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More on Houston Lawsuit Challenging VAM Methods to Evaluate Teachers

By dianeravitch
May 1, 2014 //
12

As readers of this blog know, using value-added-assessment is a very poor way to gauge teacher quality. The research and evidence do not support this methodology. Teacher quality cannot be judged by computers. Test scores reflect only a small part of what teachers do. And as the American Statistical Association recently said, teachers account for about 1-16% of the variation in test scores, yet their rating will be heavily influenced by test scores.

Here is a press release about the lawsuit filed in federal court in Houston, challenging VAM:

 

For Immediate Release
May 1, 2014

 

 

 

Contact:
Gayle Fallon, HFT
713/623-8891
Janet Bass, AFT
301/502-5222
jbass@aft.org

Seven Houston Teachers, Houston Federation of Teachers File Lawsuit
Challenging Constitutionality of Value-Added Measure for Evaluations
HOUSTON—Highly recognized, good teachers are receiving poor evaluations because of a grossly flawed value-added algorithm that should be changed, seven Houston teachers and the Houston Federation of Teachers said today in an unprecedented lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas.
　
The lawsuit details numerous problems with the Houston Independent School District’s Education Value-Added Assessment System, or EVAAS. Its statistical methodology uses a student’s performance on prior standardized tests to predict academic growth in the current year, though what is considered a sufficient level of growth is not defined. A teacher’s EVAAS score is supposed to measure the effect, or added value, of a teacher on a student’s academic growth over the school year. The school district uses this deeply flawed methodology for decisions about teacher evaluation, bonuses and termination, yet it is a “black box” system in which the methodology is considered proprietary and confidential.
　
“Due to a faulty, incomprehensible and secret formula, good teachers like the ones filing this suit are being labeled failures and our entire education system is being reduced to a numbers game,” said American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten. “Testing isn’t aligned with the purposes of public education. It doesn’t measure big-picture learning, critical thinking, resilience, creativity or curiosity, yet those are the qualities that great teaching brings out in a student. The fixation on testing has literally drained the joy out of learning. We’ve always been leery of value-added models, and we have enough evidence to make clear that not only has VAM not worked, it’s been really destructive and it in no way helps improve teaching and learning.”
　
Daniel Santos, an award-winning sixth grade social studies teacher at Jackson Middle School, said the evaluation system is failing him, his students and his profession.

“It’s dispiriting and insulting to be told I’m ineffective, a judgment that doesn’t mesh with my classroom performance or the time and effort I devote to my students. Texas is using a broken evaluation system that isn’t properly identifying who really needs help to improve,” Santos said, adding, “My students are being tested on material that is not aligned with our curriculum.”

While there have been other suits challenging VAM, the Houston suit is unique because it was brought by highly recognized teachers who contend their poor EVAAS ratings do not correlate with their actual performance nor take into account socioeconomic or demographic variables in predicting student performance. The complaint also charges that the district directed and/or pressured school administrators to “manufacture deficiencies or otherwise find fault with the instructional practices” by teachers who received low EVAAS ratings. Those teachers would be placed on a growth plan to correct the supposed faulty instructional practice.
　
Myla Van Duyn, who teaches ninth grade biology at Davis High School, received an unwarranted low EVAAS score and contends her classroom observation scores were artificially lowered to be aligned with the EVAAS scores.
　
“This is demoralizing,” said Van Duyn, who is leaving the school district at the end of the school year, a decision motivated in part by the flawed evaluation system.

