Archives for category: Teacher Evaluations
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John Thompson: Why Did Race to the Top Ignore Social Science?

By dianeravitch
September 25, 2013 //
32

John Thompson has an excellent post on Anthony Cody’s blog, trying to figure out why the architects of Race to the Top ignored a wealth of social science evidence by demanding more test-based accountability than even No Child Left Behind.

He notes that both Elaine Weiss of the Bolder Broader Approach and the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) take a dim view of RTTT.

Elaine Weiss reviewed the evidence and found that RTTT was not likely to meet its lofty goals. States made promises they could not keep, and RTTT has been accompanied by punitive strategies, conflict, and deprofessionalization of teaching. “Districts heavily serving low-income and minority students, especially large urban districts, face some of the most severe challenges. Tight timelines and lack of resources compound RTTT’s failure to address poverty related impediments to learning. Heightened pressure on districts to produce impossible gains from an overly narrow policy agenda has made implementation difficult and often counterproductive.”

The GAO report found that implementation of teacher and principal evaluation systems were proceeding slowly and problematically. Some districts report that the cost of implementation exceed the value of the award. No one can say with assurance that education has been improved by the DOE’s demand to put even higher stakes on testing.

Of course, test-based evaluation of professionals is bound to be challenging because most teachers are not teaching tested subjects; many are “evaluated” by the scores of their school, or by the scores registered by students in subjects the teachers don’t teach. This is not only a challenge, it is nonsensical.

I have been searching, but I can’t find another nation in the world that is pursuing this means of evaluating teachers. If anyone who reads this knows of one, please let me know.

I am aware of several books that will be published over the next year explaining why teachers should not be evaluated by test scores. Of course, the U.S. Department of Education was warned not to do it. It was warned in a strong letter written by the National Academies of Sciences Board on Testing and Assessment. Here is a key paragraph, warning that value-added measures (VAM) were not ready to be used to evaluate teachers:

In sum, value-added methodologies should be used only after careful consideration of their appropriateness for the data that are available, and if used, should be subjected to rigorous evaluation. At present, the best use of VAM techniques is in closely studied pilot projects. Even in pilot projects, VAM estimates of teacher effectiveness should not be used as the sole or primary basis for making operational decisions because the extent to which the measures reflect the contribution of teachers themselves, rather than other factors, is not understood. Even in pilot projects, VAM estimates of teacher effectiveness should not be used to make operational decisions for teachers with students who have achievement levels that are too high or too low to be measured by the available tests because the estimates for such teachers will be essentially meaningless. Even in pilot projects, VAM estimates of teacher effectiveness that are based on data for a single class of students should not used to make operational decisions because such estimates are far too unstable to be considered fair or reliable. 

The U.S. Department of Education ignored the advice of testing experts, and now, three years after handing out $4.35 billion, there is no evidence that Race to the Top has accomplished anything other than to create massive demoralization among teachers and principals.

Categories Accountability, Race to the Top, Teacher Evaluations, Testing

Herb Bassett: Why Louisiana’s Teacher Evaluation Is Invalid

By dianeravitch
September 13, 2013 //
25

Herb Bassett is a teacher in Louisiana. He teaches music, but like Jersey Jazzman, has the ability to understand statistics and how they work in real classrooms.

This is a letter that he wrote about Louisiana’s new teacher evaluation system, which is as incoherent as teacher evaluation systems in other states:

 

State Superintendent John White showed his true colors when he recently praised four FirstLine charter schools that “fell in the top 10 percent of Louisiana schools in terms of improving test scores, yet ranked fewer than 10 percent of their teachers highly effective.
 
‘Amazing results,’ he wrote.”
 
He did not mention that one of the four schools, while ranked in the 99th percentile of improvement, declared 68 percent of its teachers Ineffective. Most of its teachers are now on a fast track to dismissal.
 
In each of the other three schools, at least 69 percent of their Value-added Assessment Model (VAM) teachers ranked Highly Effective, but none received an observation rating of Highly Effective. Not one.
 
