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Paul Thomas on the Media’s Search for Scapegoats in Education

By dianeravitch
June 19, 2019 //
58

 

Paul Thomas Taught for nearly 20 years, then became a teacher educator at Furman University in South Carolina. He often writes about the media and its misperceptions of teaching. In this post, he laments the fact that the media is constantly in search of a scapegoat for whatever goes wrong in education.

The latest scapegoat, he writes, is teacher education, and the latest lamentation is that teacher educators fail to teach the “science” of education.

The scapegoating deepened because of Bush’s No Child Left Behind and Obama’s Race to the Top. If every child was not 100% proficient, someone must be blamed. First, the outcry was “blame the teacher,” but when VAM backfired, it became blame the teacher educator.

 

Categories Education Reform, NCLB, Race to the Top, Teacher Education, Teachers and Teaching

Eric Blanc: Five Big Lessons from the Los Angeles Teachers’ Strike

By dianeravitch
January 25, 2019 //
14

Eric Blanc has covered the wave of teachers’ strikes that started in March 2018. He has been on the ground at everystrike, talking to the rank and file to get their perspectives as working teachers.

In this article, he describes the big lessons of the strike on Los Angeles.

He begins:

It would be hard to overstate the importance of this victory in the country’s second-largest school district. Against considerable odds, Los Angeles teachers have dealt a major blow against the forces of privatization in the city and nationwide. By taking on Democratic politicians in a deep-blue state, LA’s strike will certainly deepen the polarization within the Democratic Party over education reform and austerity. And by demonstrating the power of striking, LA educators have inspired educators nationwide to follow suit.

With new walkouts now looming in Denver, Oakland, Virginia, and beyond, it makes sense to reflect on the reasons why LA’s school workers came out on top—and what their struggle can teach people across the United States. Here are the five main takeaways.

Strikes Work: For decades, workers and the labor movement have been on the losing side of a one-sided class war. A major reason for this is that unions have largely abandoned the weapon of work stoppages, their most powerful point of leverage against employers. Rallies, marches, and civil disobedience are good, but they’re not enough.

Like the red state rebellions of 2018, the depth of the victory in Los Angeles underscores why the future of organized labor depends on reviving the strike. LA also shows that the most powerful strikes, particularly in the public sector, fight not only for the demands of union members, but on behalf of the broader community as well—an approach the United Teachers of Los Angeles (UTLA) calls “bargaining for the common good.”

The Status Quo Is Discredited: LA’s educator revolt is a particularly sharp expression of a nationwide rejection of decades of neoliberalism. Unlike many labor actions, this was not primarily a fight around wages—rather it was a political struggle against the billionaires and their proxies in government.

Like the electoral insurgencies of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Bernie Sanders, the upsurge of Los Angeles rank-and-file teachers, and the overwhelming support they received from the parents of their students, shows that working people are looking for an alternative to business as usual. Work actions like LA’s will be an essential part of any movement capable of defeating Trump and the far right.

That’s only lesson number one and two.

Keep reading to learn the other lessons.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Los Angeles, Privatization, Resistance, Teacher Education, Teachers, Unions

Wisconsin: Why Educators Should Vote for Kelda Roys, Not Tony Evers

By dianeravitch
August 3, 2018 //
2

I posted a strong endorsement of Kelda Roys. She is a candidate in the Democratic candidate for Governor of Wisconsin. The leading candidate in the race is Tony Evers, who is currently State Superintendent of Education. Some people think that he would be a strong supporter of education. But, in fact, he has made teachers’ lives worse during his tenure in office. Teachers are deeply demoralized by the combination of Governor Walker and State Chief Evers’ policies.

Read what Tim Slekar wrote about Tony Evers’ record on education. It is very bad, almost as bad as Scott Walker.

From dean of education at Edgewood College and strong public education advocate Tim Slekar.

“Tony Evers has “name recognition.” He can beat Walker. Except…

I know that’s the “theory.” But on his own issue—education—there are serious problems. For me specifically (as dean of a school of education) his Leadership Group’s dismantling and deregulating of teaching licenses because of a refusal to understand the cause of the “teacher shortage” tells me that using sound research to make policy decisions will take a back seat to neoliberal market solutions that actually cause more damage.