“EVAAS is driving out great Houston teachers because they’d rather work in a place that respects　teachers. Everybody can do better, but the EVASS method does not accurately account for all of the variables that go into a child’s ability to answer questions on a multiple choice test,” Van Duyn said.
　
Andy Dewey, another plaintiff, is a history teacher at Carnegie Vanguard High School who developed the curriculum for two history courses and has been consistently rated well by his administrators. “Houston’s evaluation system is sold as a system to support and strengthen teaching, but it’s actually a bait and switch sham that’s weakening instruction and not helping teaching or learning at all,” Dewey said. “Teachers are told their scores are low but are not given information about what they did or did not do to cause their students to perform less than predicted.”
　
Gayle Fallon, president of the Houston Federation of Teachers, said: “The district is using a woefully inaccurate, educationally destructive evaluation system. If a car had as many design defects as the EVAAS system, it would be recalled as a lemon. EVAAS should be replaced with a fair and meaningful system that will actually help improve teaching and learning.”
　
AFT’s Weingarten said the real culprit is school districts’ fixation on testing, noting none of the top-performing countries subjects their students to as much testing as the United States.
　
“The testing obsession has turned kids into test scores and teachers into algorithms. Rote memorization and testing don’t prepare our students for the 21st century. We need to help kids problem solve, think critically, learn to be persistent and work in teams,” Weingarten said. “This country has spent billions on accountability, not on the improvement of teaching and learning at the classroom level, and value-added models are the leading edge of this misguided effort,” she said.
　
Weingarten said districts should develop, with teachers, a comprehensive evaluation system based on multiple measures that accurately identifies teachers needing improvement and that provides targeted help. To reclaim the promise of public education, she said there should be safe and welcoming neighborhood schools, access to early childhood education, wraparounds services at schools to address health, social and emotional issues, and project-based instruction.

Weingarten first questioned the fairness and accuracy of value-added metrics in 2007. It also has　been criticized　as inaccurate and an unstable measure of teacher performance by, most recently, the American Statistical Association, as well as RAND Corp. researchers, the National Academy of Sciences and the Economic Policy Institute. The ASA said the majority of the variation in test scores is attributable to factors outside the teachers’ control.
　
The federal lawsuit states teachers’ due process constitutional rights are being violated because the EVAAS system is not an accurate or reliable indicator of teachers’ performance and because “a cloak of secrecy” prevents teachers from verifying or challenging their EVAAS score. The suit also contends teachers’ equal protection constitutional rights are being violated because the school district directs and/or pressures school administrators to align teachers’ instructional practice scores with their EVAAS scores—two separate evaluation components—so those with below-average EVAAS scores receive arbitrary, harsher instructional practice scores. The suit also contends that the standards for acceptable growth are arbitrary, vague and constantly being recalibrated.
　
In addition to the Houston Federation of Teachers, Daniel Santos, Myla Van Duyn, and Andy Dewey, the other plaintiffs are Ivan Castillo (a fourth-grade bilingual teacher who has taught at　 Briscoe Elementary School since 1994, was the school’s bilingual teacher of the year in 2013-14 and is a finalist for bilingual elementary teacher for the Houston Independent School District) ; Paloma Garner (a ninth-grade biology teacher at David High School, has received several national awards recognizing her mentoring skills and has a consistent record of strong performance); Araceli Ramos (a ninth-grade English teacher at Austin High School who was selected in 2014 by a school official to tutor teachers on the Texas English Language Proficiency Assessment System) and Joyce Helfman (an eighth-grade English teacher at Johnston Middle School who has had a consistent record of strong performance and is well respected by her colleagues).

 

 

Categories Accountability, Teacher Evaluations, Testing, Texas

The Story of Houston Teachers Suing District’s Test-based Evaluation System

By dianeravitch
May 1, 2014 //
45

Here is the story of the Houston Seven, the teachers suing to invalidate the evaluations based on student tests scores.

How nutty is this?

“Andrew Dewey is an award-winning history teacher at Carnegie Vanguard High School in Houston. In 2011-12, he earned the top merit pay award that his school district gives out and had “most effective” teacher status through a controversial evaluation system that uses student standardized test scores. The next year, after teaching similar students in the same way, he went from being one of the district’s highest-performing teachers to one that made “no detectable difference” for his students.

