Bill Gates and his corporate allies.
So yeah, Gates wasted a boatload of moola.
Some years back, The Washington Post asked five DC-area school superintendents to discuss issues facing public education. One question asked how teachers should be evaluated, and what role test scores should play. No one answered it well.
Another question asked what the largest size a class can be without undermining a teacher’s effectiveness. Former DC schools chief Kaya Henderson used a Teach for America line, saying that “a great teacher can be transformational.” Gag. The former Montgomery County Md schools chief said that “A well-trained, motivated and engaged teacher is what makes the difference in instruction.” The former head of the Fairfax County schools talked about “individualization” and not having a “prescriptive formula.” but never answered the question. The former Loudoun County superintendent just recited the Loudoun class size averages, and the former head of the Alexandria, VA school system said that its class sizes are “among the lowest…anywhere.”
Then, the school “leaders” were asked about their “dream” for public schools. They said things like “more resources”, and students should be “energized and engaged” and a 12-month school year.
But, not one of the superintendents, given the opportunity, wished away high-stakes testing or corporate-style “reform.” Not one of them wished away the competitive nature of public education, with its ratings and rankings (Jay Mathews is a prime culprit, and so is the new kid on the block, Niche.). Noe wished away the emphasis on more tests, more courses, more “rigor,” more AP classes . None of them wished that journalists would report education matters (and data) fairly and accurately. Nor did any of them make a SINGLE mention about returning public schools to their core mission: citizenship education.
These are our education “leaders.” If this is the “best” we have, then Pogo was right: “We have met the enemy and he is us.”
I emailed a question to Charlotte Danielson several years ago. She replied to my question: where is the evidence that the framework has validity for teachers who work at every grade and every subject where it is known to be used for evaluations. Long runaround in her reply with candid admission there was not evidence. It wa clear that my question poked a big hole in the advertising for the framework.
Here is a link to the evidence that supposedly validates the original, 2014 Marzano teacher evaluation model. An absolutely amazing invention that can accurately quantify teacher effectiveness regardless of subject matter or grade level. So good that it can score the kindergarten art teacher and the AP physics teacher using the very same rubrics. And it does this while completely ignoring the content knowledge of the teacher being observed.
Click to access MCTeacherEval_VAM-20160328.pdf
Several years ago I applied for the ancillary position of instructional coach but did not qualify because my Marzano score was 0.8 point under the required score. That’s one precise measuring tool.
The NEW and improve TEM from the Marzano Center:
This new TEM is being touted as, “VALID, RELIABLE, and DEFENSIBLE”
Excuse me? Danielson exists? And answered you?
Where did you find her? I bet not tracing at risk youth!
Wow. Good for you.
Bill Gates’ view of traditional teacher evaluation: “Imagine running a factory where you’ve got these workers, some of them just making crap and the management is told you can only come down here once a year but you need to let us know because we might actually fool you and try to do a good job in that one brief moment.”
2 minute mark
What a dumb jerk.
Agree….Dumb Jerk!
I agree he’s a jerk but I don’t believe he is either dumb or even naiive.
I’ve watched enough videos of Gates to reach the uncomfortable conclusion that he often understands more than he is letting on and is not averse to saying things that are not true in order to sell his brand of snake oil.
Betsy pretends to be dumb.
Gates is not smart about anything but code.
Gates has correctly identified what we call the “dog and pony show” that many teachers put on for the one formal (announced) observation made each year. It is a real thing and all administrators know it when they see it but can only evaluate what they see.
Regarding that dynamic KIPP teacher he observed, he was too dumb to realize that he was getting a good old fashioned dog and pony show. Non-educators like Gates think in terms of the one TED talk he is giving or the one KIPP lesson he observed. Real teachers understand that the challenge of the profession is the GRIND. Five or six lessons per day, with maybe two or three different preps, 25+ students per class, grading the 125+ assignments, and doing this for 180 days, and often without administrative support for dealing with uncooperative or disruptive students. Its the grind, Bill.
In my own district (and state), teacher evaluation is based on multiple in class observations each year.
Not sure where Gates is getting his “once a year” claim from, but I know it is simply not true across the board as he implies.
