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Stephanie Jones: The Testing Regime Is a Farce

By dianeravitch
January 20, 2015 //
24

Stephanie Jones of the Univetsity of Georgia wonders what would happen if the federal government mandated that doctors be evaluated by the longevity of their patients. Those who choose to practice in low-income communities would get lower scores than those who practice in affluent communities. (So would oncologists and heart surgeons, as compared to dermatologists.)

What if evaluations got even more far-fetched by rating medical schools by the longevity of the patients of the doctors they prepared?

Yet this is the absurd mandate that the U.S. Department of Education is planning for colleges of education.

Jones writes:

“The era of testing has failed miserably, but we can only begin undoing the damage and rebuilding our K-12 students’ and families’ trust in and value from public education when we call it quits on high-stakes testing.

“If teachers don’t impact standardized test scores very much, what do they impact? Lives, motivation, understanding of content and concepts, non-standardized tests, grades, students’ willingness to learn, creativity, critical thinking, crucial skills for communication in the 21st century, and the ability for children and young people to see themselves as powerful actors in the world around them.

“So why would policymakers want to keep high-stakes testing in place – and furthermore – to embed it in the very fabric of the entire education system from kindergarten through university teacher education?

“Perhaps pride is getting in the way. It must be terribly difficult to admit that billions of dollars have been given to corporations, millions of children have been retained and put at further risk of dropping out of high school, high school students have been denied diplomas, teachers have been punished, schools have been taken over, others have been closed, communities have been ripped apart, education has narrowed to test preparation, and parents and children have been absolutely tormented because a small group of people insist – against all evidence – that high-stakes testing is valuable.

“Please, policymakers, don’t make the mistake of pinning Colleges of Education against the wall with test scores, and release the pressure from K-12 schools so they can implement the learning-focused instructional approaches they have learned in their teacher preparation programs.
Just take a deep breath and whisper “mea culpa” so we can join together as allies in the disaster relief effort.”

Categories Teacher Education, Teacher Evaluations, Testing

Arnold Dodge: “Reformers” Threaten Democracy and Creativity

By dianeravitch
January 20, 2015 //
5

Veteran educator Arnold Dodge warns that the corporate reform movement, led by the U.S. Department of Education, threatens democracy and creativity. In its quest for data and standardization, the DOE will crush imagination and innovation. Standardized tests reward right answers, not original thought.

Not content to standardize children and their teachers, the DOE now wants to control teacher education by collecting test scores of students and linking them to the institutions that prepared their teachers. Test scores above all!

Dodge quotes John Dewey, who wrote:

“”Were all instructors to realize that the quality of mental process, not the production of correct answers, is the measure of educative growth, something hardly less than a revolution in teaching would be worked.”

“Lack of the free and equitable intercourse which springs from a variety of shared interests makes intellectual stimulation unbalanced. Diversity of stimulation means novelty, and novelty means challenge to thought.””

Categories Corporate Reformers, NCLB (No Child Left Behind), Race to the Top, Standardized Testing, Teacher Education, Teacher Evaluations

Laura Chapman: Why I Don’t Believe “Quality Counts”

By dianeravitch
January 11, 2015 //
39

Laura Chapman read Stephen Dyer’s post about Ohio’s ranking on Education Week’s “Quality Counts” and called for skepticism:

She writes:

“The Quality Counts reports in EdWeek are representing the data that the Gates Foundation wants to see publicized along with mandated reporting from USDE. These data systems have been jointly funded by USDE and Gates since 2005.

“This is to say that every reader of this annual dedicated report on education in the United States should pay attention to what is NOT reported, including, for example, cuts to studies in the arts, physical education, studies in the humanities, foreign languages. The continued use of flawed measures for teacher evaluation, including VAM and versions of SLOs.

“In addition, EdWeek gets editorial support from 18 foundations, and their support is targeted so that, for example, the headlines and prime editorial space this week is devoted to teacher education programs and why so few have been shut down.

“The topical coverage of teacher education is funded by the Joyce Foundation. This reporting is parallel to the launch of full scale attacks on the absence of a national passion for firing teachers…with absurd discussions of the potential benefits of firing 25% in order to raise test scores.

“In other words, what counts as “quality” is determined by those who get to decide, and on what criteria.

“I live in Ohio where charter corruption is rampant, where few voters bother to examine the views of candidates running for the State Board of Education, where there is a data warehousing program that rarely makes the news that it deserves. There are many reasons to question whether education in Ohio is better or worse than last year, or the year before, and so on. Putting too much emphasis on stacked ratings among states, from year to year, is a version of the stack ratings within each state imposed on schools.”