“Dewey is one of seven high-achieving teachers who, along with the Houston Federation of Teachers, filed a lawsuit in federal court in Texas late Wednesday alleging that the Houston Independent School District uses a badly flawed method of evaluating teacher effectiveness, known as the “Educational Value-Added Assessment System.” The teachers argue that the EVAAS is inaccurate and unfair but that it still plays a large role in determining how much teachers are paid and whether they can keep their jobs.
The method, generically known as “value added measures,” or VAM, is increasingly in use around the country — with the support of the Obama administration — after Michelle Rhee pioneered the method when she ran D.C. public schools several years ago. The result of this lawsuit could affect evaluation systems well beyond Texas.”

Just think: if the Houston teachers win, and the evidence is on their side–they take down the central theory of Race to the Top and Rhee, as well as laws in dozens of states that will face similar lawsuits.

“Randi Weingarten, the president of the American Federation of Teachers, said that the obsession with standardized testing that has driven education policymakers to make standardized test scores the key metric of accountability for students, educators and schools, is bastardizing public education.

“This country has spent billions on accountability, not on the improvement of teaching and learning at the classroom level, and value-added models are the leading edge of this misguided effort,” she said.”

Start with Race to the Top. $5 billion wasted.

Categories Teacher Evaluations, Texas

Seven Houston Teachers Suing Over Flawed VAM Ratings

By dianeravitch
April 30, 2014 //
16

Seven teachers in Houston are suing the district over the use of test-score-based evaluations.

Good for them!

As a K-12 graduate of HISD, I am proud of these teachers for standing up for their profession.

I hope they will introduce as evidence the recent statement of the American Statistical Association cautioning about the limitations of VAM, as well as the joint statement of the National Academy of Education and the American Educational Research Association, warning that VAM produces results that are inaccurate and unstable.

Here is a good list of references the plaintiffs can use.

VAM is junk science when used to rate individual teachers. The ratings change if a different test is used. VAM says more about the composition of the class than the quality of the teacher.

Categories Teacher Evaluations, Texas

Jersey Jazzman: Did NPR Sell Out to the Walton Family Foundation?

By dianeravitch
April 29, 2014 //
10

Jersey Jazzman heard NPR describe the reason that Washington State refused to bow to Arne Duncan’s demand that the sate use test scores to evaluate teacher quality.

It wasn’t because the methodology has no evidence behind it.

It wasn’t because the method has been questioned by theNational Academy of Education, the American Educational Research Association, the American Statistical Association, and leading scholars.

No, Washington State said no to our omnipotent, omniscient Secretary of Education because of those terrible unions who are afraid of being evaluated.

Or could this explain NPR’s rationale:

“So, as I was sitting at the kitchen table this evening, my ears perked up at the 5:30 break for WNYC, the NPR outlet here in the greater New York area. The announcer let us know that All Things Considered was proudly sponsored by the Walton Family Foundation, which was supporting (I’m paraphrasing here) educational “choice” for families.”

– See more at: http://jerseyjazzman.blogspot.com/2014/04/corporate-education-reform-buys-public.html#sthash.DkIcHS3q.dpuf

Categories Teacher Evaluations, U.S. Department of Education, Unions, Walton Foundation, Washington State

Anthony Cody: It Is Time for Bill Gates to Throw in the Towel

By dianeravitch
April 28, 2014 //
54

Anthony Cody points out that for the past dozen years or so, Bill Gates has had his fun experimenting with education reform. Obsessed as he is with measurement and data, he imagined that he could impose his narrow ideas on American public schools and bring about a magical transformation.

Does American education need reform and improvement? Absolutely. Stuck as it is in the paradigm of testing and punishment, it sorely needs a revival of humanism and attention to the needs of children, families, and communities. It needs teachers who are well-prepared. It needs a recommitment o the health and happiness of children and to a deeper love of learning.

Yet Gates used HS vast wealth to steer national policy to the dry and loveless task of higher scores on tests of dubious value.

