Archives for category: Education Reform
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Denis Ian on the True Cost of the Teacher Exodus: The End of Wisdom

By dianeravitch
June 17, 2016 //
22

Denis Ian is a reader of the blog.

 

He writes:

 

 

“There are simple reasons why teachers are fleeing the profession, college prep programs are drying up, and master teachers are rushing to retirement. This reform has gutted any attraction the profession ever held. But, as a master teacher, I see the destruction in different terms than just stark numbers.

 

“Teachers know how schools change over time. Serve a few decades and you’re not much bothered by the continuous, subtle adjustments from year to year. Schools are ever in a state of reform. They have to be.

 

“Way back when, the drug stuff had us all alarmed … and the beer stuff, too. That was everyday teen stuff leaking into our narrow world. We had run-ins with hygiene and sex and cigarettes. And, of course, drunk driving. Daring schools talked about daring stuff beyond classrooms … like alcohol and divorce … and physical abuse.

 

“Then there was AIDS. That was extra-delicate and owned a frantic immediacy. The right words were so hard to find. Lots of times, I felt like I was killing innocence. 

Other moments were colored by usual stuff. Usual for adults, trauma for kids. Big difference.

 

“Not many of us got much help from teacher-prep programs or post-grad classes. Not about those issues. There weren’t many best-sellers on the issues that seeped into our classrooms. No sexy titles like you might find today … like “ Beer and the Back Seat” … which would kill two sins at once. Or “I’ll Love You for All of Next Week” … which might seem cute, but is likely to be an overly graphic how-to manual for very young teens in this age of sexual over-kill. That’s the sad trend.

 

 

“Sexting is now a middle school sport. And cell phones are sex toys. Hazing never really goes away … it just morphs into some new ugliness. 

Today, schools are nimble emergency responders … making mighty efforts to cushion kids for any and all eventualities. Lots of schools have figured out how to deal with very different students with very different issues who weren’t part of the landscape even a few years ago. Not an easy feat when the student body itself is lost in the weeds of immaturity. Lots of adults become stumble-bumblers in such situations … and it’s often these kids who sort of tutor us big dopes.

 

 

“My point? Where does generation after generation of teachers get their wisdom for things like this? … and for other topics that seem invisible to outsiders?

 

“Who whispers to them?

 
Who makes the greenhorns less green and the naive less naive? Who gives the next generations their reality booster shot? … and gets them to understand the nuances of their craft? Who oracles them?

 

 

“Know who? The folks walking out that back door. And they’re leaving in droves. 

They’re walking away from the New Nonsense and the New Idiocy. They’re leaving because they have something the New Intruders have never possessed … integrity. And they won’t ever compromise that. And they won’t betray kids. Not ever.

 

 

“This sudden exodus isn’t just the usual changing of the guard. Nope. When this brigade of Old Souls … these Gray Heads … gather up their experiences and box their lives and leave for good … they’ll be packing up decades of wisdom that will no longer be at the ready for the newbies who are never, ever as ready as they think.

 

 

“The most important things learned about teaching happen in whispers, asides, or in simple observations. 

It happens in fable form and in funny-sincere recollections of long disappeared characters. And it could happen anywhere … at any time. In hallways. At a copy machine. Or the parking lot. In a stairwell or in an empty classroom … very late in the day … when the school goes silent save for the sounds of sloshy mops and things on squeaky wheels. 

And now those splendid souls …the Wisdomers … they’re leaving. Vanishing.

 

 

“And in their moving vans are the moving stories young teachers need to know … because those stories are informal survival guides. They’re reference material for soothing young souls and spackling torn hearts. What’s in those boxes are manuals for curing failure and repairing kids who’ve had a bottom-bounce. Those are medicine boxes with un-named elixirs for hurts of all sorts. And all of this magic is flying out the back door of schools.

 

 

“Those master teachers are the antidote for this sick reform. But they’ll be gone when their wisdom is most needed.

 

 

“Someday … not sure when, but someday … we’ll come to our senses. We’ll have a national mea culpa. And we’ll get our educational priorities back in common sense rhythms. But it’s not going to be easy at all. It’s gonna be hard stuff.

 

 

“All of the wisdom whispers will have disappeared. And “starting from scratch” won’t be a cliche any more. It’ll be a reality. A bad reality.

 

 

“Wish us luck. We’re gonna need it.

 

 

“Denis Ian”

Categories Education Reform, Teachers and Teaching

Researcher: VAMS Are NEVER Accurate, Reliable, or Valid”

By dianeravitch
June 17, 2016 //
36

Audrey Amrein-Beardsley reports here on new research by Steven Klees of the University of Maryland, which concludes that the contribution of individual teachers to student learning cannot be isolated or quantified as “value-added modeling” claims to do.

