Archives for category: Teacher Education
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Rick Ayers: EdTPA Is Ruining Teacher Professionalism

By dianeravitch
November 13, 2015 //
141

Rick Ayers, a professor of teacher education at the University of San Francisco, reviews the controversy over EdTPA, the Pearson-owned assessment tool for future teachers. In the past, educational professionals decided whether teachers were prepared for their job. Now, in 35 states, teachers must take the Pearson EdTPA to win certification.

He writes:

The Education Teacher Performance Assessment (edTPA) is the new set of evaluations of teacher candidates that is spreading across the country. Packaged as government-mandated test that assures the quality of teaching, it in fact colonizes the curriculum of teacher education programs and narrows the focus on teaching as pre-determined and top down delivery of lessons.

If you ask advocates about edTPA, they’ll tell you it’s a teacher performance assessment developed through a partnership between Stanford University’s Center for Assessment, Learning and Equity (SCALE) and the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education (AACTE). They describe it as being designed “by the profession, for the profession” and “transformative for prospective teachers because [it] requires candidates to actually demonstrate the knowledge and skills required to help all students learn in real classrooms.” And policy makers are listening: as of November 2015, 647 educator preparation programs in 35 states are using edTPA, and it’s required for teacher licensure in 4 states.

Critics, however, tell a radically different story. In articles published in an increasing number of academic journals, blogs, and trade magazines, they question the validity of the assessment, its ideological stance, and its function as yet another tool of privatized, neoliberal reform. Barbara Madeloni, now president of the Massachusetts Teachers Association, was an early resistor. After the New York Times published a 2012 article about her students’ refusal to participate in an edTPA pilot, Madeloni lost her job at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Later, she, with Julie Gorlewski of SUNY New Paltz, published a series of critiques under headlines like “Wrong Answer to the Wrong Question” that describe edTPA as reductive and poorly aligned with the goals of social justice education….

Many scholars and activists are especially concerned about the role of Pearson Education, who is the exclusive administrator of edTPA and charges $300 per candidate per submission. $75 of this goes back to a “calibrated scorer”–a teacher or teacher educator who, with just 19-23 hours of computer-based training by Pearson was magically transformed from unqualified to evaluate their own teacher candidates to a national expert in evidence-based assessment. The other $225, presumably, goes to Pearson, SCALE and AACTE, who are surely celebrating their resounding success: 18,463 candidates were required to take edTPA in 2014. At $300 each, that’s $5,538,900. It is true that Pearson offers some vouchers to offset the cost for candidates. But in 2014, there were a whopping 600 vouchers available for the entire state of New York.

I have learned from a high-level official in New York that EdTPA has caused numerous problems. The future teachers are supposed to submit videos that show them teaching but parents are reluctant to give permission to film their children. The pass rates of African-American and Hispanic candidates is disproportionately low.

To many observers, both inside and outside the teacher education profession, EdTPA seems to be just one more piece of the “reform” effort to break the teaching profession and make it easier to turn teaching into a scripted performance.

If anyone wants to defend EdTPA, go for it. I’m all ears.

Categories Accountability, Illinois, Pearson, Teacher Education, Testing

Our Blog Poet’s Rhyming Commentary on “The Mywayman” (with apologies to Alfred Noyes)

By dianeravitch
September 19, 2015 //
8

The blog is fortunate to have its own poet, who goes by the nom de plume of “Some DamPoet.” He/she frequently regales us with witty poems to fit the moment. This one is fashioned after Alfred Noyes'”The Highwayman.”

“The Mywayman” (after “The Highwayman”, by Alfred Noyes)

PART ONE

THE VAM was a torrent of darkness among reformy goals
The school was a ghostly galleon tossed upon rocky shoals
The Test was a ribbon of Pearson tying the Common Core,
And the Mywayman came riding—
Riding—riding—
The Mywayman came riding, up to the school-house door.