He wanted charter schools, and Arne Duncan, his faithful liege, demanded more charter schools,even if it was central to the Republican agenda.

He wanted national standards and quite willingly paid out over $2 billion to prove that one man could create the nation’s academic standards by buying off almost every group that mattered.

He wanted teachers to be evaluated based on test scores, and Ducan gave that to him too.

But says Cody, everything failed.

Cody writes:
.

“Last September Bill Gates said,

“It would be great if our education stuff worked, but that we won’t know for probably a decade.”

But, says Cody,

“I think we already know enough to declare the experiment a failure.

Value Added is a disaster. Any “reformer” who continues to support giving significant weight to such unreliable indicators should lose any credibility.

“Charter schools are, as a sector, not better than public schools, and are expanding segregation, and increasing inequality.

“The Common Core and the high stakes accountability system in which it is embedded is on its way to the graveyard of grand ideas.

“The only question remaining is how long Gates and his employees and proxies will remain wedded to their ideas, and continue to push them through their sponsored advocacy, even when these policies have been proven to be ill-founded and unworkable.

“Part of the problem with market-driven reform is that when you introduce the opportunity to make money off something like education, you unleash a feedback loop. Companies like the virtual charter chain K12 Inc can make tremendous profits, which they can use to buy off politicians, given our Supreme Court’s “Corporations are people and money is speech” philosophy. There are no systemic brakes on this train. The only way turn this around is for people to organize in large enough numbers, and act together in ways that actively disrupt and derail the operation.

“Along those lines, activists in Seattle are organizing a demonstration on June 26th, protesting the Gates Foundation at their headquarters. It has been a year and a half since I engaged the Gates Foundation in dialogue. Given the rather poor aptitude for learning Gates and company have shown, I will be joining this protest, and perhaps if enough of us are there, we can take the dialogue to the next level.”

Categories Charter Schools, Common Core, Gates Foundation, Bill Gates, Teacher Evaluations

Michael Fiorillo: Reformers’ Game Plan

By dianeravitch
April 27, 2014 //
158

Reader Michael Fiorillo deciphers the corporate reformers’ game plan:

The Final Solution to the Teacher Question:

– Proclaim austerity for the public schools, while continuing to expand charters.

– Create incentives for non-educators to be in positions of power, from Assistant Principal on up.

– Maintain a climate of scapegoating and witch hunting for “bad teachers,” who are posited as the cause of poverty and student failure, doing everything possible to keep debate from addressing systemic inequities.

– Neutralize and eventually eliminate teacher unions (the first part largely accomplished in the case of the AFT). As part of that process, eliminate tenure, seniority and defined benefit pensions.

– Create and maintain a climate of constant disruption and destabilization, with cascading mandates that are impossible to keep up or comply with.

– Create teacher evaluations based on Common Core-related high stakes tests for which no curriculum has been developed. Arbitrarily impose cut scores on those exams that cast students, teachers and schools as failing, as was done by NYS Education Commissioner John King and Regent Meryl Tisch.

– Get teachers and administrators, whether through extortion (see RttT funding) threats or non-stop propaganda, to accept the premises of “data-driven” everything, even when that data is irrelevant, opaque, contradictory, or just plain wrong.

– Get everyone to internalize the premises and language of so-called education reform:

– Parents are not citizens with rights, but “customers” who are provided “choices”
that are in fact restricted to the decisions of those in charge, based on policies
developed by an educational industrial complex made up of foundations,
McKinsey-type consultants and captive academics.

– Students are “valuable assets” and “products,” whose value is to be enhanced
(see the definition of VAM) before being offered to employers.

– Teachers are fungible units of “human capital,” to be deployed as policy-makers
and management see fit. Since human capital depreciates over time, it
needs to be replaced by fresh capital, branded as “the Best and Brightest.”

– Schools are part of an investment “portfolio,” explicitly including the real estate
they inhabit, and are subject to the “demands” of the market and the preferences
of policy-makers and management.