Teachers are leaving the profession in droves. Making it easier to enter our classrooms as a “teacher” does nothing to stop the exodus. It actually adds to it by further demoralizing the teachers that are still teaching. And that’s the real reason teachers are leaving. They are demoralized.

Excessive testing, educator effectiveness bunk, continued accountability (reform word for teachers are to blame for the achievement gap), expansion of non-public charter schools, and a top down system that denies teachers professional autonomy. And a Broad Academy Fellow (Privatization) as second in command. These are all issues DPI have significant control over but for some reason remain silent or worse supportive of.

And the candidate to take on Walker will not win without the support of the teaching profession. Assuming teachers will support Tony is rejecting their moral compass. They know Walker is horrible but they are also quite aware of the fact that DPI has left them hanging.

Give me a candidate that understands “demoralization.” That candidate will fire up education voters.”

Tim Slekar is supporting Kelda Roys for the Democratic nomination for Governor. I hope you will too!

Categories Teacher Education, Teacher Evaluations, Teacher Shortage, Walker, Scott, Wisconsin

Breaking News! New York Judge Rules that Success Academy Can’t Certify Its Own Teachers

By dianeravitch
June 19, 2018 //
22

State Supreme Court Judge Debra J. Young ruled that Success Academy can’t certify its own teachers. The chain, New York City’s largest, has very high teacher turnover and wanted to bypass the normal standards and certification process to ease its teacher shortage. It gained the approval of the State University of New York charter committee, which consists of four businessmen appointed by pro-charter Governor Andrew Cuomo. The New York State Department of Education and the New York State United Teachers sued to block the lowered standards.

Judge Young rejected Success Academy and the SUNY charter committee.

“The judge’s ruling upends the plans of the city’s largest charter school network, Success Academy, and wipes out a legislative victory that New York’s charter sector thought it had won — though the decision will likely not be the end of the legal battle.

“The regulations, approved by the State University of New York in October 2017, were designed to give charter schools more discretion over how they hired teachers. They eliminated the requirement that teachers earn master’s degrees and allowed charter schools authorized by SUNY to certify their teachers with as little as a month of classroom instruction and 40 hours of practice teaching.

“Some charter networks argued their existing in-house training programs are more useful to new teachers than the training required for certification under state law.

“But the rule was quickly challenged by the State Education Department and the state teachers union, which filed separate lawsuits that were joined in April. They argued that SUNY overstepped its authority and charged that the rule change would lead to children being taught by inexperienced and unqualified teachers…

The ruling was issued Tuesday by State Supreme Court Judge Debra J. Young, who wrote that the new certification programs were illegal because they fell below the minimum requirements issued by the state….

“The state’s top education officials — Commissioner MaryEllen Elia and Board of Regents Chancellor Betty Rosa — have long seemed offended by the new regulations. On a panel last year, Elia said, “I could go into a fast food restaurant and get more training than that.””

SUNY plans to appeal.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Education Reform, Harlem Success Academy, Teacher Education, Teacher Shortage

National Education Policy Center: Another Phony Report on Teacher Prep by NCTQ

By dianeravitch
June 16, 2018 //
21

The National Council on Teacher Quality is a conservative group created to make professional teacher education look bad. I was on the board of the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation when it was started. It floundered a while, then got a $5 Million Grant from then-Secretary of Education Rod Paige to get its act together. It has done that. Now it is Gates-funded and is a darling of reformers, who yearn to replace the teaching profession with TFA temps and screen time.

Now the NCTQ has made itself the arbiter of “Standards” for teacher education, despite its lack of qualifications. It isssues an annual report for the media, informing them that very very few institutions meet their standards. Some major media take their ratings seriously, never asking who they are and how they have the chutzpah to rate every ed school in the nation, without bothering to visit any campuses. Linda Darling-Hammond described their first report stating that it was like a colllecyion of restaurant reviews based on menus, not on visits and tastings.

The National Education Policy Center reviewed the latest NCTQ report:

BOULDER, CO— The National Council on Teacher Quality (NCTQ) recently released its 2018 Teacher Prep Review. The report examines whether U.S. teacher preparation programs are aligned with NCTQ’s standards. This alignment, the report insists, will produce teachers “not only ready to achieve individual successes, but also [ready] to start a broader movement toward increased student learning and proficiency.”