He’d a half-cocked plan in his forehead, a shill of Gates for his spin,
A coat of the cleanest whitewash, and breeches of law within;
Though served with a Lederman wrinkle (the suits were up to his thigh!)
He rode with a jeweled twinkle,
His ed-u-bots a-twinkle,
His Tests and VAMs a twinkle, under the New York sky.

Over the cobbles he clattered and clashed in the dark school-yard,
And he tapped with his Test on the shutters, but all was locked and barred;
He whistled a tune to the window, and who should be waiting there
But the Test Lord’s VAM-eyed Super,
Elia, the New York Super
Planting a bright red “Opt Not!!” inside the “Opt out” lair.

And dark in the dark old school-yard a rusty swing-set creaked
Where Diane the Blogger listened; her curiosity piqued;
Her eyes were filled with sadness, her worry was plain as day,
For she loved the public schoolhouse,
The American public schoolhouse
Alert as can be she listened, and she heard the Gov’nor say—

“Hear this, my well-paid Super, I’m after a prize to-night,
And I shall make Opt-out parents fold before the morning light;
Yet, if they press me sharply, and harry me through the day,
Then look for me by moonlight,
Watch for me by moonlight,
I’ll come to thee by moonlight, though parents should bar the way.”

He rose upright in the stirrups; he scarce could hide his rage ,
He tried to mask what the case meant, but face read like a page
As the franks and beans from the dinner were mingling with his bile
He cursed its taste in the moonlight,
(Oh, putrid taste in the moonlight!)
Then he tugged at his reign in the moonlight, and galloped away to Long Isle.

PART TWO

He did not come in the dawning; he did not come at noon;
And out o’ the tawny sunset, before the rise o’ the moon,
When the Test was a Mobius ribbon, looping the Coleman lore,
An Opt-out troop came marching—
Marching—marching—
The parents all came marching, up to the Governor’s door.

They said no word to the Test Lord, they mocked the test instead,
And they nagged the Super and grilled her about everything she’d said;
All of them knew what the case meant, with Lederman at their side!
There were parents at every window;
And hell at one dark window;
Elia could see, through the window, the road that he would ride.

They had tried to get her attention, ‘bout many an invalid test;
They had written a letter to meet her, to discuss the VAMs and the rest!
“Now, keep good watch!” and they dissed her.
She heard the Governor say—
Look for me by moonlight;
Watch for me by moonlight;
I’ll come to thee by moonlight, though parents should bar the way!

She twisted her claims for the parents; but all their Not!s held good!
She waved her hands at the figures, she said were “misunderstood!”
She stretched and strained credulity, and the hours crawled by like years,
Till, now, on the stroke of midnight,
Cold, on the stroke of midnight,
The tip of one finger touched it! The statute at least was hers!

The tip of one finger touched it; she strove no more for the Test!
Up, she stood up to attention, with the statute above the rest ,
She would not risk a hearing; she would not strive again;
For the road lay bare in the moonlight;
Blank and bare in the moonlight;
And the blood of her veins in the moonlight throbbed to the Gov’s refrain .

The quote of laws! Had he heard it? Her quote of NY laws?;
Her quote of laws — from the distance? The “Rights of Parents” clause?
Down the ribbon of Mobius, over the brow with his bill,
The Mywayman came riding,
Riding, riding!
The parents looked to their stymying! She stood up, straight and still!

Tlot-tlot, in the frosty silence! Tlot-tlot, in the echoing night!
Nearer he came and nearer! Her face was like a light!
Her eyes grew wide for a moment; her heart, it missed a beat
Then her fingers moved in the moonlight,
Her pen-stroke shattered the moonlight,
Shattered the tests in the moonlight, sealing the Gov’s defeat

He turned; he spurred to the West; he did not know who blinked
Bowed, with her head o’er edict, drenched with her own ink!
Not till the dawn he heard it, and his face grew grey to hear
How Elia, the New York Super,
The Test Lord’s well-paid Super,
Had watched for the Gov in the moonlight, determined his future there

Back, he spurred like a madman, shrieking a curse to the sky,
With Elia caving behind him and his testing vanquished nigh!
Wide-read- were his slurs on the Twitter; wide-spread was the parents’ vote,
When they opted out on the test day,
In droves and droves on the test day,
And he lay in the flood on the test day, with a bunch of ‘rents at his throat

And still of a winter’s night, they say, when the VAMmers roam like trolls
When the school is a ghostly galleon tossed upon rocky shoals,
When the Test is a ribbon of Pearson tying the Common Core,
A Mywayman comes riding—
Riding—riding—
A Mywayman comes riding, up to the school-house door.

