The following post was written by Jill Barshay and reposted by Larry Cuban on his blog. It is a response to the claim by various economists that teachers don’t improve after three to five years. This claim has been used to promote Teach for America, despite their inexperience and lack of substantive teacher education. It has also been used, as the previous post about North Carolina shows, to claim that teachers should not be paid based on their experience. It’s a pernicious idea, and I thank Larry Cuban for featuring this debunking of the conventional but wrong “wisdom.”
Jill Barshay writes:
The idea that teachers stop getting better after their first few years on the job has become widely accepted by both policymakers and the public. Philanthropist and former Microsoft CEO Bill Gates popularized the notion in a 2009 TED Talk when he said “once somebody has taught for three years, their teaching quality does not change thereafter.” He argued that teacher effectiveness should be measured and good teachers rewarded.
That teachers stop improving after three years was, perhaps, an overly simplistic exaggeration but it was based on sound research at the time. In a 2004 paper, economist Jonah Rockoff, now at Columbia Business School, tracked how teachers improved over their careers and noticed that teachers were getting better at their jobs by leaps and bounds at first, as measured by their ability to raise their students’ achievement test scores. But then, their effectiveness or productivity plateaued after three to 10 years on the job. For example, student achievement in their classrooms might increase by the same 50 points every year. The annual jump in their students’ test scores didn’t grow larger. Other researchers, including Stanford University’s Eric Hanushek, found the same.
But now, a new nonprofit organization that seeks to improve teaching, the Research Partnership for Professional Learning, says the conventional wisdom that veteran teachers stop getting better is one of several myths about teaching. The organization says that several groups of researchers have since found that teachers continue to improve, albeit at a slower rate, well into their mid careers.
“It’s not true that teachers stop improving,” said John Papay, an associate professor of education and economics at Brown University. “The science has evolved.”
Papay cited his own 2015 study with Matt Kraft, along with a 2017 study of middle school teachers in North Carolina and a 2011 study of elementary and middle school teachers. These analyses all found that teachers continue to improve beyond their first five years. Papay and Kraft calculated that teachers increased student performance by about half as much between their 5th and 15th year on the job as they did during the first five years of their career. The data are unclear after year 15.
Using test scores to measure teacher quality can be controversial. Papay also looked atother measures of how well teachers teach, such as ratings of their ability to ask probing questions, generate vibrant classroom discussions and handle students’ mistakes and confusion. Again, Papay found that more seasoned teachers were continuing to improve at their profession beyond the first five years of their career. Old dogs do appear to learn new tricks.
The debate over whether teachers get better with experience has had big implications. It has prompted the public to question union pay schedules. Why pay teachers more who’ve been on the job longer if they’re no better than a third-year teacher? It has encouraged school systems to fire “bad” teachers because ineffective teachers were thought to be unlikely to improve. It has also been a way of justifying high turnover in the field. If there’s no added value to veteran teachers, why bother to hang on to them, or invest more in them? Maybe it’s okay if thousands of teachers leave the profession every year if we can replace them with loads of new ones who learn the job fast.
So, how is it that highly regarded quantitative researchers could be coming to such different conclusions when they add up the numbers?
It turns out that it’s really complicated to calculate how much teachers improve every year. It’s simple enough to look up their students’ test scores and see how much they’ve gone up. But it’s unclear how much of the test score gain we can attribute to a teacher. Imagine a teacher who had a classroom of struggling students one year followed by a classroom of high achievers the next year. The bright, motivated students might learn more no matter who their teacher was; it would be misleading to say this teacher had improved.
“The idea that teachers stop getting better after their first few years on the job has become widely accepted by both policymakers and the public.”
Is really stupid thinking. No surprise there since really stupid people elected Traitor Trump president.
I’m going to blame all those stupid people on fast food, chemical fertilizers, too much sugar consumption, watching Fox FAKE news 24/7, running around with AR-15s threatening unarmed people, et al.
Most of those you call “stupid” are university economists.