The NCTQ report regularly garners generally credulous coverage from media outlets, including this year from Education Week and The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

Marilyn Cochran-Smith of Boston College, Elizabeth Stringer Keefe of Lesley University, Wen-Chia Chang of Boston College, and Molly Cummings Carney of Boston College reviewed the report for NEPC. The reviewers are all members of Project TEER (Teacher Education and Education Reform), a group of teacher education scholars and practitioners who have been studying U.S. teacher education in the context of larger reform movements since 2014. Their review found the report to have multiple logical, conceptual, and methodological flaws.

The report determines that most teacher preparation programs are not aligned with the NCTQ standards. Accordingly, it finds “severe structural problems with both graduate and alternative route programs that should make anyone considering them cautious.”

However, the report’s rationale includes widely critiqued assumptions about the nature of teaching, learning, and teacher credentials. Its methodology, which employs a highly questionable documents-only evaluation system, is a maze of inconsistencies, ambiguities, and contradictions. Further, the report ignores accumulating evidence that there is little relationship between the NCTQ’s ratings of a program and its graduates’ later classroom performance.
Finally, the report fails to substantively account for broad shifts in the field of teacher education that are nuanced, hybridized, and dynamic. It also exacerbates the dysfunctional dichotomy between university programs and alternative routes. For years now, researchers and analysts have pointed out that this distinction is not very useful, given that there is as much or more variation within these categories as between them. Ultimately, the report offers little guidance for policymakers, practitioners, or the general public.

Find the review, by Marilyn Cochran-Smith, Elizabeth Stringer Keefe, Wen-Chia Chang, and Molly Cummings Carney, at:
http://nepc.colorado.edu/thinktank/review-teacher-prep-2018

Find 2018 Teacher Prep Review, written by Robert Rickenbrode, Graham Drake, Laura Pomerance, and Kate Walsh and published by the National Council on Teacher Quality, at:
https://www.nctq.org/dmsView/2018_Teacher_Prep_Review_733174

Categories Education Reform, National Council on Teacher Quality (NCTQ), National Education Policy Center, Teacher Education

ALERT: GOP Legislature in Michigan Considering Legislation to Harm Teacher Education Programs

By dianeravitch
May 10, 2018 //
6

Mitchell Robinson, a professor of music education at Michigan State University has published an urgent warning about ill-considered legislation that Michigan is considering in an attempt to punish teacher education programs.

Ironically, only days after the conservative journal published an article debunking the idea that teacher education programs should be held accountable for the test scores of the students of their graduates, the GOP-dominated Michigan legislature wants to require teacher education programs to give a “warranty” that their teachers will be effective…or else.

As Professor Robinson points out, the irony in this legislation is that the legislature is simultaneously trying to open additional paths to alternative certification to teachers who have no professional education at all.

Highlights include…

• House Bill 5598: This bill would require all teacher ed faculty to complete 30 hours of subject-specific continuing education per year. “Faculty members must demonstrate completion of these requirements to the satisfaction of MDE”.

Collegiate faculty are typically the persons who provide this instruction, so it is unclear how this continuing education requirement would be implemented, and by whom. Further, collegiate faculty already engage in significant professional development by attending research conferences and other events throughout the year–it is unclear how this requirement would impact those events.

• House Bill 5599: would link teacher ed program approval to the effectiveness of their graduates in the schools by instituting a “warranty” program. While this may sound like a good idea in theory, it equates the process of education to that of a business transaction. A warranty may make sense when one purchases a car, but early career teachers are not commodities, and teacher prep programs are not automobile manufacturers, or car dealerships. Evidence suggest that most teachers who struggle in the classroom do so as a result of a lack of adequate administrative support and mentorship–not inadequate preparation.

Further, the MDE has stats that indicate fewer than 1% of MI teachers receive a rating of “ineffective” each year–suggesting that a “warranty” program like the one here may be a solution in search of a problem.