Categories Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Ohio, Teacher Education

James D. Kirylo: How to Improve Teacher Education

By dianeravitch
January 10, 2015 //
39

While there has been much talk about the needs of teacher education, the “fixes” now center on Arne Duncan’s misguided belief that teacher colleges should be evaluated by the scores of the students taught by their graduates. This is a long stretch of causality and is sure to encourage these institutions to advise their graduates to apply to teach where the challenges are lowest. Here is another point of view, written by James D. Kirylo. He is an education professor and a former state teacher of the year. His most recent book is titled A Critical Pedagogy of Resistance. He can be reached at jkirylo@yahoo.com

 

Teacher Education:
The Path Toward Educational Transformation in Louisiana

It is said that education is the great equalizer. Yet, we know when it comes to resources, opportunity, and the quality of a teacher, not all educational experiences are equal. Then we react with a bevy of voices coming from a variety of corners on how to better equalize the great equalizer. To be sure, when making sense of gray matter, complexity, and multi-layered challenges inherent in education, the solutions are not easy.

Yet, when it comes to navigating through this entangled web, a leading thread to direct that charge ought to have the name “teacher” at its pinpoint. There are few absolutes when it comes to education. And of those few, one is this: There is positive correlation between a high quality teacher and student success.

It is, therefore, logical that if we want to move toward educational transformation, we need to ensure that teacher education is right up there on the priority list. It is no coincidence that high achieving countries, like Singapore, South Korea, and Finland are quite selective as to who teaches their youth, how they prepare those who are to teach their youth, and how they maintain ongoing development while teaching their youth.

That a common thread in high-achieving countries is an elevated priority on teacher education ought to raise our collective sensibilities, stirring movement toward embracing that model right here in Louisiana. To that end, the following summarizes what we need to qualitatively do in our backyard if we expect to move toward long-lasting transformative educational change:

 

One, entrance requirements and processes into teacher education programs need to be more rigorous and more selective.
Two, those who are accepted into teacher education programs should be provided tuition waivers, grants, and other incentivizing initiatives.
Three, teacher education programs across the state must be creatively innovative, systematic, and unified in which not only content knowledge is emphasized, but also concepts, practices, and theories related to human development, pedagogy, curriculum, and learning are thoroughly explored in light of the diverse country in which we live.
Four, field experiences and rich mentorships are emphasized that works to connect the thoughtful relationship between theory and practice.
Five, upon graduation, teacher candidates leave their programs with great expertise, expectation, and adulation as they move into the teaching profession.
Six, once in the classroom, teachers regularly engage in ongoing and meaningful professional development, with them at the center of facilitating that endeavor.
Seven, the school curriculum in which teachers teach is wide-ranging, with an inclusive priority on the various arts, physical education, and foreign language.
Eight, when it comes to curricula, assessment, and evaluation decisions at the school setting, teachers are integral members at the table.
Nine, at the school setting, a test-centric focus has to be abandoned and replaced with a learning-centric focus that is energizing, inspiring, and imaginative.
Ten, students, teachers, and schools are not in competition with one another, but work to cooperate, collaborate, and lift each other up.
Eleven, all schools, regardless of location and economic demographic have equal access to quality resources, material, and high quality teachers.
Twelve, the teaching profession is viewed with great respect, indicative of the competitive salaries, the working conditions in which teachers are placed, and how teachers are professionally viewed, treated, and honored.
Thirteen, a top-down hierarchal structure needs to be replaced with a teacher leadership empowerment structure.

Fourteen, “fast-track” teacher training programs, such as TFA and LRCE, are not acceptable routes to teach our youth.

Fifteen, the waiving of requirements for those going into administrative type roles are not acceptable routes to work in leadership positions in our schools, systems, and state.

Sixteen, only well-prepared, qualified, and certified teachers from high quality teacher education programs must teach our youth.
While there are certainly some examples of good efforts occurring in teacher education programs in our state, we are not doing near enough. Without doubt, if we are to move toward educational transformation in Louisiana, the systematic prioritization of teacher education is a must, the fostering of the professionalization of teaching is vital, and ultimately education must be viewed as an investment in which the entire state can be richly furthered. Indeed, our international friends have provided us with an outstanding model.

Categories Education Reform, Teacher Education

My Review of Elizabeth Green’s “Building a Better Teacher”

By dianeravitch
January 6, 2015 //
72

Elizabeth Green recently published a book called Building a Better Teacher: How Teaching Works (and How to Teach It to Everyone). It has been widely and favorably reviewed. I have known Elizabeth for about ten years, when she was covering education for the now defunct New York Sun. I like her, and I consider her a friend. Elizabeth is cofounder of Gotham Schools, which is now called Chalkbeat. It is a publication that covers education issues in New York City, Tennessee, Indiana, and Colorado. Chalkbeat is funded by a large number of foundations and individuals, many of whom are prominent in today’s charter school movement (the Gates Foundation, the Walton Foundation, and some board members of the hedge-funders’ Democrats for Education Reform).