Anyone who reduces human beings to mathematically quantifiable widgets qualifies as stupid in my book. I have yet to be introduced to either a standardized teacher or student.
Economists depend on bad data to draw causal conclusions or predictions from correlations. Their theories & methods FAIL to examine “externalities”, e.g., context, environmental conditions, or systems effects. Essentially, economist’s “research” = garbage in- garbage out. I don’t know why we look to them to make policies in education or anything involving humans.
Amen, speduktr!!!
And your point . . . ?
😉
I don’t believe I started to improve as a teacher until after my third year; I don’t think I really perceived or fully understood what I needed to improve until after my fifth year in the classroom.
In general, I think the statement that teachers don’t improve after three to five years is fatuous and disingenuous. After 32 years of working with adolescents, though, what do I know?
I posted this comment on a previous article, but it also applies here–even more so, considering the absurd study about teachers not improving after 3-10 years. Do teachers, along almost any other profession, have members who improve over the years, as well as get worse or complacent over the years? Yes. Does that mean we should judge an entire profession by the worst examples of that profession? Of course not. As a recently retired HS Spanish teacher, I was continually learning, amending and tweaking my lessons & methods right up until the end of my 40 year career. There is no doubt that my years of experience made me a better teacher than I was in the early part of my career. One can say the same thing about any profession, from doctors or lawyers to carpenters or hairdressers. Why not use the same criteria for these professions–base their pay on the results or outcomes of their patients, clients, constructions or customers? Basing teacher pay on their students’ test scores may sound good on the surface, but when one factors in the reality of a student who doesn’t pay attention in class, doesn’t care about the class, doesn’t do homework, has a terrible, disruptive home life, doesn’t care about or has a bad day on the day of the high stakes test they are forced to take, among many other negative factors, it is ridiculous to hold teachers to those incredibly subjective standards. These are the problems we will always have as long as those in charge of educational policies are politicians, rather than educators.
Amen.
The PTB’s will hunt for any justification NOT to invest in education. Teachers are simply the scapegoats for the failings of late-stage capitalism and our corrupted political system.
Let’s see the same false metrics applied to doctors, lawyers, politicians, LEO’s and CEOs.
There are so many things that teachers do that cannot be reflected in test scores. Test scores are merely a simplistic easy metric for economists. The research has shown that performance on tests is linked to the family socio-economics, not teacher performance. If we believe test scores are a valid indicator of teacher performance, then all teachers in remedial education are “bad” teachers, and all teachers that work in poor school districts are unworthy teachers. We know this is nonsense. VAM or value add evaluations have been shown to be capricious and patently unfair in court decisions where it has been challenged.
Likewise, experience counts for a variety of reasons. I was far better teacher near the end of my career than at the beginning. I was far more skilled, resourceful and patient. Like others I continually tweaked practice and lessons to meet student needs. In fact, continuously learning and trying to be better were factors that made the job interesting and challenging.
When I was teaching, my mantra was “If you aren’t trying to get better, you were probably back sliding.” Some of my best innovations came in my last ten years (of a 35 year teaching career), although it is possible my students didn’t agree with that, but then they weren’t there years earlier to be able to compare the two versions of me as a teacher.
Note–I had a revelation late in my career. While I was not a “blame the student” teacher, I wasn’t all that positive toward my students. Then I wondered: would I teach a friend that way? When I realized I would not, I did a top to bottom examination of my teaching and restructured almost everything along those lines, that is teaching as if my students might become my friend (and I would never betray a friend by giving them bad feedback)..
I feel the same. I reached a point where I felt I wasn’t providing opportunities for my students to explore and learn (I am a mathematics teacher, especially geometry) and revamped my entire classroom strategies. I soon felt better about what I was doing and how I was doing it. My students were more engaged and seemed happier and appeared to be learning more and learning better. Used these new strategies until I retired. Guess I did well with them as I won the Presidential Award for Excellence in Mathematics Teaching. Must have done something right. BTW, my first three to five years while I felt I was a “good” teacher, I knew I could be better.
