Archives for category: Teachers and Teaching
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$50 Million. 3 Years. No Clue.

By dianeravitch
January 16, 2013 //
41

Gary Rubinstein, the brilliant math teacher at Stuyvesant High School in New York City, has done it again.

He has dissected the Gates MET study–the one that says test scores are better at determining teacher quality than observations–and he says that the data in the study don’t make the point that has been widely reported.

Gene Glass, Research Professor at the University of Colorado, takes apart the MET study, and like Gary, says that the $50 million was a waste.

I wonder when Gates will abandon his mission to find the perfect metric to measure teacher quality. It isn’t working anywhere; it has perverse incentives; it is inaccurate and unreliable.  How long will he stick with this failed idea?

Just think how many musical instruments that $50 million would have bought, how many librarians could have been rehired, how many after-school programs might have been funded.

 

 

Categories Gates Foundation, Bill Gates, Teacher Evaluations, Teachers and Teaching, Testing

Hamburg Teachers: Stop Threatening Us

By dianeravitch
January 16, 2013 //
6

The Hamburg (NY) teachers union has refused to agree to a deal on teacher evaluations that would give all power to the superintendent; they want an independent person to make the final judgment when a teacher appeals a bad evaluation.

Negotiations broke down when an administrator threatened that teachers would be fired if no agreement was reached.

Remember that the deal is about getting $450,000 for the district to comply with Race to the Top, which requires that teachers be evaluated by the scores of their students. New York has an evaluation plan whose own designers (AIR) have said is not ready for prime time.

By agreeing, the teachers agree to be judged by a methodology that is JUNK SCIENCE.

Be strong, Hamburg Teachers. Minimize the damage to teachers, and you protect your students and your schools against churn and demoralization.

Categories Teacher Evaluations, Teachers and Teaching

Read Gary Rubinstein’s Open Letters to “Reformers”

By dianeravitch
January 15, 2013 //
6

Many people have written to ask for a link to Gary Rubinstein’s “open letters to ‘reform’ leaders.”

Those who read them say they are brilliant, and indeed they are.

As you may know, Gary was one of the first alums of TFA. He became a career teacher.

He teaches mathematics at Stuyvesant High School in New York City.

He blogs regularly and whatever he writes is worth reading.

He is one of the best informed and reasonable critics of corporate-style reform in the blogosphere.

Categories Accountability, Corporate Reformers, Education Reform, Privatization, Teach for America TFA, Teachers and Teaching, Testing

Kasich Pulls a Fast One

By dianeravitch
January 13, 2013 //
15

A reader sent this notice of a major change in teacher evaluation in Ohio, slipped into legislation at the last minute, with little discussion. The governor is determined to follow the Rhee script and bombard teachers with test-based accountability, despite evidence to the contrary. I have a suggestion for Governor Kasich: How about if you take the students’ end of course exams and publish your test scores?

The bottom line:

If you’re not familiar with legislative language, here’s the summary 

HB 555 radically changes the method of calculating evaluations for about 1/3 of Ohio’s teachers. If a teacher’s schedule is comprised only of courses or subjects for which the value-added progress dimension is applicable – then only their value-add score can now be used as part of the 50% of an evaluation based on student growth. Gone is the ability to use multiple measures of student growth – ie Student Learning Objectives or SLO’s.

Teachers and school districts have spent countless months collaborating on the development and implementation of an evaluation system originally detailed in HB153 – only to now find the rules of the game changed at the 11th hour. Furthermore, the change is regressive. We have detailed the growing list of research that demonstrates the very real and serious problems with heavy reliance on value-add, and the need to offset these problems by using multiple measures of student growth.

Categories Accountability, Corporate Reformers, Ohio, Teacher Evaluations, Teachers and Teaching

You Are the Leaders

By dianeravitch
January 12, 2013 //
48

Spring is coming.

People are standing up and speaking up.

Teachers at Garfield High in Seattle say “no more.”

Teachers at Ballard High School support their colleagues at Garfield.

The Seattle Education Association supports the Garfield and Ballard teachers.

Randi Weingarten tweeted her support.

Superintendents, one after another, are saying the testing obsession is out of control.

The principals of New York State stand together to demand professional evaluation, not trial by testing.

Parents are defending their children by supporting their teachers and their community schools.

The PTA of Niagara County in New York say hands off our public schools.

Communities are opposing school closings and corporate takeovers.

Students are speaking out because they know what is happening to them is not right.

Journalists are starting to recognize that the “reformers” are not real reformers but privatizers.

It is starting to happen.

We will put education back into the hands of educators and parents and communities.

We will work to make our schools better than ever, not by competition, but by collaboration.

Last year, someone emailed and asked me to create and lead the movement to stop the corporate reformers, and I said I couldn’t do it, that all I can do is write and speak.

That truly is all I can do, but when I started this blog in late April, it turned into a platform for the movement, and leaders are emerging all over the country, and learning about each other. They are communicating.

I am not the leader, I am the facilitator. You are the leaders.

Categories Administrators, superintendents, Corporate Reformers, Parent Groups, Principals, Privatization, Students, Support for public schools, Teachers and Teaching, Testing, Unions

Ohio Teacher: Bravo to Teachers of Seattle!