 

Since I know Elizabeth, I have decided to review the book as a letter to her. Somewhat unconventional, but let’s see how it works out.

 

 

Dear Elizabeth,

 

Thank you for sending me galleys of your book. I am sorry to be so late in reviewing it, but better late than never. There were things about the book that I liked very much, and other things that I found puzzling. I will be as honest with you as you would expect me to be.

 

To begin with, you are certainly a skilled journalist. I like the way you effortlessly weave the stories of individuals into larger themes and use those stories to make a larger point. The book is very well-written, and you manage to inject liveliness and high interest into pedagogical issues, which is no small feat.

 

You begin the book by strongly asserting that good teachers are made, not born, and that it is a fallacy to believe that some people are just “natural” teachers, while others will never learn no matter how hard they try. Your goal, clearly, is to persuade the reader that anyone, armed with the right training and preparation, can become a good teacher. You had me convinced until you got into the lives of the people you highlight as heroes—like Deborah Loewenberg Ball and Magdalene Lampert—who do seem to have been born to teach, not products of a specific pedagogical training program.

 

The book seemed to me to be two different books. The first book tells the story of the search for a research-based approach to teaching teachers, drawing on the work of John Dewey, Nathaniel Gage, and Lee Shulman. I thought I knew where you were going. I thought you would visit not only Japan but also Finland, to learn how thoughtfully their teachers are prepared to teach. I liked this book, I was sure it would end up with recommendations for higher standards for entry into teaching, for practice-based internships, for mentors for new teachers, and other ideas that would send new teachers into the classroom with both knowledge and experience, as well as support for them in their early years as teachers.

 

But suddenly the second book emerges, and the second book says that the problems of teaching are being solved in charter schools run by entrepreneurs. The entrepreneurial sector, in your telling, is doing what the researchers, academicians, and university-based scholars hope to accomplish, and the entrepreneurs are doing it without the benefit of any study of education. This line of thought threw me for a loop, because the teachers in the entrepreneurial sector enter teaching with little or no preparation (i.e., low standards or no standards), just the assurance that they are really smart because they graduated from an Ivy League college or some other top university. Somehow this smacks of class bias. Most of them are in Teach for America, which means they start teaching with only five weeks of training. I got confused. There is no profession that can be entered into with only five weeks of training.

 

You also have many pages about the “no excuses” charter schools, which you treat with ambivalence. On the one hand, as we are assured by people you quote, the children they enroll—black, Hispanic, and poor—need the tough-love discipline, the rules that can never be broken, the fear of suspension or exclusion or stigma. This boot-camp discipline, they say, makes it possible for the children to learn. On the other hand, you quote graduates who speak of the demoralization of students, who know that the school intends to crush their spirit, and who “hated school.”

 

What often appears to be an admiring portrait of the “no excuses” charter schools is tempered by this statement about Academy of the Pacific Rim:

 

“The first year, Doug Lemov and Stacey Boyd had started out with a class of fifty-five or so seventh-graders. But by the time that class made it to senior year, only eleven students remained. And three of them had only joined later on, in ninth grade.” (p. 203) Elizabeth, you recognize the problems and contradictions, but you render no judgment other than to include facts like these. A graduating class that contains only 8 of the 55 students who started is hardly a portrait of a model school or a beacon for American education.

 

I may have missed it, but I didn’t see data on teacher attrition at either “no excuses” charter schools or charter schools in general. From other sources, we know that teacher attrition is high; the teachers are inexperienced, and (as you point out) the hours are exceptionally long, set with the assumption that teachers do not have families or personal lives. We know that TFA corps members are typically gone after three or four years. How, under these circumstances, can entrepreneurial charters—with their high teacher churn—be seen as laboratories where excellent teaching is being developed and is, in fact, already happening? If it is happening, why do as many as 50% of the teachers leave some of the most successful charters every year?

 

What seems strangest about the book to me is its detachment from the real world of mandates and demands by federal and state authorities, punishments and rewards, school closings and political interference with teaching. Your account does not reflect the atmosphere of teacher-bashing, the hunt for “the bad teacher,” the demoralization that so many teachers express today. Nor does it dwell on the current obsession with test-based accountability that has made many teachers feel that they are disrespected and are not allowed to exercise any professional judgment. You set up a dichotomy between accountability and autonomy, but surely you know that the scales are heavily weighted by federal policy against any autonomy for teachers. A profession that lacks autonomy is not a profession.