It is a common observation among university STEM faculty that one doesn’t really feel comfortable and confident teaching a course until after one has taught it three times. The first time that STEM faculty teach a university course it is not uncommon to spend 15 hours of preparation for each one hour of class meeting time.
This is for people that already have a PhD in the subject.
In the K-12 world where a teacher teaches multiple subjects in a day, I cannot fathom how anyone could not think that experience doesn’t matter.
exactly
The test scores of students of teachers improve more the first five years of teaching. Somebody needed to study that? I bet carpenters get better too. Experience is the best teacher. This is a no-brainer.
Someone needs to research the researchers because I can’t believe someone who has studied education for more then three years would actually conclude you don’t get better at teaching after 3 years.
Economists are out of touch bean counters. Their conclusions are naive at best and invalid at worst. How are they qualified to measure teachers’ performance?
Economists use the wrong metrics to measure the quality of teachers and schools. They have wreaked terrible damage on Educatuon by using test score as the only valid measure of quality.
I am curious about what people here believe is the correct metric. If it is obviously true that teachers improve after 3 to 5 years on the job, you must be using some metric. What is it?
Imagine, if teachers could conduct research on economists’ performance outcomes.
TE: Metrics do not always tell the story. Sometimes they distract from the story. You cannot measure teaching. You cannot measure art. You cannot even measure farming.
Roy,
If you can not measure teaching, there is no basis to claim teachers improve after the first five years, or even that they improve in the first five years. Would you agree?
You can’t measure teaching. You can assess it, but there is no algorithm that measures “teaching.”
OMG! This is just painful to read! The responsive comments have said it all, nearly. First, teaching is an “analogue” skill set. It is not digital, and thus not subject to measure by digitalized test scores. I know my own teaching got better over the years, and I did some of my most interesting projects at the end of my career. That was largely because I knew a lot more after years of experience, and I’d picked up some ideas and approaches along the way. But, really, Bill Gates–or any techno-guy, telling a professional teacher how to teach is just ridiculous.
I started out teaching small-city high school English, then taught junior-high history and English in a different–inner city–school district. Then headed a major teachers’ union local (Columbus, Ohio), where we negotiated forms of teacher and school building evaluation. I had a successful career in labor relations for the state and the V.A. I returned to the classroom to teach journalism, English, and American Studies.
I retired just in time to avoid teaching to a standardized test. I had seen it coming when Governor-candidate Clinton and President Bush I agreed that “every child should come to school ready to learn,” etc. Nonsense. They provided no money for food, rent, books, etc. for many of the kids I saw.
Again, some of the “reformers” do mean well, in the sense that they’re trying to equalize opportunity. But, in general, the “reform” effort is meant to provide profit for the testing companies and privateers, and to rein-in the teachers’ unions, which have become a key part of the struggling labor union movement. It’s mostly about profit, though not all the “reformers” seem to know that.
All that will work to save public education is for its supporters–teachers and public–to fight back–with strikes, boycotts, etc. And soon, on a much greater scale. Otherwise, education as we knew it will die, and so will our republican “democracy.” It’s happening right now.
I’m an octogenarian, and so it’s up to you!
Thanks for this comment, Jack, and thanks for your years of service!
Some anecdotal observations:
-I was a much better teacher years 6-17 vs. year 0-5. One item that is overlooked is the value of experience and maturity when handling discipline and productivity in the classroom. I became more energized as I developed better confidence running a classroom and was, thankfully, given more creative license because I could handle my students in positive ways. I would argue that I was a better teacher the last 3 years of my career than at any other time. When I was given the opportunity to teach new content I was more energized.
-Brain research and my experience as an administrator has shown me that we throw young adults solo into the classroom too early. We now know that executive functioning doesn’t mature until 25 or later. This is a crucial part of developmental maturation required for success in the classroom. Whenever we brought a brand new teacher into the classroom we expected, and usually experienced significant challenges in regard to discipline and planning priorities. I do not know a single principal who would choose to fill a vacancy with teachers right out of college over a veteran with a proven track record.