If the VAM computer model ranked so many teachers Highly Effective, why could the principals not find at least one example of Highly Effective teaching in an observation?
 
These results clearly do not reflect student achievement or teacher quality. They deserve condemnation, not praise.
 
What does this bode for teachers and students on the coming Common Core assessments? White has predicted that due to the “rigor” of the new standards, achievement scores will go down.
 
As strange as it seems, teachers will not see lower ratings under VAM – even with the dramatic drop predicted for student scores. The VAM computer model simply ranks the teachers from highest to lowest. No matter whether the scores rise or drop dramatically, there will always be a bottom ten percent ranked Ineffective and a top twenty percent ranked Highly Effective. These quotas were set by the Louisiana Department of Education. Yes, the Department arbitrarily decided that ten percent of teachers are Ineffective and twenty percent should be Highly Effective.
 
Then why does the Compass Report show that only four percent of all teachers are Ineffective?
 
The computer model does not rank all teachers. The majority of teachers are not subject to the quotas. The purpose of the Compass Report was to show the discrepancy, and to coerce evaluators of the non-VAM teachers into matching the VAM system quotas.
 
White, however, seems to relish the thought of evaluations that cut short the quota for Highly Effective teachers.
 
Superintendent White now controls the cut-off scores for the achievement levels on the new assessments. Having seen him praise unjustifiably low teacher evaluations, should parents trust him to decide whether their children pass or fail the new assessments?  
Categories Accountability, Louisiana, Teacher Evaluations

How Many Teachers Leave the Profession and Why?

By dianeravitch
September 12, 2013 //
71

A regular reader has posted several comments that seem to
imply that not enough teachers are being fired. Or that a system
with a small number of teachers fired was not up to par, assuming
that there are many “bad” teachers who have not been found out yet.
This seems to be the assumption behind Race to the Top and the
Gates’ approach to evaluation: stack ranking, from top to bottom.
Fire the bottom. I responded that about 40% of teachers leave
within the first five years of starting their job. He asked for
evidence. Good question. Here are two good sources. Ken Futernick
of Wested in Sn Francisco wrote an excellent article called “Incompetent
Teachers or Dysfunctional Systems?” Matt Di Carlo wrote
a good overview of
the research here. In no other profession do so many
people exit so rapidly. This suggests to me that states and
districts should have high standards for hiring teachers and then
should mentor new teachers, build a collegial culture, and make
sure that retention is a goal. We make a huge mistake with the new
evaluation systems, which seem intended to find and fire weak
teachers. The goal should be to make teachers better, if they are
willing to be helped. Churn is bad.

Categories Teacher Evaluations, Teachers and Teaching

The Original Purpose of Teacher Evaluation Was….

By dianeravitch
September 10, 2013 //
25

Dr. Stephen Mucher is an assistant professor of history and
education at Bard College. In
this public radio interview, he explains the original
(and still valid!) purpose of teacher evaluation.

Professors visited classrooms not to grade teachers, but to learn about
instruction and how to improve it. It was a mutual endeavor,
intended to help, not to destroy and punish and fire. History has
much to teach us, if only we are willing to learn.

Here is my take, not Mucher’s:

The current era of teacher evaluation can be traced
to the social efficiency movement that began with the work of
Frederick Winslow Taylor. His time-and-motion studies emphasized
the importance of measuring the worker’s output and challenging all
workers to meet the same metric. In the 1920s, efficiency experts
took a leading role in the field of curriculum and instruction. Men
like John Franklin Bobbitt and W.W. Charters devised elaborate
checklists to measure teacher quality. Bobbitt came up with
cost-benefit analyses for subject matter, and he decided that Latin
should be discarded because it cost too much and produced nothing
of value, by his measures.

I wrote about the efficiency movement in
my 2000 book Left Back: A Century of Battles Over School
Reform. The original title was Left Back: A
Century of Failed School Reforms. I hated the title and
I hated the subtitle. The editor at Simon & Schuster, Alice
Mayhew–a legendary figure–insisted that the title had to have the
word “fail” in it. When the book came out in paperback, I was
allowed to change the subtitle to more accurately reflect the
content of the book (forgive the split infinitive).