 

Elizabeth, I hope you will not be offended by my candor. I found the book well-written and engaging. I was hoping that you would make a case for developing a stronger teaching profession, but that is not what the charter sector will produce; it relies on a constant turnover of low-wage teachers, and whatever they learn in the classroom will be lost when they move on to a different career. I appreciated your footnote at the bottom of p. 156, where you write that “Multiple studies of charter school performance have shown that the schools often perform just as poorly as the district-run schools they seek to outdo. And across the country, charter schools have been the victim of the same inefficiency and corruption challenges that plague neighborhood public schools.” That’s almost right. I don’t know of any public school superintendent or principal who has built a multi-million dollar mansion in Palm Beach like a certain charter entrepreneur in Pennsylvania or acquired a multi-million yacht like a certain charter entrepreneur in Florida. Absent regulation and oversight, there is even more corruption in the entrepreneurial charter sector than in the public schools.

 

In the end, I don’t think you demonstrate how to build a better teacher. You show that a lot of people are trying to do so. You show that there is a longing for a coherent system of standards, tests, and accountability, but behind that longing is the behaviorist belief that teachers should teach to the same standards, and students will do well on the tests. If that’s coherence, it’s pretty well played out. That’s what we have been trying to do since No Child Left Behind was passed, and after 13 years, it seems to be a dead end. I have no doubt that we need better teacher preparation at the university level (Finland requires five years of teacher education, and a master’s degree for every teacher). But even with a long period of preparation, I doubt that every teacher will adopt and implement the same methodology. What strikes me, as I reflect on your very provocative book, is the urgency of establishing professional norms that protect teachers against legislators, politicians, philanthropists, for-profit entrepreneurs, and non-educators who want to play school.

Categories Charter Schools, Teach for America, Teacher Education, Teachers and Teaching

“Change the Stakes” Speaks Out Against VAM

By dianeravitch
January 4, 2015 //
14

This is an excellent letter to the U.S. Department of Education, which patiently explains the harm caused by value-added modeling (VAM). It was submitted by a Néw York group called “Change the Stakes,” which opposes high-stakes testing. The letter was written by psychologist Dr. Rosalie Friend, a member of Change the Stakes. It is a good source for parents and educators who want to explain why testing is being overused and misused.

USDOE’s Proposed Regs for Teacher Education Programs

Change the Stakes submitted these comments in response to the U.S. Department of Education’s proposal to impose new accountability measures on teacher education programs, https://www.federalregister.gov/articles/2014/12/03/2014-28218/teacher-preparation-issues.

The U.S. Department of Education has proposed that teacher education programs be rated by the employment, placement, and performance of their graduates. Ratings of the performance of graduates would include the test scores of the students who are taught by graduates of those programs.

Change the Stakes (changethestakes.org), an organization of New York City parents and educators promoting alternatives to high-stakes testing, opposes this proposal.

Rating teacher education programs by what teachers do after they leave the programs is unrealistic. The decisions made by graduates and their employers are not determined by the teacher education programs. Teacher education programs are already assessed by professional accrediting boards that understand the nuances of teaching and learning.

The accountability procedures imposed on K-12 schools have diverted astounding amounts of money and time from teaching and learning. The accountability procedures have not led to any measurable improvement in student achievement. Extending these ill-conceived procedures to teacher education programs is counter-productive. Attaching high stakes to evaluation leads to the distortion of the processes that are being evaluated, as documented by Dr. Donald Campbell, the pre-eminent social scientist.

Teaching is a difficult profession. Industrial-type accountability procedures distract from the focus on teaching and learning. We want teachers to learn how to engage children in learning new ideas and using those ideas to reason and solve problems. At the same time, teachers must be able to assist children with developing socially and emotionally. This requires dealing with enormous differences among children’s backgrounds and personalities. Of course, teachers must also be expert in the skills and materials they teach. Teacher education programs must prepare teachers to think on their feet and respond to the ever changing conditions under which they labor, not to drill children for shallow, regimented tests.

Teachers’ working conditions are a major factor in their professional achievement. Social conditions, school culture, school leadership, class assignments, and relationships among colleagues are all important in determining both students’ and teachers’ success. Management expert, W. Edwards Deming, said, “It is the structure of the organization rather than the employees, alone, which holds the key to improving the quality of output.” All these factors are independent of teacher education programs.

Perhaps the most wrong-headed part of the proposal is the use of student test scores in assessing the teachers who graduated from the programs. Using student scores to evaluate teachers and then to use that “so-called” data to rate their teacher education programs is unsound and unacceptable for the following reasons.

Low Reliability of Standardized Test Results

Value-added modeling (VAM) cannot be accurately used for a small sample such as a single class. The aggregation of student test scores to derive a score for an individual teacher has been demonstrated to be wildly unstable, especially while assigning scores to a given teacher from year to year or even from class to class. The American Statistical Association has warned against the use of VAM for teacher evaluation. Using these unreliable figures to draw conclusions about the programs that educated teachers is folly.