-None of the research cited by the Standards proponents is valid. Tests cannot be a good measure of success because their reliability as a window on student performance is so inconsistent. Discipline data is too focused on suspension data and cannot measure actual classroom effectiveness accurately.
– So why do these business folks insist that teachers don’t improve over 3 years when half or our teaching force resigns by year five and education policy makers refuse to provide the resources necessary for teacher success? I think this is more Humpty Dumpty than Chicken v. Egg debate.
Agree
Well put Mr. Bonner
It’s just ludicrous that these so called researchers would conclude that teachers don’t improve after 3 years. I improved over time and one of the things you do learn is what not to do. Every year is different because you have a different group of kids with different abilities, personalities, needs and backgrounds. The idea that teachers don’t improve over time is typical of the scorn, disrespect and demeaning of public school teachers in service of a privatizing agenda by people like Bill Gates, Chris Christie and the charter school cheer leaders.
yes: when he word “ludicrous” could just as well be written “lucrative” — there is no POINT in making this argument unless someone is pushing your financial buttons
LOVE it!.
HAAAA. Well said, Ciedie!!
More completely unbiased data from the echo chamber:
“The polling was administered in March by the research group SocialSphere on behalf of Murmuration, a reform-oriented nonprofit. Roughly seven months ahead of a midterm election cycle that could shake up control of Congress and state governments, its findings strongly suggest that voters of all backgrounds see public education as a crucial issue after two years of COVID-related tumult. ”
Only “reform oriented non profits” are permitted to submit and you’ll never guess the conclusion! Charters and vouchers are super awesome and public schools suck.
Weird how echo chamber groups so closely mirror the ideological and policy goals of the echo chamber they serve. No one could have predicted that.
Look at the wording of the poll. It could not be more favorable to ed reform. They should be embarrassed.
https://www.the74million.org/article/young-republicans-old-democrats-exclusive-poll-points-to-stark-generation-gaps-on-school-choice-teachers-unions/
The polling group called Murmuration was funded by Michael Bloomberg’s daughter, Emma: https://www.protocol.com/amp/bloomberg-tech-co-murmuration-2650744040
KEY POINT
You will appreciate this, Chiara, from a survey sent around by my Republican congressman in Flor-uh-duh:
Do you believe that the U.S. should restart domestic energy production to avoid buying oil from adversaries like Russia, Venezuela, and Iran?
Yes
No
No opinion
The question contains an embedded assertion that U.S. domestic energy has been stopped by the Biden administration. The truth for good or ill, is that U.S. fossil fuel energy production is UP under the Biden admin from what it was under Trump, as are approvals of new drilling.
A little off-topic, but a local Minneapolis news station unearthed a video of 11 year old Prince supporting a local teachers’ union strike in 1970 or thereabouts.
Prince (as a young boy) has a short soundbite talking about how teachers do a lot.
^^^https://www.cbsnews.com/news/prince-age-11-interview-minneapolis-teachers-strike/
^^I can’t seem to post a link, but it’s easy to google the video.
Prince says: “…I think they should get some more money cause they work, they be working extra hours for us and all that stuff,”
This article from the ‘NY Post’ tells the whole Prince story.https://nypost.com/2022/04/04/footage-of-11-year-old-prince-during-1970-teachers-strike-found/
Why does it matter that the mandated state tests in ELA are invalid and so do not provide accurate “data”? Because it leads people, based on scores from those tests, to make the idiotic claims that Master of the Universe Billy Gates makes–e.g., that advanced degrees do not affect teacher quality and that teachers don’t improve after three years.
There is no notion so idiotic that Bill Gates won’t believe if based on invalid test “data.”