By dianeravitch
January 12, 2013 //
3

Maureen Reedy sends congratulations, praise, hugs, and high-fives to the teachers at Garfield and Ballard High Schools in Seattle. May their message resonate in schools across America.

Dear Ballard and Garfield High School Teachers in Seattle,

Your proclamations ring true as patriots of public education!

Your proclamations proclaim our right as educational experts to independently stand up, and let our voices ring loud and clear for integrity, authenticity and educational expertise in our teaching practice.

Your proclamations are just what our country needs to build the precursor to a new Declaration of Independence for Public Education!

Most importantly, your proclamations show our students that we will stand up for them and be strong role models in fighting for what we know is best in creating quality educational experiences and lessons for our kids.

Quite simply, when something is wrong, we do everything in our power to “make it right.”

That’s what we teach our students, that’s how we practice our profession and that is how we live our lives.

Thank you for standing up for our children, thank you for standing up for our profession, thank you for standing up for public education.

Thank you all for your courage and conviction.

Teachers across America stand with all of you!

Maureen Reedy
Parent & 29-year public school teacher
Columbus, Ohio

Categories Teachers and Teaching, Testing, Washington State

Support the Teachers of Seattle

By dianeravitch
January 12, 2013 //
9

The teachers of Seattle ask that you sign this petition to support them.

Please be careful when you go to change.org and do NOT sign any other petition as you may be duped into becoming a member of StudentsFirst.

Categories Teachers and Teaching, Testing, Washington State

Ballard High School Teachers Say NO in Solidarity with Garfield Teachers

By dianeravitch
January 12, 2013 //
13

The revolt against the inappropriate use of standardized testing is spreading in Seattle.

Teachers at Ballard High School in Seattle voted not to administer the MAP test and to support their colleagues at Garfield High School.

“Whereas

The MAP test is a resource expensive and cash expensive program in a district with very finite financial resources,

The MAP test is not used in practice to inform student instruction,

The MAP test is not connected to our curricula,

The MAP test has been re-purposed by district administration to form part of a teacher’s evaluation, which is contrary to the purposes it was designed for, as stated by its purveyor, making it part of junk science,

The MAP test has also been re-purposed for student placement in courses and programs, for which it was not designed,

The MAP test was purchased under corrupt crony-ist circumstances (Our former superintendent, while employed by Seattle Public Schools (SPS) sat on the corporation board of NWEA, the purveyor of the MAP test. This was undisclosed to her employer. The initial MAP test was purchased in a no-bid, non-competitive process.)

The MAP test was and remains unwanted and unneeded and unsolicited by SPS professional classroom educators, those who work directly with students,

The MAP test is not taken seriously by students, (They don’t need the results for graduation, for applications, for course credit, or any other purpose, so they routinely blow it off.)

The MAP test’s reported testing errors are greater than students’ expected growth,

The technology administration of the MAP test has serious flaws district wide which waste students’ time,

Therefore

We, the undersigned educators from Ballard High School do hereby support statements and actions of our colleagues at Garfield High School surrounding the MAP test. Specifically, the MAP test program throughout Seattle Public Schools ought to be shut down immediately. It has been and continues to be an embarrassing mistake. Continuing it even another day, let alone another month or year or decade, will not turn this sow’s ear into a silk purse.

Ballard High School teachers

Categories Teacher Evaluations, Teachers and Teaching, Washington State

AIR: VAM Not Ready for Prime Time

By dianeravitch
January 6, 2013 //
23

We have been saying it for months, no, since 2009, when Race to the Top started.

Value-added assessment or value-added-modeling is not ready for prime time.

Now we have a technical paper by American Institutes for Research that says it:

VAM is not ready for prime time.

Here is the takeaway:

“We cannot at this time encourage anyone to

use VAM in a high stakes endeavor. If one

has to use VAM, then we suggest a two-step

process to initially use statistical models to

identify outliers (e.g., low-performing

teachers) and then to verify these results

with additional data. Using independent

information that can confirm or disconfirm

is helpful in many contexts. The value of

this use of evaluative change results could be

explored in further research efforts….”

Is anyone at the U.S. Department of Education listening?

Hello?

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

Schools for Other People’s Children: UPDATE: LINK ADDED!

By dianeravitch
January 6, 2013 //
7

One of our most perceptive essayists Rachel Levy watched John Merrow’s program about Rocketship charters and recoiled with alarm.

She said if she put her children in front of a screen two hours a day, she would be called a bad parent, but the charter does it and it is called innovative.

She was distressed that the school treats test scores as the only goal of school, so stuff like art and music don’t get time. That’s what kids do on their own time, if they choose, after school.

And what is it that parents do, other than chant with their children?

What’s clear to Levy is that Rocketship is a school for “them,” for other people’s children, not for “ours.” It is all about test scores, for the glory of the founder, not about education.

Rocketship may be a Model T, an apt means of mass-producing test scores, but that’s a horrifying metaphor for stamping out standardized children who never ask questions, never day dream, always find the answer demanded by the program.

Rocketship is a school designed by Alphas and staffed by Betas for the children who are Delta, Gamma, and Epsilon. Read your Huxley.

Rachel also notes possible conflicts of interest. See her P.S.

Categories Blended Learning, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, On-Line Education, Teachers and Teaching, Technology, Computers
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