Over the cobbles he clatters and clangs in the dark school-yard,
And he taps with his Test on the shutters, but all is locked and barred;
He whistles a tune to the window, and who should be waiting there
But the Test Lord’s VAM-eyed Super,
Elia, the New York Super
Planting a bright red “Opt Not!!” inside the “Opt out” lair.

Categories Cuomo, Andrew, New York, Teacher Education

Faculty at U. Of Memphis Opposes Relay “Graduate” School of Education

By dianeravitch
September 19, 2015 //
14

Faculty members at the University of Memphis are fighting any partnership between the university and the Relay “Graduate School of Education.”

The student newspaper writes:

“Can Relay Graduate School of Education produce quality educators after a one-year teaching residency in one of Memphis’ charter schools?

“The University of Memphis is reconsidering this question after faculty senate members have asked university president David M. Rudd to reevaluate the potential impact of a proposed partnership between the university, Relay, and Shelby County Schools/ Achievement School District.

“The proposed program is drawing concern from faculty members and people in the community, where charter schools already use young teachers who obtain teaching certification from other non-traditional programs such as Teach for America or Memphis Teacher Residency.

“The faculty senate unanimously voted to independently investigate any risks that Relay might pose to current university programs. Additionally, a task force likely to include Provost Karen Weddle-West, College of Education, Health, and Human Sciences Dean Ernest Rakow, and Professor of Educational Leadership Reginald Green will be established to offer recommendations for a university partnership with SCS/ASD.

“Relay is a one-year teaching residency program available to undergraduates from any major, and while their training period is substantially longer than other alternative certification programs, some feel that it is still inadequate.

“With what they are doing, it is impossible to become a good teacher — especially if you do not have an educational background in areas like the psychology of education,” said Mate Wierdl, a U of M professor in the Department of Mathematical Sciences and a faculty senate member.

“Relay’s official website outlines of their curriculum, that includes reviewing recorded classroom footage of student’s teaching interactions, as well as online tutorials. Wierdl, however, is perturbed by other concerns.

“We don’t exactly know what Relay is doing. We know that Relay is a company based in New York. We know that it is four years old. Otherwise, it has no track record whatsoever,” said Wierdl. “It’s just the strangest thing — that somehow charter school teachers can train other charter school teachers, and in New York and now in Tennessee, they can give out master’s degrees.”

Categories Corporate Reform, Teacher Education, Tennessee

Is Online Teacher Education as Good as Traditional Teacher Education?

By dianeravitch
September 15, 2015 //
39

Wouldn’t you know that the narrative of “bad teachers cause low scores and failing schools” would produce new contenders to prepare “great” teachers?

The regular ratings published by the National Council of Teacher Quality in U.S. News claim that almost every teacher education program in the nation stinks. They reach that conclusion not by visiting campuses but by perusing course catalogues and give demerits based on their own criteria.

But what to do?

The answer (to some): online teacher education.

Many online “universities” already offer degrees to teachers, who presumably never interact with a real child until they enter the classroom. Online universities are the biggest producer of masters’ degrees for teaching.

Now, Emily Feistritzer has created an online company called “TEACH-NOW,” which will offer degrees to those who want to teach. She has already awarded degrees to 600 teachers but plans to expand the number of students to 10,000.

The newly rebranded TEACH-NOW Educatore School of Education (taking the go-big-or-go-home approach to capitalization) was founded in 2011 by Emily Feistritzer, a long-time analyst of alternative-certification programs. TEACH-NOW is a traditional certification program, however—it takes at least nine months to finish, leading to certification. The first class began in March 2013.