Accumulating evidence continues to demonstrate that the teacher evaluation systems imposed by Arne Duncan in the Race to the Top is invalid, inaccurate and unreliable. How many teachers and principals have been fired because of these flawed metrics?

http://vamboozled.com/vams-are-never-accurate-reliable-and-valid/

Open the article for her many links.

She writes:

The Educational Researcher (ER) journal is the highly esteemed, flagship journal of the American Educational Research Association. It may sound familiar in that what I view to be many of the best research articles published about value-added models (VAMs) were published in ER (see my full reading list on this topic here), but as more specific to this post, the recent “AERA Statement on Use of Value-Added Models (VAM) for the Evaluation of Educators and Educator Preparation Programs” was also published in this journal (see also a prior post about this position statement here).

After this position statement was published, however, many critiqued AERA and the authors of this piece for going too easy on VAMs, as well as VAM proponents and users, and for not taking a firmer stance against VAMs given the current research. The lightest of the critiques, for example, as authored by Brookings Institution affiliate Michael Hansen and University of Washington Bothell’s Dan Goldhaber was highlighted here, after which Boston College’s Dr. Henry Braun responded also here. Some even believed this response to also be too, let’s say, collegial or symbiotic.

Just this month, however, ER released a critique of this same position statement, as authored by Steven Klees, a Professor at the University of Maryland. Klees wrote, essentially, that the AERA Statement “only alludes to the principal problem with [VAMs]…misspecification.” To isolate the contributions of teachers to student learning is not only “very difficult,” but “it is impossible—even if all the technical requirements in the [AERA] Statement [see here] are met.”

Rather, Klees wrote, “[f]or proper specification of any form of regression analysis…All confounding variables must be in the equation, all must be measured correctly, and the correct functional form must be used. As the 40-year literature on input-output functions that use student test scores as the dependent variable make clear, we never even come close to meeting these conditions…[Hence, simply] adding relevant variables to the model, changing how you measure them, or using alternative functional forms will always yield significant differences in the rank ordering of teachers’…contributions.”

Therefore, Klees argues “that with any VAM process that made its data available to competent researchers, those researchers would find that reasonable alternative specifications would yield major differences in rank ordering. Misclassification is not simply a ‘significant risk’— major misclassification is rampant and inherent in the use of VAM.”

Klees concludes: “The bottom line is that regardless of technical sophistication, the use of VAM is never [and, perhaps never will be] ‘accurate, reliable, and valid’ and will never yield ‘rigorously supported inferences” as expected and desired.

Categories Accountability, Education Reform, Teacher Evaluations

Joanne Yatvin: If I Were Queen of Schools

By dianeravitch
June 16, 2016 //
49

Joanne Yatvin is a former teacher, principal, and superintendent who is now retired.

Having complained long and loud about the misguided school reform schemes that have dominated public education over the past several years, I think it’s time for me to step up and offer my own ideas for making schools work. Be warned that my proposals are not only unorthodox, but also teacher-biased, and cheap. Well, at least cheaper than the test-drenched practices now in place.

My version of school reform is based on two premises: (1) poverty and its accoutrements are the major causes of students’ poor academic performance (2) the principals and teachers who live their professional lives in schools are the ones best qualified to make decisions for schools and to implement them.

Convert schools in high poverty areas to full-time community centers.

By moving as many community services as possible into school buildings and making them available in the evenings and on weekends, schools could provide social supports to poor families more efficiently and economically and also add recreational and self-improvement activities now in short supply.

In restructuring school building use, the only adjustment to the daytime programs would be the addition of basic health and dental care for students. During evening and weekend hours, however, libraries, gyms, meeting rooms and computer labs would be open, offering a variety of activities for adults and young people. In addition, inexpensive and nutritious evening meals could be offered in the school lunchroom.

Turn over the management of high-poverty schools to professional educators.

We need to lure the best principals and teachers into low performing schools by offering them incentives of autonomy, professional advancement, and higher salaries. Under the leadership of a dynamic principal, chosen by the school staff and parents, schools would be empowered to create their own structures, including a principal’s cabinet and grade level instructional teams. Within each team, roles and salaries would be differentiated according to teachers’ expertise, and willingness to take on additional responsibilities.