– Create an intimidating, punitive environment, where the questions and qualms are either disregarded or responded to with threats.

– Get the university education programs on board under threat of continuing attack. Once they are on board, go after them anyway, and deregulate the teacher licensing process so that it’s easier to hire temps.

– Eliminate instruction that is deemed irrelevant to the most narrowly-cast labor market needs of employers, getting rid of art, music, dance, electives, etc., thereby reducing the focus of education to preparation for passive acceptance of low-wage employment.

– Embed software and electronic gadgets in every facet of the classroom and school, from reading to test-taking, with the intention of automating as much classroom input and output as possible.

– Use the automation of the classroom to enlarge class size – something explicitly promoted by Bill Gates – and transform teachers into overseers of student digital production that is connected to massive databases, so that every keystroke is data to be potentially monetized.

– Cash your bonus checks, exercise your stock options, and declare Excellence and Civil Rights achieved.

Categories Closing schools, Corporate Reformers, Data and Data Mining, Education Industry, For-Profit, Privatization, Race to the Top, Teacher Evaluations, Teachers and Teaching, Technology, Computers, Testing

Does Anyone Still Believe in VAM? The “Center for American Progress” Does.

By dianeravitch
April 27, 2014 //
19

Despite the fact that major scholarly organizations have debunked value-added measurement as a way of identifying and quantifying teacher quality, there are still a few lonely defenders of VAM.

There is the U.S. Department of Education, which bet nearly $5 billion on VAM.

There is the Gates Foundation, which has bet hundreds of millions on VAM.

There are stragglers here and there.

And then there is the Center for American Progress, which says that despite all the research to the contrary, they are sticking with VAM.

Just a few weeks ago, the American Statistical Association stuck a pin in the VAM bubble.

The National Academy of Education and the American Educational Research Association had earlier expressed their skepticism about the utility of VAM.

Nonetheless, the CAP still wants to believe. They really truly want to believe, no matter what the statisticians and researchers say.

Probably they are just showing their loyalty to Arne Duncan and the Obama administration.

So Audrey Amrein-Beardsley decided to stick a pin in CAP’s ideological bubble. 

She writes:

Their research is notably a small subset of the actual research out there on VAMs, research that was used to rightfully construct the aforementioned position statement released by the ASA, and research that for decades has evidenced that teachers account for, or can be credited for, approximately 10% of the variance in student test scores, while the other 90% is typically due to factors outside of teachers’ control.

Regardless, while the Center for American Progress briefly acknowledges this, they spin this into their solution: The reason this percentage is so low is because we have not yet been accounting for growth in student achievement over time; that is, via value-added models (VAMs). In other words, using more sophisticated models of measurements (i.e., VAMs) will help to illuminate the “real” results we know are out there, but simply have not been able to capture given our archaic models of measurement and teacher accountability.

Not to worry, though, as they write that these “[n]ew measures of teacher effectiveness, determined by evidence of teacher practice and improvements in student achievement, are now available [emphasis added] and provide strong markers for assessing teaching quality and the equitable distribution of the most capable teachers.”

CAP wants to believe in VAM, therefore it does believe in VAM, no matter what the evidence may show.

This should be laughable but this skit, she says, is not funny.

 

 

Categories Accountability, Education Reform, Teacher Evaluations

Obama and Duncan Plan to Control Teacher Institutions with Their Failed Ideas

By dianeravitch
April 25, 2014 //
54

With the Obama administration’s latest policy pronouncement, the federal grip on American education grows tighter and stupider every day.

The latest: the administration plans to reward the best teacher-training institutions and drive the “worst” ones out of business. This is like Race to the Top for teacher preparation programs.

What are their measures? Of course, student test scores loom large.