While the school has commenced or completed training more than 600 teaching candidates, it announced this week ambitious plans to prepare 10,000 new teachers over the next five years, and establish a master’s degree program. To help with the expansion, TEACH-NOW has hired Philip A. Schmidt, former dean of the teacher-training program for Western Governors University, a major nonprofit online school. At WGU, Schmidt helped oversee a similar scale-up over the past 14 years.

“It’s true that we’re in the relatively early years of this school of education [TEACH-NOW], but everything about what I see and hear tells me that the jury is no longer out,” Schmidt said in an interview. “This pedagogical approach is the real thing.”Emily-feistritzer-phil-schmidt.jpg

That approach involves a cohort-based, activity-based model with a focus on group work and early exposure to the classroom, starting by week three of the program, Feistritzer said. There’s also emphasis on candidates understanding several forms of education technology.

I admit I am skeptical of most online learning programs for children and for professionals, but I am willing to be convinced. Has any reader earned a degree online? What do you think of your preparation to teach?

Categories On-Line Education, Teacher Education

Zeichner and Conklin on the Misuse of Research to Bash University-Based Teacher Education

By dianeravitch
September 11, 2015 //
30

Kenneth Zeichner and Hilary G. Conklin complain that vendors of alternative pathways into teaching have been misusing research to slam university-based teacher education. In an excerpt from a longer study, they document how organizations like Teach for America, the National Council on Teacher Quality, and the Relay “Graduate School of Education” have selectively quoted research to support their own self-interest. They seek not to improve university-based teacher education, but to replace it with entrepreneurial programs.

Zeichner is a professor of teacher education at the University of Washington, Seattle, and professor emeritus in the School of Education at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. A member of the National Academy of Education, he has done extensive research and teaching and teacher education. Conklin is a program leader and associate professor of secondary social studies at DePaul University whose research interests include teacher learning and the pedagogy of teacher education.

They write:

Critics of college and university-based teacher preparation have made many damaging claims about the programs that prepare most U.S. teachers–branding these programs as an “industry of mediocrity”–while touting the new privately-financed and- run entrepreneurial programs that are designed to replace them. These critics have constructed a narrative of failure about college and university Ed schools and a narrative of success about the entrepreneurial programs, in many cases using research evidence to support their claims.

Yet in a recent independently peer-reviewed study that will be published in Teachers College Record, we show how research has been misused in debates about the future of teacher education in the United States. Critics have labeled university teacher education programs failures and decreed their replacements successes by selectively citing research to support a particular point of view (knowledge ventriloquism), and by repeating claims based on non-existent or unvetted research, or repeatedly citing a small or unrepresentative sample of research (echo chambers).

After citing specific examples of the misuse of research, they make the following recommendations:

In order to hold all programs — public and private — to common standards of quality and evidence, we believe that several things need to be done to minimize the misuse of educational research.

First, all researchers who conduct studies that purport to offer information on the efficacy of different program models, and those who produce syntheses of studies done by others, should reveal their sources of funding, their direct and indirect links to the programs, and they should subject their work to independent and blind peer review.

Second, given that much academic research on education is inaccessible to policymakers, practitioners, and the general public, researchers should take more responsibility for communicating their findings in clear ways to various stakeholders.

Third, the media should cover claims about issues in teacher education in proportion to the strength of the evidence that stands behind them and whether or not they are supported by research that has been independently vetted.

Fourth, we should assess the quality of programs based on an analysis of a variety of costs and benefits associated with particular programs, and not just look at whose graduates can raise test scores the most. Research suggests that an emphasis only on raising test scores deepens educational inequities and continues to create a second-class system of schooling for students living in poverty.