Even if it is a “dog and pony show”, that does not mean a good administrator can not glean valuable information from it.
It’s very unlikely that a teacher who is regularly teaching inferior lessons can teach a good one on demand. It is even more unlikely that a teacher who has poor classroom management skills (students talking and not paying attention) is going to be able to magically have all students on task during the observations.
Gates is painting a cartoon picture of the evaluation process and he almost certainly knows it.
When the building principal, the superintendent, or an SED person, (or a celebrity like Gates) enter any classroom to observe and type away on a laptop, the classroom dynamic is immediately altered in ways that favor the teacher. As far as that chronically inferior or truly incompetent teacher goes, one must ask why they were 1) interviewed, 2) hired, 3) observed and given positive evaluations, and 4) granted tenure after three or even four years of being observed formally and informally and then granted tenure. If a really bad teacher still has a job, its a management issue not a teacher problem.
Most administrators are so over-whelmed that they find it easier to live with that one or two truly incompetent teachers than taking the time to properly follow the rules of due process for dismissal. Administrators also well aware of the fact that there is no secret supply of awesome teachers just looking for a job.
Multiple observations by administrators that factor into a teacher evaluation have logistical constraints. A building principal with 40 teachers and 3 or 4 observations per would have little time to do much else. Formal and informal observations often include pre and post observation conferences, the observation itself, and digital reams of redundant documentation.
And yes, there is many a burned out (formally effective) teacher that can turn it on during their “dog and pony” show. Happens all the time.
Gates is painting a cartoon picture because it is. Most veteran teachers will tell that formal evaluations have little credibility because the real evaluation occurs on a daily basis. Kids are really hard to fool.
There is a fundamental problem with extrapolating what happens in a given school, district or even state to the nation at large as Gates has done with his “once a year” observation comment.
A test score is a complex amalgam of variables. Factors that produce any individual test score include:
STUDENT intelligence, effort, attendance, attitude, and motivation.
STUDENT outside experiences, conversations, and enrichments.
STUDENT rest, preparation, and motivation specific to testing.
STUDENT frame of mind on test day.
PARENT support care, and expectations (from conception)
STANDARDS used for test development
CUURICULUM aligned with standards
PEDAGOGY used to deliver instruction
TEACHER effectiveness
TEST items
So let’s just blame the TEACHER.
And maybe Bill can explain to that teacher who wants to improve by looking at a single score exactly which of these complex variables contributed. And if that concerned teacher happens to teach art, music, phys-ed, biology, chemistry, physics, geology, history, geography, foreign language, etc. – exactly which test score are they using?
.
All of the above is reliable – in the here’s what, so what? now what? world – –
1) if YOU were in charge of Gates’ millions in contributions, what would you do with it?
OR
2) Teachers DO make the difference – and reality is not all are outstanding – so should teacher be evaluated and if yes, how?
I teach in Hillsborough County Florida and our district received one of the large Gates Grants to implement a teacher evaluation system. I remember at the beginning administrators in charge of the program were asked to explain the formula used to generate the VAM score. They said that you would need a doctorate in theoretical mathematics to understand the formula. None of our administrators that I know of had such a degree. We were being evaluated under a system that no one understood.
Fortunately I teach at a school that has students that have had early childhood education opportunity, there is family support and they have plenty to eat. My VAM scores have always been above the average.
Would I move to a high needs school under this system, NO! I teach because I want to help students but I’m also a realist and know I need to have a paying job to support my family
A doctorate in theoretical mathematics, or this:
https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=13&ved=0ahUKEwjd2tPJouzbAhVKpFkKHVzkCoAQFgiMATAM&url=http%3A%2F%2Foada.dadeschools.net%2FVAM%2520Information%2FUTDVAMPresentationFinal.pptx&usg=AOvVaw1So2tQKSwx76uoHhrBa5ML
We need to do a better job of informing the public that underfunding public schools is the issue. That their tax dollars that once funded their schools are paying for the private education of children in charters while lining the pockets of those CEO’s. The voters need to vote for candidates vested in our public education system so the state once again funds our schools instead of placing the burden on local communities.