“The goal: To ensure that every state evaluates its teacher education programs by several key metrics, such as how many graduates land teaching jobs, how long they stay in the profession and whether they boost their students’ scores on standardized tests. The administration will then steer financial aid, including nearly $100 million a year in federal grants to aspiring teachers, to those programs that score the highest. The rest, Duncan said, will need to improve or “go out of business.”

Thus, programs that send their graduates to work in urban districts with high-needs students will get low ratings. Duncan will drive them out of business. Smart institutions will steer their graduates to affluent suburbs, where scores will go up regardless of what they do.

The message from the U.S. Department of Education to the nation’s colleges of teacher education:

1. Do not send your graduates to teach struggling students who are likely to get small or no gains on standardized tests, such as students with extreme disabilities and English language learners, as well as gifted students, who are unlikely to post gains because of the ceiling effect.

2. Teach to the test. Drill the students hour after hour. Extend the school day whenever possible so there is more time for test prep.

3. Don’t waste time on non-tested subjects like the arts, history, civics, and science. They don’t count.

4. Invest in Pearson and McGraw-Hill stock.

The evidence is overwhelming that value-added measures for teachers are inaccurate, but neither secretary Duncan nor the White House care about evidence.

As reporter Stephanie Simon points out:

“The formulas for measuring how much “value” a teacher adds to a student’s test scores are complex and often carry a sizable margin of error.

“Earlier this month, the American Statistical Association warned that such formulas must be used with caution because teachers generally account for less than 15 percent — and in some studies, as little as 1 percent — of the variability in student test scores. Value-added models spit out precise-sounding numbers that purport to quantify a teacher’s impact on her students, but in fact the formulas “typically measure correlation, not causation,” the group concluded.

“A recent study funded by the Education Department found that value-added measures may fluctuate significantly due to factors beyond the teachers’ control, including random events such as a dog barking loudly outside a classroom window, distracting students during their standardized test. A 2010 study, also funded by the Education Department, found the models misidentify as many as 50 percent of teachers — pegging them as average when they’re actually better or worse than their peers, or singling them out for praise or condemnation when they’re actually average.

“Yet another challenge: Calculating scores for educators who do not teach subjects or grades assessed with standardized exams. Nationally, some 70 percent of teachers — including most high school and early elementary teachers, plus art, music and physical education teachers — fall into that category.

“Despite such complications, [White House policy director Cecilia] Muñoz made clear in a call with reporters on Thursday that Obama wants student test scores, or other measures of student growth, to figure heavily into states’ evaluations of teacher prep programs.

“This is something the president has a real sense of urgency about,” she said. “What happens in the classroom matters. It doesn’t just matter — it’s the whole ballgame.” So using student outcomes to evaluate teacher preparation programs “is really fundamental to making sure we’re successful,” Muñoz said. “We believe that’s a concept … whose time has come.”

Yes, using student test scores to evaluate teachers, principals, schools, and teacher colleges is “a concept… whose time has come,” despite the fact that there is no evidence for it, despite the fact that the nation’s leading scholarly organizations have warned about its limitations and misuse, despite the fact that it fails to account for factors beyond the teachers” control, and despite the fact that it misidentifies teacher effectiveness at an alarmingly high rate.

Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2014/04/barack-obama-arne-duncan-teacher-training-education-106013.html#ixzz2zuFEulXw

Categories Duncan, Arne, Education Reform, Race to the Top, Teacher Evaluations, Teachers and Teaching

Randi to Pearson: Remove the Gag Order and Test Secrecy

By dianeravitch
April 25, 2014 //
22

Randi Weingarten, on behalf of the American Federation of Teachers, sent representatives to the Pearson shareholders’ meeting in London and wrote the following letter to the leaders of the world’s biggest testing corporation. By shrouding the tests in secrecy, Pearson denies information to teachers to help diagnose student needs. The tests become useless by having no diagnostic value. Speculation abounds about hidden “Pineapple” questions and other test errors. If the lives of students and teachers and principals hinge on the tests, the tests must be made public after they are administered. Otherwise, teachers will be fired and students will be failed and schools will be closed without seeing the validity of the instruments of punishment. This is wrong.