Categories Research, Teach for America, Teacher Education

Laura Chapman Compares Relay “Graduate School of Education” to McDonald’s University

By dianeravitch
September 9, 2015 //
57

Relay “Graduate School of Education” is not a real graduate school of any kind. It has been accredited in a few states to award “master’s degrees” even though it has no one on its faculty with a doctorate, engages in no research, has no library, and has no relationship to the advancement of knowledge in education. It was created by charter operators to teach future charter teachers how to control classes and how to raise test scores. Its “faculty” consists of charter teachers, mostly from Teach for America, some of whom claim that they raised test scores more than anyone else in their city. Its deans do not have doctorates in any field of study, although a few say they are working towards earning a doctorate. I admit my own bias; I earned my Ph.D. at Teachers College, where my mentor was Lawrence A. Cremin, the greatest historian of his generation, and where every faculty member had a doctorate. Research and the advancement of knowledge was one of the goals of graduate education. Then. It was expected that graduate students would learn about the sociology, economics, history, and politics of education. Then. They would conduct research and earn a degree based on the quality of their research. Then.

Here is Laura Chapman’s observation:

Here is another sad thing about Relay. NY state was the first to accredit the program and President Obama/Arne Duncan approved of it as a model for other to follow.

A colleague once attended McDonald University in order to show the public exactly what the training methods were. He did not last long. They kicked him out, but not before he got some insight into the cult of standardization and cost-cutting.

Relay is the educational equivilent of McDonald University. It is a franchise operation for charter schools that want fully standardized cost effective education achieved by processing children through a mental meatgrinder to have the same puppet-like response to the teachers questions, on time, and with the right posture, gait, hand placement. Before McDonald and Relay the guru of this version of training was B.F. Skinner.

http://www.relay.edu/blog-entry/doe-recognizes-relay-federal-plan

Categories Charter Schools, Higher Education, Teacher Education

Illinois Picks Pearson EdTPA to Certify Teachers

By dianeravitch
August 24, 2015 //
33

Fred Klonsky’s blog carries a post by retired educator Sandra Deines about a fateful decision in Illinois:

“Starting this fall Pearson will be in the business of deciding who becomes a teacher in the state of Illinois.

“The Illinois State Board of Education has adopted a rule that designates Pearson’s “edTPA” as the means by which student teachers will be evaluated and granted certification.

“As the fall semester begins, all student teachers in the state will be required to pay an extra $300 (on top of the tuition they are already paying) and arrange for videotaping so that they can submit a lengthy narrative that covers the planning, execution and evaluation of a series of lessons with one of their classes as well as a ten-minute video of themselves carrying out their lesson with a class.

“Student teachers are required to get parent permission for their children to be video-taped.

“Pearson owns the video.

“Once submitted to Pearson, an “evaluator” will apply rubrics and 2-3 hours of their time to decide whether or not the student teacher “passes” and can be licensed to teach by the State of Illinois.

“That’s right—no longer will the evaluations of cooperating teachers, university field instructors and education professors determine the success of a student teacher.”

To learn about how to resist the Pearson takeover of teacher certification in Illinois, read the test of the post.

Categories Illinois, Pearson, Teacher Education, Teacher Evaluations, Testing

How Will The ED Department Judge Teacher Prep Programs?

By dianeravitch
July 24, 2015 //
18

Politico.com reports today that the General Accounting Office wants the U.S. Departmemt of Education to exercise greater oversight over teacher education programs. The question is how quality will be judged? Will it be the pass rates on Pearson’s EdTPA? Or the VAM ratings based on student test scores after graduation? If the former, expect to see a sharp decline in the proportion of African-American and Latino teachers? If the latter, expect to see teachers avoiding special education and schools in poor districts?

Incentives have unintended consequences.

As long as they are beefing up oversight at ED, why don’t they close down some of the predatory for-profit colleges that sell worthless diplomas and saddle young people with debt?

If the U. S. Department of Education had the capacity to oversee any sector,

Categories Teacher Education, U.S. Department of Education, VAM (value-added modeling)

Formal Review of NCTQ: Its Ratings Are Meaningless

By dianeravitch
June 3, 2015 //
10

Mercedes Schneider reports that the National Council on Teacher Quality received a formal evaluation for the first time in its 15-year history, and, the results are “not pretty.”