Categories Accountability, Administrators, superintendents, Teacher Evaluations

What Direction for NYC’s Public Schools?

By dianeravitch
September 8, 2013 //
22

The New York Times published an online debate about what is needed next in NYC.

Pedro Noguera, Geoffrey Canada, So Stern and I weigh in.

Who is defending the status quo? You decide.

Categories Accountability, New York City, Teacher Evaluations, Testing

Everything You Wanted to Know about Teacher Evaluation But Were Afraid to Ask

By dianeravitch
September 8, 2013 //
24

This is a terrific new book with essays showing what a farce the current test-based evaluation of teachers is.

It includes the work of several distinguished scholars who understand that it is farcical to judge teacher “quality” by using the scores on standardized tests.

I was happy to write the introduction.

Read the description and you will want to read the book.

One major finding: No state is using the teacher evaluations to improve instruction, only to punish and reward teachers.

This is a hugely valuable book that will help push back against dumb ideas.

Categories Accountability, Race to the Top, Teacher Evaluations, Teachers and Teaching

Cuomo’s Teacher Evaluation

By dianeravitch
September 4, 2013 //
37

New York won $700 million in Race to the Top funding, which involved a commitment to measure teacher effective meant in significant part by test scores of their students. This theory, which Arne Duncan has imposed on the nation’s schools by using federal funds as a lure, has not worked anywhere. It has failed everywhere. Its main consequence is to demoralize teachers, like the one who wrote this comment:

“I am sick to my stomach over this APPR plan in NY. I just received my score, and I am two points away from being “effective” as a teacher. I scored 58/60 on my instructional practices which is effective. I scored effective on my local measurement, and I scored developing on my state measurement which was the ELA 7th grade exam.

“My students, as well as many others, tanked on the exam, so because of that, I am now a teacher who has to have an improvement plan. What should my plan include? More test prep? Teaching kids how to bubble in circles?

“This whole plan is absurd. I know I make a difference in children’s lives. This testing obsession is ruining education, our children, and our teachers. I come in early, leave late, work at home, volunteer for a million things, and yet am now deemed developing by some politically driven evaluation plan.

“Cuomo should come in and do what I do on a daily basis. He would get eaten alive. I’m actually questioning whether I can teach for the next 20 years. It’s all I’ve ever wanted to do, but this APPR garbage is effectively forcing out some of the best teachers I’ve worked with. I may be next.”

Categories Duncan, Arne, New York, Race to the Top, Teacher Evaluations

E.D. Hirsch, Jr., Opposes Value-Added Teacher Evaluation

By dianeravitch
August 30, 2013 //
30

E.D. Hirsch, Jr., the founder of the Core Knowledge curriculum, wrote an article opposing value-added teacher evaluation, especially in reading. Hirsch supports the Common Core but thinks it may be jeopardized by the rush to test it and tie the scores to teacher evaluations. He knows this will encourage teaching to the test and other negative consequences.

Hirsch believes that if teachers teach strong subject matter, their students will do well on the reading tests. But he sees the downside of tying test scores to salary and jobs.

He writes:

“The first thing I’d want to do if I were younger would be to launch an effective court challenge to value-added teacher evaluations on the basis of test scores in reading comprehension. The value-added approach to teacher evaluation in reading is unsound both technically and in its curriculum-narrowing effects. The connection between job ratings and tests in ELA has been a disaster for education.”

He is right. Will the so-called reformers who recently became Hirschians listen?

Categories Common Core, Curriculum, Teacher Evaluations, Testing

My Favorite Question Of the Week, Month, and Year: Who ARE These Guys?

By dianeravitch
August 29, 2013 //
19

In an earlier post, Arthur Goldstein explained the absurd
evaluation scheme adopted at his school, where teachers will be
allocated the score for the whole school if they do not teach a
tested subject. This reader asks the question that Butch Cassidy
asked the Sundance Kid: Who ARE these Guys? Meaning, this is so
crazy, it makes no sense, why are they doing this to us?