Most of the deformers including Gates are not looking for honest answers. They are looking for “bias confirmation.” Gates’ extreme wealth gives him a outsized megaphone
Nailed it. It’s a terrible irony that these people insist that they are being scientific. Bill Gates’s picture should be next to “confirmation bias” in the dictionary.
I can’t be certain but I think Bill Gates got the idea that teachers don’t improve after three years from economist Eric Hanushek.
Hanushek’s big paper on this topic is
Hanushek, Eric A. “The Economic Value of Higher Teacher Quality.” Economics of Education Review 30 (2011) 466-79.
Hanushek’s analysis is based upon taking test scores at face value. An elementary and egregious mistake. Here’s why:
Combating Standardized Testing Derangement Syndrome (STDs) in the English Language Arts | Bob Shepherd | Praxis (wordpress.com)
If you base your argument on false data from invalid instruments, you are going to arrive at false conclusions. Garbage in, garbage out.
Of course, none of this is news to you, Diane!
If we can judge a man by the company he keeps, what does Gates’ friendship with Jeffrey Epstein say about him? Why should someone with such poor judgment be a self-appointed judge of teachers?
So many wise comments here! Wonderful to read about people’s specific experiences in the classroom! All you fellow teachers who show up here: THANK YOU.
Hmmm…I wonder if they say the same thing about surgeons…no improvement after three years.. The attacks never end.
Bring in Heal for America. No med school but high expectations.
LOL!!!
You always cut to the chase!
My “effectiveness” depends on a number of factors from the principal to the parents to the students to the neighborhood. Funding natters too: environment, classroom, materials, resources. “Measuring” my “effectiveness” is like measuring how fast I can swim while I’m swimming in a swirling current. Junk science.
exactly
Just switch out the teacher widgets after 5 years! Discard and replace! It’ll be cheaper too- salaries can stay entry level and we’ll save on health care costs.
Why does the United States allow economists to dominate all policy discussions? Is it even smart to take such an incredibly narrow view? Do other countries do this? Turn everything from education to public health over to economists? Wouldn’t we all benefit from some diversity in evaluation?
Economists are often teachers too, at the university level. Should we discard them too after 5 years? Many of them should have been replaced long ago.Surely there’s some 25 year old we can plug in who will work for 15 dollars an hour. Save on tuition!
And since advanced degrees don’t improve performance, we don’t even need all those la-de-dah PhD economist teachers in “higher education.” This is revolutionary! No teachers who actually know something about what they are teaching! My mind is racing with the endless possibilities.
The Deformers continually parrot arrant nonsense, and journalists publish it without subjecting it to the slightest scrutiny. This conclusion is derived from analysis of student test scores. But almost none bothers to ask, are those scores valid?
Brown University economist Emily Oster has also attacked public K-12 education and gotten funding from Walton Foundation, Peter Thiel, etc. It is curious that so many white, affluent liberal women are her dittoheads. Her advice to pregnant women to ignore their obstetrician advice on alcohol and Listeria is very troubling
If one wants to eliminate public pensions, then experience doesn’t matter is useful to that goal.
Those that teach in majority white schools probably have a number of students with parents that follow her.
So fetal alcohol syndrome doesn’t exist? In her infinite wisdom as an economist, she is pontificating on medical advice?
Speduktr, An epidemiologist studying fetal alcohol syndrome and the F A S Diagnostic network and the obstetrics community disagree with Emily Oster. The “protean” website has a recent piece by Abigail Cartus dated March 22 about Emily Oster.
I should hope so. The fact that anyone listens to people like her who have no business pontificating on subjects far outside their area of expertise makes my blood boil. Sorry for the cliche but there is smoke coming out of my ears.
Oster posted a rigged-up data dashbord and then went on a media tour proclaiming kids don’t catch COVID in schools.