For Immediate Release
April 25, 2014

Contact:

Marcus Mrowka
202/531-0689
mmrowka@aft.org

Kate Childs Graham
202/615-2424
kchilds@aft.org

AFT’s Weingarten to Pearson: Lift Gag Order on Testing, Meet with Stakeholders

WASHINGTON— In conjunction with the annual Pearson shareholder meeting in London, AFT President Randi Weingarten today released a letter sent to Pearson executives, board members and shareholders calling on the corporation to remove “gag orders” preventing educators from expressing concerns about Pearson-developed tests and to meet with educators, parents and other stakeholders to address their concerns regarding these tests. Pearson is the largest testing company in the world and derives 57 percent of its profits from the U.S.

Representatives from the AFT are at the shareholder meeting this morning to deliver the letter and discuss the concerns of educators, parents, students and shareholders. The AFT also launched an online action allowing educators, parents and others across the world to make the same demands of Pearson executives and board members.

“Principals and teachers in New York who recently administered the Pearson-developed Common Core tests have said they are barred from speaking about the test content and its effects on students,” wrote Weingarten. “This appears to be a result of a Pearson contract term that has been construed as disallowing them from expressing their concerns and views. …On behalf of teachers, parents, students and your shareholders, including our pension plans, I ask you to immediately remove these prohibitions (referred to as “gag orders” in the press) from existing and future contracts.”

Weingarten continued, “These gag orders and the lack of transparency are fueling the growing distrust and backlash among parents, students and educators in the United States about whether the current testing protocols and testing fixation is in the best interests of children. When parents aren’t allowed to know what is on their children’s tests, and when educators have no voice in how assessments are created and are forbidden from raising legitimate concerns about the quality of these assessments or from talking to parents about these concerns, you not only increase distrust of testing but also deny children the rich learning experience they deserve.”

Weingarten’s full letter to Pearson can be found below.

April 24, 2014

John Fallon
Chief Executive
Pearson PLC
80 Strand
London WC2R ORL
UK
john.fallon@pearson.com

Glen Moreno
Chairman
Pearson PLC
80 Strand
London WC2R ORL
UK
Glen.moreno@pearson.com

Dear Mr. Fallon and Mr. Moreno:

I was deeply disturbed to read recently in the New York Times and other newspapers of the issues teachers, principals, parents and students raised about Pearson tests. Principals and teachers in New York who recently administered the Pearson-developed Common Core tests have said they are barred from speaking about the test content and its effects on students. This appears to be a result of a Pearson contract term that has been construed as disallowing them from expressing their concerns and views. Elizabeth Phillips, the principal at Public School 321 in Brooklyn, N.Y., summarized these concerns in a recent New York Times opinion piece. On behalf of teachers, parents, students and your shareholders, including our pension plans, I ask you to immediately remove these prohibitions (referred to as “gag orders” in the press) from existing and future contracts.

These gag orders and the lack of transparency are fueling the growing distrust and backlash among parents, students and educators in the United States about whether the current testing protocols and testing fixation is in the best interests of children. When parents aren’t allowed to know what is on their children’s tests, and when educators have no voice in how assessments are created and are forbidden from raising legitimate concerns about these assessments’ quality or talking to parents about these concerns, you not only increase distrust of testing but also deny children the rich learning experience they deserve.

Continuing these practices may also have severe financial consequences for your corporation. Growing mistrust and concerns by parents, teachers and others over the asserted lack of transparency at InBloom appears to have been a driving factor in the company’s recent decision to end operations.

This is the third consecutive year that Pearson’s standardized tests have led to headline risk and reputational damage to the company. We’re concerned that Pearson is using gag orders to cover up-rather than address-problems with its standardized tests. If Pearson is going to remain competitive in the educational support and testing business, the company must listen to and respond to the concerns of educators like Elizabeth Phillips who report that the company has ignored extensive feedback.