Evaluate teachers on their own performance, not those of students

Although principals’ views of teachers’ competence are not perfect, having a wise and alert administrator observing what teachers do to help students learn is the only rational way to evaluate them. Not only formal observations should count, but also classroom drop-ins, finding a teacher in the library helping some kids with research, noticing how often a teacher volunteers to do something extra for the school, seeing a teacher eating lunch at her desk while she reads student essays, an teacher leadership among colleagues.

Offer early retirement to burned-out teachers and incentives for ineffective younger teachers to resign or transfer to non-teaching positions.

At present, removing an unsuccessful teacher in any school district is a long, unpleasant and expensive process. But the problem is not teacher tenure. It is the lack of evidence of failure that makes attempting to remove a teacher look arbitrary or vengeful. The first step to improve the situation is to insure systematic evaluations of teachers with prompt feedback and offers of assistance. Ultimately, all teachers marked for dismissal should be provided with counseling, a dignified resignation process, and some incentives.

Cut reliance on commercial educational materials for students while increasing teachers’ professional development opportunities

Rather than depending on slick commercial programs and their disposable materials (i.e. workbooks), schools would do better to invest in high quality literature, technology, and reference books for students and professional books and university courses for teachers.

Increase the size and power of the school library and make the librarian a key figure in the education of students

Every school needs a full-time professional librarian/technologyst along with an aide so that the library is open full time during the school day and perhaps for a while after school closes. Not only should every class have a regular weekly library time, but also times when teachers can sign up to send small groups for specific assistance in finding and using library materials. School librarians should also meet with teacher teams to plan units to be taught and make sure that the materials students need are available. To make these things happen fully funding a school library should be a high priority for the principal and the school district.

Provide poor children with the background knowledge and support they may have missed at home and in their community.

What makes school difficult for most poor children is not their lack of ability but their meagerness of social, cultural and literary experiences. What many have missed out on is being read to, having substantive conversations with adults, visiting museums, parks, forests, and beaches, and being members of an educated community. To learn academic content and skills successfully, poor children need a school environment that is not only welcoming and supportive, but also rich in books, hands-on activities, cooperative learning, and exposure to the world outside their home community. Every high poverty school should receive additional funding for student field trips and in-school music and drama performances.

Reduce the number of standardized tests and the time devoted to test preparation

Not only do standardized tests now dominate schools’ curricula and classroom teaching time, they are extremely expensive and of little value beyond informing local districts and state officials about schools’ average test scores. Within our schools today tested subjects crowd out other subjects, and test preparation becomes almost a subject in itself. In addition, tests influence teaching style in general making it shallow and formulaic to fit the limitations of a multiple choice testing format. Both students and schools would be better served if standardized tests were given only every four years and classroom teachers were allowed to use their own methods and judgment to determine the extent and quality of each student’s learning.

Make every school a place where students want to be

In the recent studies of test scores from school to school and district to district, researchers cite student absenteeism and indifference to learning as some of the causes of low scores and stagnation in student progress. If instead of advocating for better teaching and more rigorous students expectations, schools concentrated on providing classes and assignments that appealed to students’ interests and also gave all students opportunities to make decisions and play important roles in school operations we would see better performance from everyone.
Although I could add a few more change proposals to my list, I believe that those above are the basics. Through my experience as a teacher and a principal I learned a lot about what helps teachers to teach well, children to learn, and schools to be the healthy, happy places I have known and the even better ones I still dream of.

Categories Education Reform, Librarians, Real Education, Teachers and Teaching, Testing

Jay Greene: Do Higher Test Scores Predict Better Life Outcomes?

By dianeravitch
June 16, 2016 //
112

Jay Greene, chairman of the Department of Educational Reform at the University of Arkansas, reaches a startling conclusion: Higher test do not necessarily translate into higher graduation rates or other life outcomes that matter.

This post pretty much blows away the rationale for corporate reform. How many times did we hear from Michelle Rhee, Joel Klein, Wendy Kopp, Arne Duncan, Bill Gates, and other “reform” leaders that charter schools get higher test scores than public schools? How many times have we heard from the Friedman Foundation and other cheerleaders for vouchers that vouchers are the key to higher test scores? But what if the higher test scores do not translate into better outcomes for students? What if Jay Greene is right? Perhaps the goal of schooling should be to teach a well-rounded education, character, and citizenship? Test scores don’t measure that.

This is one of the most important posts I have read in a very long time. I encourage you to read it.

Greene writes:

I’ve written several times recently about how short term gains in test scores are not associated with improved later life outcomes for students. Schools and programs that increase test score quite often do not yield higher high school graduation or college attendance rates. Conversely, schools and programs that fail to produce greater gains in test scores sometimes produce impressive improvements in high school graduation and college attendance rates, college completion rates, and even higher employment and earnings. I’ve described at least 8 studies that show a disconnect between raising test scores and stronger later life outcomes.