“Such claims to superior logic and reason can be a convenient mask for ideological assumptions. Appeals to “following the data” do not always reflect a scientific consensus; rather, “the data” is a rhetorical device used to grant narrative authority to certain quantitative analyses—those that confirm preconceived ideas. Meanwhile, those analyses can (and often do) have important limitations like weak study designs, arbitrary assumptions, or erroneous math that should alert readers to interpret the findings cautiously. The intent is to shame people for straying from the experts’ superior rationality, and ultimately to portray any demand for change to the status quo as fringe, conspiratorial, and anti-scientific.”
There’s a tragic irony in people whose business is doing statistical analysis failing to do this fundamental thing: asking themselves whether the “data” on which they are basing their analyses is accurate. It’s shocking that people like Gates and Hanushek would base their conclusions on supposed “data” from the CLEARLY invalid state standardized tests without spending ANY effort, at all, vetting that supposed “data.” Are the instruments that provide this “data” valid? No, they aren’t. Garbage in, garbage out.
Sometimes, received wisdom is wrong. The sun appears to rise and fall, but that’s not actually the case. HOWEVER, when an assertion flies in the face of experience and common sense, that should be a smell test and should prompt consideration of what might be wrong with the argument. In this case, vetting the purported “data” on which the analysis is based would blow up the argument.
Sadly, Ed Deformers and a great many journalists simply parrot the state test scores without asking whether those scores are accurate measurements. They aren’t (and NOT for the crazy reason that all measurement of all intellectual accomplishments is invalid that is sometimes pops up on this forum). The instruments that generate the “data” are invalid, and here’s why:
I get angry about the claim that all measurement of intellectual accomplishments is invalid because it’s crank stuff. Kooky. And because it is so kooky, it feeds the Ed Deform narrative. Oh, those folks who oppose test-based accountability are just a bunch of crazies like the folks who write to mathematicians to say that they have squared the circle or to astronomers to say that the Earth is flat. It is extraordinarily important that educators and policy makers come to understand the ACTUAL reasons why the state test scores aren’t valid and that they not dismiss any argument about that validity based on crackpot theorizing.
CX: and that they not dismiss any argument about the invalidity of the state tests as just more crackpot theorizing.
cx: data . . . are
This fallacious assertion is kin to and comes from the same sources as the argument that teachers getting advanced degrees is of no value to their students–another utterly bonkers notion that Gates propounded and that was adopted widely by states and school districts that, based upon the authority of Gates and his sources, did away with additional pay based upon receiving advanced degrees.
Now, it ought to be obvious that IN GENERAL, a history teacher with a doctorate in history is going to be better at the job than is someone with a bachelor’s degree. Yes, there will be exceptions–the occasional teacher who has only a bachelor’s degree but is a committed autodidact. But the general rule seems obvious. And if you are going to challenge that obvious idea, you had better have some really good information and arguments. Gates et al. didn’t. All they had was their hubris and certainty that they were smarter than teachers are.
Call me crazy, but I think that knowledge of history is a prerequisite for being able to teach history.
When I was beginning my free-lance career as a Spanish enrichment to regional PreK/K’s, my classes were popular with the kids because I entertained them. In the final few yrs of my 20-yr stint, the kids still loved my classes, but I also got quite a bit of feedback from parents on how much Spanish their kids were learning.
I had a sort of watershed at the 10-yr halfway point that really pushed my abilities forward. Strangely, from the unwelcome intrusion of standards-based instruction that trickled quickly into a few PreKs, I became much more focused on assessing myself: articulating more refined goals, measuring outcomes regularly– learning to make on-the-spot formative assessments during class, changing up as needed. My 30-yr-prior experience as a hisch French teacher had not taught that; the textbook was one’s guide. I was always flying by the seat of my pants in the new venture, as there were no textbooks [nor much teaching PreK for-lang in US, period]: had to pick up what I could find from Euro programs, & adapt concepts from a conversational program for older kids that was popular in the US Southwest. Somehow the onerous NCLB/ CCSS machinery provided me with a new framework– something I was– unlike pubsch teachers– free to observe and cherry-pick [it was only imposed on me in a minimal, token manner].