Parents, students and teachers need assessments that accurately measure student performance through questions that are grade-appropriate and aligned with state standards-especially since standardized tests have increasingly life-altering consequences for students and teachers. By including gag orders in contracts, Pearson is silencing the very stakeholders the company needs to engage with. Poll after poll makes clear that parents overwhelmingly trust educators over all others to do what is best for their children; educators’ voices, concerns and input should be included in the creation and application of these assessments.

We intend to bring these concerns to the attention of senior management, the board and other shareholders during your annual meeting on Friday, April 25. We also are asking that you meet as soon as practical with stakeholders to discuss a comprehensive response to their concerns and to this serious threat to the company’s reputation, brand and share price. If you have representatives in the United States who meet with potential customers routinely to sell Pearson products, we believe you also can meet with stakeholders.

We look forward to your reply. Pearson must move quickly to address a serious and emerging threat to its brand, business model and ability to generate long-term value for shareholders.

Sincerelv.

Randi Weingarten
President

Categories Students, Teacher Evaluations, Teachers and Teaching, Testing, U.S. education, Unions

Chris Rekydal of Washington State: A Hero of American Education

By dianeravitch
April 25, 2014 //
50

Washington State thoughtfully rejected Arne Duncan’s threat to cancel its waiver from the absurd demands of No Child Left Behind. The decision to say no to federal demands and intimidation was bipartisan.

The Legislature refused to bend to Duncan’s insistence that the state adopt test-based evaluation, which has consistently failed across the nation and has been declared inaccurate by the nation’s leading scholarly organizations.

The Washington State legislature understands federalism. Secretary Duncan does not. He thinks he is charge of the nation’s schools–every one f them. As someone who spent eight years running the Chicago public school system, one of the nation’s lowest-performing, he should have earned humility. Unfortunately, he enjoys a sense of certainty that is astonishing, almost as astonishing as his indifference to research and evidence.

The sense of the Washington State legislature was succinctly expressed by Chris Rekydal, a Democrat.

Unlike Duncan, Rekydal understands that the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution leaves education policy to states and localities.

He said in a statement:

“As a legislator who voted for our state’s robust home-grown teacher-principal evaluation system and one of the authors of our state’s new rigorous 24-credit graduation framework, I am disappointed in the federal government’s decision to repeal our waiver.

“This is a tremendous moment in our nation’s history where a state that strongly supported the President in 2008 and again in 2012 soundly rejected the federal government’s demands to structure our teacher-principal evaluation system to the specific criteria established by the U.S. Dept. of Education.

“My message to President Obama and Secretary Duncan is that Washington State is committed to education reform that is collaborative, bipartisan, and focused on student success and teacher growth. Our legislative decision to reject the federal government’s demands was done with substantial deliberation and a deep respect for state and local control.

“The bipartisan rejection of this federal government demand during the 2014 legislative session is a strong and unifying message that our state fully embraces our constitutional 10th Amendment guarantee to develop, fund, and administer our state’s education system as the citizens of the state of Washington and their elected representatives determine, not as federal officials deem it appropriate.

“Washington State has one of the leading K-12 systems in the United States. With 89% of our adult population having earned a high school diploma or greater, we are a national leader in student success, employment growth, and earnings.

“I strongly encourage federal officials to use this moment in history to model Washington State’s success instead of using us as an example of federal government power and leverage. I challenge the federal government to turn a corner on education reform, fix the deeply-flawed and failed No Child Left Behind Act, and get back to empowering the states instead of coercing them.

“No Child Left Behind is a failed policy of the Bush administration that focuses on student failure and school punishment. This is no way to run a public education system. Enacting bad policy at the state level as a result of bad policy at the federal level will not help schools – and certainly won’t help students – be successful.”

Categories Duncan, Arne, Federal Waiver, Teacher Evaluations, U.S. education, Washington State
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