Created by the conservative Thomas B. Fordham Foundation/Institute to encourage alternative routes into teaching, NCTQ labored in obscurity for several years. Then, with the rise of the corporate reform movement, NCTQ became the go-to source for journalists looking for comments about how terrible teachers and teacher education are. It also became a recipient of Gates’ funding. See its 2011 report on teacher evaluation in Los Angeles here.)

Now NCTQ issues an annual report published by U.S. News & World Report, rating the nation’s colleges of education and finding almost all of them to be substandard. Among its standards is whether the institution teaches the Common Core. It bases its ratings on course catalogues and reading lists, not on site visits. Some institutions, skeptical of NCTQ’s qualifications and motivation, have refused to cooperate or send materials.

NCTQ recently agreed to collaborate with professors at Vanderbilt University and the University of North Carolina to assess the quality and validity of NCTQ’s ratings of colleges of education. The bottom line: the ratings do not gauge or predict teacher quality.

The full study opens with these conclusions:

“In our analysis of NCTQ’s overall TPP ratings, we find that in one out of 42 comparisons the graduates of TPPs with higher NCTQ ratings have higher value-added scores than graduates of TPPs with lower ratings; in eight out of 30 comparisons graduates of TPPs with higher NCTQ ratings receive higher evaluation ratings than graduates of TPPs with lower NCTQ ratings. There are no significant negative associations between NCTQ’s overall TPP ratings and teacher performance. In our analysis of NCTQ’s TPP standards, out of 124 value-added comparisons, 15 of the associations are positive and significant and five are negative and significant; out of 140 teacher evaluation rating comparisons, 31 associations are positive and significant and 23 are negative and significant.

“With our data and analyses, we do not find strong relationships between the performance of TPP (teacher prep program) graduates and NCTQ’s overall program ratings or meeting NCTQ’s standards.”

What does it mean?

Gary Henry of Vanderbilt Universoty was quoted here:

“The study also examined teacher evaluations but failed to establish a strong relationship between good teacher evaluations and NCTQ standards, according to Henry.

“The conclusion was the same,” Henry said. “Higher NCTQ ratings don’t appear to lead to higher performing teachers.”

I think that means the NCTQ ratings have no value in rating institutions or their graduates.

Categories National Council on Teacher Quality (NCTQ), Teacher Education, Teacher Evaluations

Indiana University Dean Agrees that Education in the State is Headed to “Disaster” Under Former Governor Daniels’ Course

By dianeravitch
June 3, 2015 //
18

Gerardo Gonzalez, dean of the College of Education at Indiana University, wrote a letter to the editor of the Indianapolis Star agreeing with the dean of the College of Education at Purdue: Indiana is on track for an education disaster because of the policies enacted by the legislature at the behest of former Governor Mitch Daniels (now president of Purdue) and continued by his success Mike Pence.

 

He wrote:

 

Indiana’s downward trend in education enrollments can be traced directly to the policies promoted under then-Gov. Daniels and Indiana schools superintendent Tony Bennett. Between 2000 and 2012 constant-dollar teacher salaries in Indiana decreased by 10 percent, outpaced nationally only by North Carolina’s 14 percent decrease.

 

At the same time, the wrong-headed Rules for Educator Preparation and Accountability policies promoted by Daniels and Bennett increased regulation of education schools and licensure requirements for teacher education students while lowering standards of preparation for nontraditional teacher prep programs. Coupled with the equally flawed testing and test-based teacher evaluation policies implemented in the state, these rules have driven out experienced, effective teachers while discouraging new teachers from entering the field.

 

Unless Indiana changes course, its public education system is headed for disaster. Already teacher shortages are being felt across the board, not just in traditional shortage areas.

 

It is wonderful to see education leaders speaking out fearlessly and telling the truth. Indiana’s leaders have led education to a precipice. Will the electorate permit them to continue destroying public education and higher education?

Categories Accountability, Education Reform, Indiana, Teacher Education, Teachers
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