Low Validity of Standardized Test Results

Tests cannot adequately account for every factor outside of a teacher’s instruction that impacts how students perform on a test because there are far too many other factors affecting students’ scores. Research shows that whatever teachers’ impact is, it accounts for only 1-14% of student variability in standardized test scores. If the teacher’s score is based on factors other than the teacher’s influence, it is not valid.

Studies since the 1966 Coleman report continue to show that nothing affects student achievement as much as the student’s home. Parents in poor families cannot provide their children with the same social and learning supports and enrichment that affluent and middle-class parents can provide. Furthermore, well-funded schools in prosperous communities consistently get higher test scores than cash starved schools in poverty-stricken neighborhoods.

A teacher’s effectiveness is directly affected by the composition of the class assigned to that teacher even within the same school. What kind of academic background do the children have? Are their goals aligned with the school’s goals? How cooperative are they? How well behaved or self-regulated are they?

Conclusion

The entire process of professional training of an educator is exceptionally complex. While a school of education affects the resulting quality of the professional educator, so much more goes into their success. Any evaluation of such an institution should be developed to be inclusive of all the contributing factors, not simply the ones for which quantitative data (however invalid and unreliable) are available.

Ignoring these additional factors and the research supporting them is an injustice not only to the programs the Education Department plans to rate but also to students, teachers, parents, and communities alike.

Sources

American Statistical Association. (2014). ASA Statement on Using Value-Added Models for Educational Assessment. http://www.amstat.org/policy/pdfs/ASA_VAM_Statement.pdf

Baker, E. L., Barton, P. E., Darling-Hammond, L. D., Haertel, E., Ladd, H. F., Linn, R. L., Ravitch, D., Rothstein, R., Shavelson, R. J., & Shepard, L.A. (2010). Problems with the Use of Student Test Scores to Evaluate Teachers: Briefing Paper 278. Washington, DC: Economic Policy Institute.

Campbell, D.T. (1976). Assessing the Impact of Planned Social Change. Dartmouth College, Occasional Paper Series, #8.

Greene, D. (2013). Doing the Right Thing: A Teacher Speaks. Victoria, Canada: Friesen Press.

Haertel, E.H. (2013) Reliability and validity of inferences about teachers based on student test scores. William H. Angoff Memorial Lecture Series. Princeton, NJ: Educational Testing Service.

Johnson, S.M., Kraft, M.A., & Papay, J.P. (2012). How Context Matters in High-Need Schools: The Effects of Teachers’ Working Conditions on Their Professional Satisfaction and Their Students’ Achievement, Teachers College Record, 114:1-39.

Viadero, D. (2006). Race Report’s Influence Felt 40 Years Later: Legacy of Coleman study was new view of equity. EdWeek [Online] Available http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2006/06/21/41coleman.h25.html

These comments were written by Dr. Rosalie Friend, Educational Psychologist and a member of Change the Stakes.

Categories Standardized Testing, Teacher Education, Teacher Evaluations, U.S. Department of Education

Two Different Deadlines for Comments on Federal Regulations for Teacher Education Institutions

By dianeravitch
December 29, 2014 //
6

In earlier posts this morning, I urged you to send your comments on the federal Department of Education plan to rate teachers’ colleges by the scores of students taught by their graduates. Call this “long-distance Value-Added Modeling.”

 

It is a bad idea on many counts, not least because VAM doesn’t work when it is applied to an individual (too many variables, too much missing data, too much error). It works even less when an institution will be judged by the test scores of students taught by their graduates.

 

Here are the proposed regulations.

 

Comments are due January 2 to the U.S. Office of Management and Budget (OMB).

 

Comments are due to the U.S. Department of Education by February 2.

 

 

Categories Education Reform, Teacher Education, U.S. Department of Education

Imposing VAM on Teacher Education Is Madness, and We Must Say So. Now.

By dianeravitch
December 29, 2014 //
11

We’re All Mad Here: The Conference on English Education’s (CEE) Response to the US Department of Education’s Proposed Regulations for Teacher Preparation

 

 

On Dec. 3, 2014, the United States’ Department of Education (DOE) released a document proposing new regulations for teacher preparation programs, citing the need for greater accountability for teacher preparation programs, as well as the development and distribution of data focused on the quality of those programs. The public was then invited to comment on the regulations, with the comment period closing on Feb. 2, 2015. Note, however, that the Office of Management & Budget “is required to make a decision regarding the collection of information contained in the proposed regulations between 30 and 60 days after publication of the proposed regulations.”3 For full consideration of the public’s response, therefore, comments should be submitted by Jan. 2, 2015.

 

The Conference on English Education (CEE) urges its membership, as well as teachers, parents and students, to make use of this public comment period to respond to the proposed regulations – ideally by Jan. 2.