Finally, while it’s seductive to connect a young teacher’s effectiveness in the classroom to the quality of instruction that novice teacher receives in their undergraduate education program, the connection here is much more complicated and complex than that. Just as K-12 teachers should not be evaluated based on their students’ scores on standardized tests (https://theconversation.com/can-it-get-more-absurd-now-music-teachers-are-being-tested-based-on-math-and-reading-scores-47995), teacher educators should not be evaluated based on their students’ effectiveness upon entering the profession. Education is a relationship, not a business transaction–and conflating the two does a disservice to all involved.

• House Bill 5600: requires that all cooperating teachers who agree to work with a student teacher receive a stipend of $1000. Unfortunately, the bill does not mention where these funds would come from, and given the size of most higher education department budgets this requirement poses a significant challenge. For example, the program I teach in produces roughly 30 graduates per year, with a budget of around $3000. This bill would add an additional $30,000 per year to our responsibilities during a time when budgets across our university campuses are shrinking, not expanding. If the legislature wants to provide additional funding to meet this requirement, this would be a wonderful way to recognize the contributions of cooperating teachers. As it currently stands, this is simply another unfunded mandate.

Robinson concludes: If passed, this legislation will only hurry the division of the state’s teacher workforce into two castes–one, a group of hurriedly-prepared and hastily-certified edutourists for the state’s charter and private schools, and an increasingly small and dwindling number of hyper-scrutinized and continuously-monitored graduates of traditional teacher preparation programs. Neither is a pathway leading to a sustainable vision of professional success.

He urges everyone in Michigan to contact their legislators and tell them to oppose this effort to ruin the teaching profession.

Categories Michigan, Teacher Education

EdNext: How Not to Rank Teacher Preparation Programs

By dianeravitch
May 8, 2018 //
33

Education Next is a conservative journal that can be counted on to support education reform in all its manifestations.

However, today it is releasing a new study finding that the most ineffective way to rate teacher education programs is by the test scores of students taught by their graduates. As we have often said, VAM (value-added measurement), beloved by Arne Duncan, is a sham. The now discredited rule was promulgated by the Obama administration.


Ranking teacher-prep programs on value-added is ineffective

New analysis finds program rankings based on graduates’ value-added scores are largely random

Last year Congress repealed a federal rule that would have required states to rank teacher-preparation programs according to their graduates’ impact on student test scores. Yet twenty-one states and D.C. still choose to rank programs in this way. Can student test performance reliably identify more and less effective teacher-preparation programs? In a new article for Education Next, Paul T. von Hippel of the University of Texas at Austin and Laura Bellows of Duke University find that the answer is usually no.

Differences between programs too small to matter. Von Hippel and Bellows find that the differences between teachers from different preparation programs are typically too small to matter. Having a teacher from a good program rather than an average program will, on average, raise a student’s test scores by 1 percentile point or less.

Program rankings largely random. The errors that states make in estimating differences between programs are often larger than the differences states are trying to estimate. Program rankings are so noisy and error-prone that in many cases states might as well rank programs at random.

High chance of false positives. Even when a program appears to stand out from the pack, in most cases it will be a “false positive”—an ordinary program whose ranking is much higher (or lower) than it deserves. Some states do have one or two programs that are truly extraordinary, but published rankings do a poor job of distinguishing these “true positives” from the false ones.

Consistent results across six states. Using statistical best practices, von Hippel and Bellows found consistent results across six different locations—Texas, Florida, Louisiana, Missouri, Washington State, and New York City. In every location the true differences between most programs were miniscule, and program rankings consisted mostly of noise. This was true even in states where previous evaluations had suggested larger differences.

When measured in terms of teacher value-added, “the differences between [teacher-preparation] programs are typically too small to matter. And they’re practically impossible to estimate with any reliability,” say von Hippel and Bellows. They consider other ways to monitor program quality and conclude that most are not ready for prime time. But they do endorse reporting the share of a program’s graduates who become teachers and persist in the profession—especially in high-need subjects and high-need schools.

To receive a copy of “Rating Teacher-Preparation Programs: Can value-added make useful distinctions?” please contact Jackie Kerstetter at jackie.kerstetter@educationnext.org. The article will be available Tuesday, May 8 on educationnext.org and will appear in the Summer 2018 issue of Education Next, available in print on May 24, 2018.