Well, now we have a 9th. Earlier this month MDRC quietly released a long-term randomized experiment of the effects of the SEED boarding charter school in Washington, DC. Because SEED is a boarding school, there was a lot of hope among reformers that it might be able to make a more profound difference for very disadvantaged students by having significantly more time to influence students and structure their lives. Of course, boarding schools also cost significantly more — in this case roughly twice as much as traditional non-residential schools.

While the initial test score results are very encouraging, the later life outcomes are disappointing. After two years students admitted to SEED by lottery outperformed those denied admission by lottery by 33% of a standard deviation in math and 23% in reading. If we judged the quality of schools entirely based on short term changes in test scores, as many reformers would like to do, we’d say this school was doing a great job.

In fact, SEED may be doing a great job in a variety of ways, but when we look at longer term outcomes for students on a variety of measures the evidence demonstrating SEED’s success disappears or even turns negative. Of the students accepted by lottery to SEED 69.3% graduate from high school after four years compared to 74.1% for the control group, a difference that is not statistically significant. And when asked about their likelihood of attending college, there was no significant difference between the two groups. SEED students also score significantly higher on a measure of engaging in risky behavior and lower on the grit scale….

If we think we can know which schools of choice are good and ought to be expanded and which are bad and ought to be closed based primarily on annual test score gains, we are sadly mistaken. Various portfolio management and “accountability” regimes depend almost entirely on this false belief that test scores reveal which are the good and bad schools. The evidence is growing quite strong that these strategies cannot properly distinguish good from bad schools and may be inflicting great harm on students. Given the disconnect between test scores and later life outcomes we need significantly greater humility about knowing which schools are succeeding.

The last time I checked (when reviewing “Waiting for ‘Superman'” in 2010, the cost of a SEED education was $35,000 per child; it is probably more now.

Be sure to open the link to read the full post, which is very informative.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Closing schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Education Reform, Privatization, Testing, Vouchers

Will the State Senate Renew Mayoral Control in New York City?

By dianeravitch
June 15, 2016 //
8

There is a battle going on in Albany about whether and how to renew mayoral control.

The bottom line is that the Republican controlled State Senate hates Mayor de Blasio and so does Governor Andrew Cuomo.

The leader of the State Senate has offered two alternatives: either a one-year extension with an inspector appointed by Governor Cuomo (to harass Mayor de Blasio).

Or a three-year extension, loaded with poison pills. Both alternatives have goodies for Eva Moskowitz and others.


Both Senate bills also include a sweetener for a pocket of the charter school sector and a legislative priority for the New York State United Teachers.

If either bill were ultimately passed, teachers at charters with teacher-training programs would have three years to become certified. The little-known certification fight has been a top legislative priority for Success Academy CEO Eva Moskowitz, whose legion of local charters is largely staffed with uncertified teachers. Moskowitz would essentially require the proposed certification law in order to grow her charter network as planned to 50 or even 100 schools.

Both proposals also include a provision that would prevent districts without teacher evaluation plans from being financially penalized by the state. If passed, that provision would be a win both for teachers’ unions and for Flanagan’s — and Senate education committee Carl Marcellino’s — constituents on Long Island, where evaluations are particularly contentious.

And, in what would be a win for de Blasio, the Senate’s three-year extension bill includes a provision on employee protections for school bus drivers — a legislative priority for the mayor for several years.

But it’s likely that some of those sweeteners will be traded for others as the Senate and Assembly debate final mayoral control logistics in the coming days.
This year’s mayoral control fight has gotten politically messy in recent weeks.

Here is the inside scoop on mayoral control. It is no panacea. Cleveland and Chicago have mayoral control, and no district should copy them.

NYC has long had some form of mayoral control, except for 1969-2002. All those other years, the mayor appointed the Board of Education, and the Board of Education was an independent agency: it hired and fired the superintendent and approved the budget. Under the current ridiculous model, the mayor controls the board, hires the Chancellor, and makes all decisions for the board. Here is my take on mayoral control.