 

These regulations are disingenuous at best, hypocritical at worst, in their misrepresentation of and approach to quality teacher education. Therefore, we must state clearly and forcefully – to the DOE, as well as to US senators, state representatives, university presidents, state superintendents, school principals, teachers, students, neighbors and the public at large – that the proposed regulations will do more harm than good.

 

Whether online, through the media or in person, we must speak against the misguided beliefs driving such regulation: that teacher performance can be equated to student performance; that standardized tests provide meaningful evidence of learning; that student learning occurs in a vacuum; that there is one set approach that works with all students. We have been invited to speak, and we must accept the invitation – although it feels a bit like being invited to the Mad Hatter’s tea party, doesn’t it? “But I don’t want to go among mad people,” Alice remarked. “Oh, you can’t help that,” said the Cat: “we’re all mad here. I’m mad. You’re mad.” “How do you know I’m mad?” said Alice. “You must be,” said the Cat, “or you wouldn’t have come here.”

 

Despite very little evidence to support its efficacy for student learning, standardized testing has claimed our classrooms. “Objective” data drives decision-making rather than the “subjective” issues that affect the children we seek to educate. Teachers are constantly labeled as ineffective, uncaring, unprepared. Patently unqualified corporations, millionaires and for-profit businesses are invited to “solve” educational issues while patently qualified teachers, teacher educators and educational researchers are excluded from the discussion.

 

The document is found at http://www.regulations.gov/#!documentDetail;D=ED-2014-OPE-0057-0001

 

To do so, visit http://www.regulations.gov/#!submitComment;D=ED-2014-OPE-0057-0001

 

For additional information, view Jane West’s webinar: http://ceedar.education.ufl.edu/wpcontent/ uploads/2014/12/Teacher-Preparation-Regulations-for-CEEDAR.pdf

 

For an excellent example, see Anne Elrod Whitney’s piece Proposed Regulations Bad for Kids, Teachers, and Schools: http://writerswhocare.wordpress.com/2014/12/08/proposed-regulations-bad-forkids- teachers-and-schools/ And now, teacher education programs have moved into the line of fire. If the proposed regulations are to be believed, teacher preparation currently functions with little accountability, producing poor quality candidates whose abilities are not properly assessed. The evidence for such claims consists of flawed measures and unreliable research from questionable sources.

 

Yet, the answer to this (unproven) assumption is to increase assessment and accountability measures, despite no evidence that these measures have been beneficial as implemented in the public schools. Madness. Teacher preparation programs are, indeed, held accountable; they undergo assessment; they use data to inform their decision-making processes.

 

As the professional organization for English teacher education, CEE created the Standards for Initial Preparation of Teachers of Secondary English Language Arts 7-12; revised in 2012, these standards delineate the required competencies of knowledge, skills and dispositions connected to content, pedagogy, learners and professionalism. The Council for the Accreditation of Educator Preparation (CAEP) uses these standards to assess and recognize the abilities of English teacher education programs to prepare quality secondary English teachers. To meet these standards, programs must gather, analyze and report a wide range of data from both the program and the candidates. This external accountability is in addition to the internal accountability of the programs themselves. In-house, as it were, teacher preparation programs must remain cognizant of and respond to the internal and external pressures driving education in order to prepare teachers for the classroom.

 

Do some teacher education programs fail in this endeavor? Admittedly, yes. But the way to improve our teacher education programs is not with more assessment and accountability, measures in and of themselves that are already present and valued in higher education. Could these measures be improved? Certainly, as any educator knows. Teacher education programs recognize the need to improve our efforts to gather better data from and about our graduates; we are constantly revising our means of candidate assessment in order to respond to our needs and the requirements of an outside accrediting body.

 

What we don’t do is expect the test scores of our graduates’ students to provide a worthwhile measure of their teacher’s efficacy. Value added measurement (VAM) has little support among those with the ability to understand the nuances of assessment5, much less those of teaching and learning. Parents certainly do not support the current over-testing of their children; teachers know that reliance on externally developed high-stakes tests offers a distorted view of a child’s abilities; teacher educators recognize that assessment is a nuanced process that requires multiple measures over time. We know that assessing teachers’ worth on the test scores of the complex human beings they teach is a deeply flawed measure of ability, with no recognition of the many factors influencing both teaching and learning. Rather than admit this and seek better ways to determine quality teaching, however, the US Department of Education now proposes to assess the teachers of the teachers’ worth on those same test scores. Madness. Alice laughed. “There’s no use trying,” she said: “one can’t believe impossible things.” “I daresay you haven’t had much practice,” said the Queen. “When I was your age, I always did it for half-an-hour a day. Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.”