About the Authors: Paul T. von Hippel is an associate professor at the University of Texas at Austin and Laura Bellows is a doctoral student in public policy at Duke University.

Categories Duncan, Arne, Obama, Teacher Education, Teacher Evaluations

New Mexico: State Commissioner Makes Power Grab to Grade Teacher Education Institutions

By dianeravitch
April 27, 2018 //
14

 

New Mexico is one of the lowest performing states in the nation on the NAEP. It ranks about 49th in the nation. It also has the highest child poverty rate in the nation. Unfortunately the state has a Republican governor who has swallowed the Jeb Bush formula of high-stakes testing, test-based evaluation of teachers, and privatization of schools as the answer to the state’s problems. New Mexico education has not improved at all during the reign of the Bush acolytes.

Hannah Skandera was the State Secretary of Education for seven years. She has been replaced by TFA alum Christopher Ruszkowski. He has just proposed taking control of the state’s teacher education institutions and having sole power over whether they should continue to be allowed to prepare teachers. 

The Secretary-designate is proposing to assert authority that now resides with the legislature.

New Mexico’s teacher evaluation model–one of the most punitive in the nation (test scores are 50% of a teacher’s grade)–are currently suspended while a judge considers whether they are valid.

Being a true “reformer,” Ruszkowski wants to impose letter grades on teacher education programs.

Given the persistent failure of the state’s Public Education Department over the past eight years, it would be a mistake to allow its leader to control teacher education in New Mexico.

The state Public Education Department is pushing to have more direct authority over teacher development programs, including taking on the oversight duties now provided by national accreditation groups.

But some are questioning whether the proposal is within PED’s authority.

By this time next month, PED wants a rule in place that allows it to rate educator preparation programs – which ultimately license teachers – through site visits and a scorecard system.

PED Secretary-designate Christopher Ruszkowski said he thinks they would end up evaluating about 12 to 15 New Mexico institutions, such as the University of New Mexico, New Mexico Highlands University and New Mexico State University, if the rule goes through.

The proposed evaluation system mirrors PED’s teacher evaluations and school grading efforts. Both systems have generated controversy in public school districts statewide.

PED’s proposal would allow the agency to decide whether a teacher education program may remain in operation, regardless if the institution is private or public. An institution can appeal a revocation but ultimately PED has final decision-making power, according to the rule.

Rule requirements

PED’s proposed requirements include: The program’s pedagogy, or instruction in teaching methods, has to align with PED standards; teachers in training would undergo observations by PED; the institution would be required to store documentation of the observations for at least five years; and teacher trainees would be evaluated using methodology of NMTEACH, which is the state teacher evaluation system.

PED would annually score the programs, rating them on an A to F scale and evaluating their effectiveness through factors like acceptance rates of candidates into the program, how they do on performance and licensure tests and how those who complete the programs are rated in NMTEACH.

Right now, teacher preparation programs are being reviewed by national accrediting bodies like the National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education or the Council for the Accreditation of Educator Preparation.

But Ruszkowski said the measures those organizations provide aren’t rigorous enough and they don’t review the programs frequently enough.

“The PED has the ultimate decision-making authority over teacher preparation programs that impact K-12 education directly,” Ruszkowski said. “And what states did historically is they took the NCATE or the CAEP and used it as a rubber stamp of approval.”

While UNM declined to comment, the university has previously called NCATE the “gold standard for teacher preparation.”

If PED’s new rule goes into effect, institutions already offering teacher prep programs will have to reapply under the new standards.

Instead of imposing letter grades of institutions of higher education, New Mexico needs fresh thinking about teaching and learning. It should start by throwing out the failed Florida model of test and punish.

Categories New Mexico, Teacher Education, Teacher Evaluations

An Interview with Kenneth Zeichner about Relay Graduate School of Education

By dianeravitch
April 26, 2018 //
8

 

Professor Kenneth Zeichner of the University of Washington has studied and written extensively about teacher education.

In this interview, he sharply criticizes the “independent teacher prep programs” that have sprung up in recent years to provide newly minted teachers for charter schools. The most conspicuous example of such a program is the Relay Graduate zschool of Education, which claims to be a graduate school but has none of the requisite features of a graduate school. No scholars, no studies of the foundations of education, no concern about Research. In effect, this school and others like it focus solely on discipline and test scores.