Read more: http://www.politico.com/states/new-york/city-hall/story/2016/06/john-flanagan-new-mayoral-control-schools-bills-assembly-few-options-102840#ixzz4Bfy5ncVU
Follow us: @politico on Twitter | Politico on Facebook

Categories Education Reform

LA Times Reports on Eli Broad’s Bold Move to Take Over Public Schools and Open More Charters

By dianeravitch
June 15, 2016 //
18

Forget about the elected L.A. School board. Eli Broad has picked his own school board, one run by his surrogates and the charter-happy privatizers of the Walton Family Foundation. Why not make the elected board irrelevant and let a billionaire from L.A. and a billionaire family from Arkansas run schools for half the children in Los Angeles?

This is one of the boldest, brashest, most outrageous attempts to destroy public education in the history of education in the U.S. What a legacy Eli Broad and the Walton family will leave behind. Destructive, anti-democratic, union-busting, a need to control whatever they can buy, a belief that everything–even public schools–are for sale. They are utterly shameless.

Here is Howard Blume’s report on the story.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Education Reform, Los Angeles, Privatization

Idaho Students to Albertson Foundation: “You Don’t Know What You Are Talking About!”

By dianeravitch
June 14, 2016 //
20

High school students in the West Ada school district made a 3-minute video to respond to the Albertson Foundation’s attack on public education. (Read here about the Albertson Foundation’s attacks and its plan to open enough charter schools to enroll 20,000 students.)

The Albertson Foundation is leading a mean-spirited attack on public education in Idaho. They have underwritten television ads saying that the public schools are no good and 80% of the graduates are not prepared for college or careers. Attacks like this are always the prelude to demands for privatization and for replacing public schools with charter schools, vouchers, and virtual charters.

The students got tired of hearing these stale and erroneous complaints from a handful of billionaires who don’t like public education, so they made their own video. Of course, they can’t afford to put it on television, but they can put it on social media.

Let’s hear it for the kids! They are alright in Idaho!

Categories Accountability, Billionaires, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Reform, Idaho, Privatization

Dallas: A Chance to Save The Public Schools!

By dianeravitch
June 14, 2016 //
13

The Dallas public schools have been controlled by corporate reformers for many years. In 2012, the board hired Broadie Mike Miles as superintendent. He made grandiose promises, drove away hundreds of teachers with his laser-like focus on test scores and merit pay, then left after three years when none of his promises and goals were met.

 

At present, the board is tied 4-4, between the stale reformers and advocates for public education.

 

This Saturday, Dallas has a chance to install a new board majority by electing Mita Havlick, a public school parent and school volunteer. 

 

Her opponent Dustin Marshall has the support of the conservative, test-loving Dallas Morning News. He sends his children to private school.

 

The Dallas school board has some wonderful activists, including two who are my friends, Joyce Foreman and Bernadette Nutall. If they are in the majority, the rebuilding of public education in Dallas will begin.

 

Please vote this Saturday!

 

 

Categories Corporate Reform, Dallas, Education Reform

The Orlando Massacre: Perspectives

By dianeravitch
June 14, 2016 //
74

Chris Savage at Eclectablog says that we should ignore any politician who offers “thoughts and prayers” if they voted against reasonable restrictions on access to assault weapons. He includes a great tweet from a Michigan Congressman Jeremy Moss:

“I literally never want to hear again that LGBT people in the bathroom are a threat to public safety.”

Once again we’re forced to protect ourselves from insane civilians with semi-automatic weapons with ‘thoughts & prayers’

Steven Singer knows who the real culprit is: the powerful lobby that wants everyone-including terrorists–to have guns.

https://gadflyonthewallblog.wordpress.com/2016/06/13/florida-shooters-strongest-ally-was-the-american-gun-lobby/

Categories Education Reform

Why is Connecticut Governor Malloy Protecting Insurance Industry from Scrutiny?

By dianeravitch
June 13, 2016 //
7

Investigative journalist David Sirota exposes Connecticut Governor Malloy’s protection of insurance giants. He signed a bill to shield them from Freedom of Information requests.

 

Is it because the giants of the industry are based in his state? Or was it their $360,000 contribution to the Democratic Governors’ Association, which Malloy chairs?

 

Sirota writes:

 

“Amid a burgeoning conflict-of-interest scandal over Connecticut’s national role regulating Cigna and Anthem’s proposed merger, International Business Times has just published a new report on Connecticut Gov. Dan Malloy quietly signing insurance-industry-backed legislation exempting insurance industry information from his state’s open records law. Weeks after the Malloy-backed bill was introduced in the legislature, Anthem and Cigna pumped $360,000 into the Malloy-run Democratic Governors Association. The bill was later attached to unrelated legislation, passed in the middle of the night in the waning hours of Connecticut’s legislative session, and then signed by Malloy with no public statement.”

 

 

Categories Accountability, Connecticut, Education Reform
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