 

For more on those nuances, see the American Statistical Association’s Statement on Using Value-Added Models for Educational Assessment: http://www.amstat.org/policy/pdfs/ASA_VAM_Statement.pdf These regulations promulgate beliefs that those in education know to be false: that there is one right measure of learning, that there is one right method of teaching, that there is one right type of teacher, that there is one right way to prepare teachers. Teaching is a complex, complicated, challenging, often contentious, endeavor because those we seek to teach – and the subjects we seek to teach them – are complex and complicated and challenging and, often, contentious. We understand, though, that teacher education creates the foundation that our students build on for the rest of their teaching career rather than hubristically assuming that we can boil teaching down to a set of “one size fits all” approaches that will serve in any situation.

 

Teacher education programs educate prospective teachers to understand, examine and respond to issues of content, pedagogy, learners and learning. It isn’t an easy job – hence the diversity of approaches and the ongoing assessment of those approaches in teacher education programs around the country. While the foundational principles of education may remain the same, English education programs in New York City are not – and should not be – the same as those in Cheyenne. What my students in West Lafayette, Indiana need to know in order to teach a largely rural population differs from what my colleague’s students in Tampa, Florida need to know in order to teach a largely urban population.

 

Yet, every day, we in teacher education embrace this difficult task of preparing young men and woman to respond as experienced professionals to every possible combination of factors they will meet in their future classrooms. These regulations trade on the common complaint that many beginning teachers feel unprepared when they first enter the classroom, pointing back to a lack of preparation from their teacher education programs. Solidifying such unproven cause and effect into ill-suited regulation belies the many factors that shape a teacher’s entry into the classroom: the type of school, the level of support, the number of resources, the diversity of student issues in addition to the teacher’s individual abilities, understandings and personality. Assuming that this one factor – how teachers are prepared – contributes to the high rate of teacher turnover is yet another unproven cause and effect. Teachers don’t leave simply because they aren’t prepared well. They leave because political, social and rhetorical conditions in this country destroy their will to teach. And those conditions are now poised to destroy teacher education.

 

Has it occurred to no one (except educators) that one reason teachers leave the classroom is because many schools have become unpleasant places to be? This has less to do with their preparation – teacher education programs cannot control the factors their students will meet upon entering the classroom – and everything to do with the current climate in this country surrounding teachers and education. Why would anyone want to enter a profession that is continuously attacked, denigrated and demeaned in every public avenue? And, yet, I have students in my college classrooms wanting to do just that. These bright young women and men are cognizant that their choice of career is held in little regard; they understand that they will work long hours for little external reward; they accept that the public will disregard their intelligence, their ability and their commitment in seeking to become English teachers. They want to teach, however, because they want to do something meaningful with their brains and their bodies.

 

These young college graduates willingly take on an astounding level of responsibility from their very first day in the classroom because, as one of my students wrote recently, “How are we, as future teachers, supposed to challenge our students if we never challenge ourselves?” “Take some more tea,” the March Hare said to Alice, very earnestly. “I’ve had nothing yet,” Alice replied in an offended tone, “so I can’t take more.” “You mean you can’t take LESS,” said the Hatter: “it’s very easy to take MORE than nothing.”

 

At this point in our country’s history, teachers and teacher educators are doing their best with more of nothing: no public support for their work, no understanding of their professionalism, no recognition of the contributory factors to student learning. That extends to the teacher education programs that prepare them. We work against the fallacy that teacher education at the college level is of little benefit, that sixweek boot camps can prepare anyone for the classroom, that those with no understanding of or background in education are better suited to do our work. The US DOE regulations of teacher education programs cost more time and more money – millions, in fact – while implementing an assessment system in higher education that has proven seriously flawed in the public schools. They assume a reductive approach to teacher preparation that belies the complex factors teacher education programs must navigate to educate their candidates. They dismiss the solid work happening in teacher education programs every day throughout the country in favor of pushing an agenda that neither conforms to reality nor recognizes expertise.

 

Like Alice, we need to push away from our seat at this table by clearly speaking against the misguided beliefs propelling these regulations. We need to publicly proclaim this party for the madness it is, opposing those who lead it and shaking those who slumber while it happens. We know better, as teacher educators. Every day, we do better, as teacher educators. It’s time we spoke up, as teacher educators, and established that we are better at assessing our students’ abilities as teachers than the measures proffered by these fundamentally flawed regulations.

 

Respectfully submitted,

 

Melanie Shoffner, PhD Chair, Conference on English Education

Categories Accountability, Teacher Education, Teacher Evaluations, U.S. Department of Education

Urgent: Send an Email Protesting VAM for Teacher Education

By dianeravitch
December 29, 2014 //
20

The U.S. Department of Education is accepting comments on its proposed regulations about teacher education until January 2, 2015. These regulations would impose VAM on teacher education. These institutions would be judged by the test scores of the students taught by the graduates of these institutions. Graduates would be incentivized to avoid the neediest students.