All that detail just to say: I became a much better teacher in the last half of a 20-yr gig. Sure, I improved by leaps and bounds in my first 5 yrs– because I started from such a basic level! I had a long way yet to go.
The supposed research on this issue—at least the research cited in the article– is risible, despite the author’s more-than-generous commentary. K12 teacher ability “as measured by their ability to raise their students’ achievement test scores,” give me a freaking break. [IMHO, a sick concept that has invaded and taken over the classroom, promoted an funded by the commercial ed-industry.] As implied by Barshay, this research assumes that every teacher’s incoming class is equivalent to the previous one— brainless empty vessels awaiting the pixie dust of said teacher’s ‘ability to raise test scores.’ In other words, studies not even meeting the basics of controlled experiments.
Great, Ginny! Thanks for sharing your experience!
When Education Deformers spout such nonsense, they simply reveal how utterly clueless they are. Innumerable thanks to the older, experienced, knowledgeable teachers I had over the years–the ones who had a clue what they were doing!!!
Ihave met education professors who are all in on the measurement thing. I want to sic Senor Swacker on them. Anyone who does not see the philosophical disconnect that makes test scores invalid is either being silly or disingenuous (usually for personal gain). As I close my career in a couple of months, I have come to the conclusion that even the teacher-made tests are suspect. We need to move away from concrete evaluation and toward subjectivity as an admitted element of our teaching, even if it is a problematic one.
Roy, I’m sorry to hear you are retiring. You are a treasure. Your deep knowledge, your compassion, your wisdom are invaluable. Please share your thoughts with Teaching Economist, who left a question about what metrics teachers prefer.
Is that in this thread?
sorry. Found it.
I recall taking a graduate statistics class while working on my leadership degree in the late nineties. The professor would frequently lament how K-12 educators did not use research to inform their instruction. All I have seen sense that time is the misuse of the tried and true “study of studies” method to reinforce the confirmation bias that so dominates the talking point of education “reformers” today. Accuracy of the data used is no longer a priority. Truly “alternative facts.”
Subjectivity played an increasing part in my evaluations of students. It took me awhile to get there, but for many of my (struggling) students it was absolutely essential that I judge them by more than numbers. Early on after I returned to teaching I supported a student through a resource class. His mother had alienated his whole team of teachers and I became the link between them and her. At the end of the first semester, one of his teachers called me to ask how she should grade him. He had not made the cut-off for the higher grade, but he was close. I told her to give him what he had earned. Stupid! the boy had earned the next grade up. He had worked his tail off and his grades had gone up but she did not weight later work higher (growth). He shut down and nearly didn’t pass that class. My fault. On more than one occasion once my students and I had “bonded,” i asked them how many of them thought they were stupid. I don’t need to tell you the response from a class of kids who had been labeled for years. Thank goodness in my last years i did not have to post grades on a regular basis , and I had become a lot more savvy about the whole assessment game. I spent a lot of time examining patterns and weighting assignments when it came time to issue report cards.
The MDTP Interim Assessments must have been funded by economists too.
These “FREE” tests are being administered to schools who want to use them.
The initial research out of UCSD resulted in this 2012 IMPACT report – https://mdtp.ucsd.edu/resources/illuminate.html
It appears to link test scores to teacher longevity.
These interim assessments are given to all or most California public school students and the data recipients are the nearby universities. The links to the test show it was being administered through Illuminate ED or a subsidiary of theirs, IO, and now claims to be distributing these assessments across the country. ILLUMINATE’s data was recently breached in NYC and possibly elsewhere.
The universities are married to cradle to grave policies because their benefactors are asking for it.
I’d love to see the research done on other professionals such as, how much they improve over years of their career ands especially how their success/non-success is measured.
Does this postulate also include doctors, athletes, politicians, and people in general? What a bunch of “no evidence” crap.
Yeah, how come veteran “practitioners”, no matter their field, are valued? Why don’t we have an endless rotation of newly minted professionals leading the charge?