This reader wonders too:

“Then Da Vinci was right. “”The supreme misfortune is when theory outstrips performance.” Because depending on some of the choices NYC schools will have to make, good teachers may suffer just because they are in a low performing school while poor teachers may shine because they are in high performing schools. The whole thing sounds like “luck of the draw” to me. It’s either that or we have entered a dystopian novel where the present will suffer only to hopefully let the future try to understand our mistakes. The problem is that real and honest people are involved here. Honest, hard working teachers with mortgages and family. Honest and hard working teachers with rents to pay. Honest and hard working teachers who dreamed of making a difference who now have loans. Honest and hard working teachers with plans to grow a family. Your reply confirms the absolute absurdity of the whole thing. If no one understands it, then how in the world did it come to be? Is everyone who participated in this confusing mess idiots? As a native New Yorker I can only ask: what neighborhoods did these people grow up in? Who raised these people?”

Categories Teacher Evaluations

Our Thoroughly Insane Teacher Evaluation System

By dianeravitch
August 29, 2013 //
45

This is a letter from Arthur Goldstein to his colleagues at Francis Lewis High School in Queens, New York. Arthur is chapter chair of his school, where he teaches English language learners. He also had a terrific blog called NYC Educator.

This is what he told the staff about the new teacher evaluation system:

 

Dear colleagues:

Today our Measures of Student Learning Committee met to decide precisely how thoroughly invalid junk science measures will be used to rate teachers in Francis Lewis High School. We had several choices. We based our choices on the information available to us, which was very little.

Our first choice was whether to use goal or growth measures. We were told that goal measures entailed inventing tests or projects. These tests or projects would then be sent to the insane ideologues at the NYC Department of Education who would set goals. The goals could have been different for individual students, which could mean ringing 170 different bells.

Were you to disagree with the goals set by the DOE, you would have the option of submitting reasons and appealing to the principal, who would either deny your appeal or submit your reasons and appeal to the DOE for reconsideration.

Given the tremendous amount of work we have ahead of us this year, we opted for growth models, although we have little or no idea how they will be calculated. For state measures, some were mandated to reflect individual classes of teachers. In those cases, we opted to have department results reflect the local measures. In other words, your department Regents results could be the local measures. This would reflect not only the exams in areas you teach, but those given by your entire department. For example, if you teach algebra, the results in geometry and trigonometry will also be part of your local measures.

We aimed, in general, to make measures as broad as possible. Wherever possible, we tried to avoid competition between teachers and groups of teachers. We do not want teachers to feel they would be hurting themselves by, for example, tutoring students of their colleagues.  

If there was a state exam and individual class results were not mandated, your department results were your growth measure. In those cases, we opted to have the local measure be your department results. In this system, if the state measure was also department results, local growth would be measured by the lowest third of your department results. Because there is no logic, rhyme or reason to this system, we were prohibited from using the same standard twice.

If your subject, like music, art, or physical education, does not have a state assessment, your evaluation would be based on schoolwide state tests. Your local evaluation would be based on the lowest third of schoolwide state tests.

We did not have the option of evaluating what teachers actually do, as the geniuses in Albany and DC, many of whom send their children to private schools where this nonsense does not apply, appear to have determined that teachers teach tests rather than students.

We will discuss this further when we meet on Tuesday and Wednesday. I’m afraid I have no more details than these on this system. However, we will revisit it next year, by which time we’ll hopefully have a better idea on what does and does not work in our school.

Let me be clear—I hate this system and virtually everything about it. But as our union leadership had a hand in writing the law imposing this on us, and as John King had carte blanche to impose pretty much whatever reformy nonsense he saw fit, we are stuck with it.

We will make the best of it, and work to bring sanity in education back to our city and state soon. Sadly, that won’t be happening this year.

Best regards,

Arthur

Categories Teacher Evaluations, Teachers and Teaching
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