 

Please write today and urge the DOE not to impose discredited junk science on teacher education programs.

 

 

This is from the Conference on English Education of the National Council of Teachers of Education.

 

 

This document provides an overview of the U.S. Department of Education’s proposed regulations for teacher education programs, a list of points concerned educators, scholars, students and parents might use when drafting a response to the proposed regulations, and information on how and when to deliver a response. The authors of this Call to Action urge the CEE membership, as well as all concerned parties, to submit a response to these regulations immediately.

 

 

How to Comment: 1. E-mail OIRA_DOCKET@omb.eop.gov by January 2, 2015. 2. Submit comments through the comment portal on the regulations website: https://www.federalregister.gov/articles/2014/12/03/2014-28218/teacher-preparation-issues

 

Summary of Proposed Regulations

 

 

On December 3, 2014, the U.S. Department of Education proposed a new federal rule to extend accountability measures to teacher education programs.

 

Under this rule, teacher education programs would be graded based on the employment, placement, and performance of its graduates. Included in the performance ranking is the use of VAM (value added measures), a statistical formula that uses children’s tests scores to demonstrate teacher effectiveness.

 

These rankings will be used to determine eligibility for federal TEACH grants. The Office of Management & Budget is required to make a decision about the collection of information between 30 and 60 days after the regulations’ publication. For your comments to be fully considered, (1) submit them by email (OIRA_DOCKET@omb.eop.gov) or (2) through the comment portal (https://www.federalregister.gov/articles/2014/12/03/2014-28218/teacher-preparation-issues) by Jan. 2, 2015.

 

 

Points to Reiterate in Your Own Words: Too Much Testing

 

 

The tests used to create the VAM hinder teaching, learning, and innovation. They diminish the experience of school for teachers and children. They discourage teaching that responds to the child and encourage teaching to the test. Children are defined as data and ranked by test scores.

 

Flawed Methods, Bad Measures

 

The methods suggested to rank teacher education programs rely on measures that do not serve children, teachers, or schools. The regulations extend the controversial VAM and standards-based models of K-12 education to higher education. The American Statistical Society discredited the VAM as a valid measure of teacher effectiveness.

 

 

Hampers Innovation

 

 

Innovation demands risk; regulations demand obedience. By tying university programs to a federal rule, the regulations stifle creative responses to local education needs. Instead of meeting the needs of school systems, teachers, children, and parents, universities will be tied to meeting the standards of regulation, regardless of how those regulations fit the local context. In addition, a federal rule leaves university programs unable to meet new challenges and to adapt to changing conditions. 2 Federal Overreach States already regulate their teacher education programs. The proposed regulations transfer that power to the federal government and use the TEACH grants to enforce that power. This is the definition of federal overreach.

 

 

The Hidden Costs

 

 

The federal regulations demand data and performance from teacher education programs, but they place the costs of gathering and disseminating that data on states. This is another unfunded mandate from the federal government.

 

 

Caricatures of Teacher Education Programs

 

 

The report portrays teacher education programs as unaccountable producers of poorly prepared teachers. This portrait understands accountability as a statistical formula. Teacher education programs understand assessment and accountability as an ongoing, varied and supportive effort that focuses on the child as an individual with individual needs and abilities, Teacher education programs prepare many, many excellent teachers every year in an inhospitable climate to public education.

 

 

How to Comment: 1. E-mail OIRA_DOCKET@omb.eop.gov by January 2, 2015.

 

 

2. Submit comments through the comment portal on the regulations website: https://www.federalregister.gov/articles/2014/12/03/2014-28218/teacher-preparation-issues

 

 

Respectfully submitted,

 

 

Rebecca Powell, University of Southern Mississippi

 

Anne Elrod Whitney, Pennsylvania State University

 

Don Zancanella, University of New Mexico

 

Melanie Shoffner, CEE Chair, Purdue University

 

 

Sources

 

American Statistical Society on VAM http://www.amstat.org/policy/pdfs/ASA_VAM_Statement.pdf

 

Sharon Robinson, AACTE President http://hechingerreport.org/content/burdensome-restrictive-flawed-why-proposed-federal-regulations-for-teacherpreparation- programs-are-a-cause-for-concern_18389/

 

Jane West’s webinar: http://ceedar.education.ufl.edu/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/Teacher- Preparation-Regulations-for-CEEDAR.pdf

 

Anne Elrod Whitney’s piece Proposed Regulations Bad for Kids, Teachers, and Schools: http://writerswhocare.wordpress.com/2014/12/08/proposed-regulations-bad-for-kids-teachers-and-schools/

Categories Teacher Education, U.S. Department of Education
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