“Instead of making the status quo permanent by increasing the supply of under-prepared, inexperienced, and short-term teachers in high-poverty schools, we should seek to eliminate this situation. We should invest in a high quality college and university system of teacher education as has been done in leading education systems in the world. We should provide greater incentives for fully certified, and experienced, teachers to work for more than a few years in schools attended primarily by students living in poverty. Finally, we should make sure that the public resources in these schools and communities are comparable to those in wealthier communities.

“Relay currently promotes itself as a solution to teacher shortages, especially shortages of teachers of color. While they may have increased the percentage of teachers of color in their cohorts, they do not present retention data or evidence that they actually are contributing to solving the problem of teacher shortages or shortages of teachers of color. Most of their teachers are prepared in and for charter schools, and there is no public data as to where they teach post graduation, how long they stay, and how well they teach beyond the hand-picked testimonials they advertise.

“The teaching shortages in districts throughout the U.S. are real and very troubling, but fueling the pipeline with uncertified and underprepared teachers isn’t the solution. Most scholars who have studied these issues such as Richard Ingersoll of the University of Pennsylvania and Linda Darling Hammond of the Learning Policy Institute, conclude that the shortages result from teacher attrition more than the underproduction of teachers, and that attrition is a consequence of low teacher compensation and benefits, poor induction and working conditions, as well the general blaming and shaming of teachers for the problems of society and the accountability systems that have been developed reflecting this view.

“What we need to do is to improve teacher compensation and working conditions, including access to high quality teacher professional development. We also need to ensure that the pre-service preparation for teaching they receive is of high quality.

“The shortage of teachers of color is also a serious problem, but it won’t be solved by investing in entrepreneurial programs like Relay. Subsidizing the preparation of teachers in the public universities that prepare most of the nation’s teachers as is done in other leading educational systems in the world will create the conditions for a well-prepared, and more diverse workforce.”

Categories Education Reform, Teacher Education, Teacher Pay, Teacher Shortage, Teachers and Teaching

Mercedes Schneider: Relay + TFA, Partners in Deprofessionalizing Education

By dianeravitch
March 8, 2018 //
11

 

Mercedes Schneider did some research and discovered that a very large proportion of the “deans” at the Relay “Graduate Schools of Education” got their start in Teach for America.

Relay Graduate School of Education’s Overwhelmingly TFA-Derived “Deans”

This makes sense. TFA bypasses traditional professional education and places ill-prepared “teachers” in urban and rural classrooms with only five weeks of training. Who would go to a doctor who never went to medical school but had five weeks of training? Who would go to a “lawyer” who skipped law school and read law books for five weeks?

Relay is the right place for “deans” with no real education background. These faux “graduate schools” have none of the authentic markers of a genuine graduate school of education. Few, if any, of their faculty have doctorates. They have no programs in the foundations of education, in cognitive development, in learning the skills need to be a teacher of children with disabilities or a teacher of English language learners. Libraries? I don’t think so.

Relay grew out of a program created at Hunter College called TeacherU, whose purpose was to prepare young people to teach in charter schools. It was sponsored by three no-excuses charter chains: KIPP, Achievement First, and Uncommon Schools. What matters most to the no-excuses charters are strict discipline and test scores. Who needs research? Who needs scholarship? Who needs experts in school finance or history or psychology? Not Relay.

Like the unaccredited Broad Superintendents Academy, Relay is a means of bypassing professional education while mimicking it.

The Atlanta Board of Education just awarded a $600,000 sole source contract to Relay to prepare leaders.

Schneider reviews the background of the 15 Relay “deans” and concludes:

There you have it: 15 “deans”; no Ph.D.s (but one almost); no bachelors degrees in education; no refereed publications, and not a one “dean” qualified for a tenure-track position in a legitimate college of education. But who needs legitimacy when you can franchise yourself into a deanship?

What a farce.

P.S. Mercedes Schneider has an earned Ph.D. in research methodology and statistics. She chose to teach high school students in Louisiana. She knows what a legitimate graduate school of education is.

Categories Administrators, superintendents, Atlanta, Principals, Teach for America, Teacher Education
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