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A Teacher Who Is Evaluated by the Scores of Students She Does Not Teach

By dianeravitch
December 9, 2013 //
40

A reader writes:

“I’m a special education teacher in New Mexico and I took this year off teaching, for medical reasons. The choice was made easier by the new teacher evaluations. Since my students have significant disabilities, they can not take the state tests. 50% of my evaluation would then be based on how the regular education students, who I do not teach, scored at our school. 25% of my evaluation would be based on my principal’s view of how I contributed to that score (God knows how that we be, since I do not provide instruction to any of the students who take the test). So 75% of my yearly evaluation would have been based on test scores of students that receive no instruction from me. How could this possibly be an effective indicator of student/teacher performance in my classroom?

“All this does is provide an incentive for teachers to work with the wealthiest, highest performing schools, while disincentivizing teachers from working with special needs students or in high risk or low income settings.

“I have no problem with being evaluated or critiqued as a professional, but it needs to be done with some semblance of common sense.”

Categories New Mexico, Special Education, Teacher Evaluations, Testing

Charleston, S.C., Builds a Bridge to Nowhere–in Its Schools

By dianeravitch
December 9, 2013 //
6

Surprise! The school leadership of Charleston, South Carolina, has come up with some stale ideas and branded them as “reform.”

Nothing like copying what was tried and failed everywhere else!

The district calls it a “new” program of teacher evaluation, pay for performance, and reconfigured salary structure BRIDGE but in fact it is the status quo demanded by the U.S. Department of Education.

Every Broad-trained superintendent has the same ideas but is tasked with calling them “new” (when they are not), “evidence-based” (when they are not), and “reform” (when they are the status quo, paid for and sanctified by the U.S. Department of Education).

Patrick Hayes, a teacher in Charleston, has launched a campaign to expose the destructive plan of the district leaders, whose primary outcome will be to demoralize and drive away good teachers.

This blogger, the Charleston Area Community Voice for Education, recognizes that the new structure is not new, that it relies on “Junk Science,” and that it is “a Bridge to I Don’t Know Where.”

He writes:

BRIDGE brings into full play in Charleston many of the recent reform strategies and policies, including

  • large-scale testing,
  • using test scores to rate principal and teacher performance (VAM), merit pay,
  • Broad Academy trained leadership (starting with the superintendent), for example

It is important to note that these are the reforms of the last decade or so that have produced little improvement in schools as measured by the same testing and by the recently announce PISA results. These “reforms” are the status quo; in fact, they are not reform at all. As Hayes and others have pointed out, there is no credible evidence to support the effectiveness of these efforts, at least in terms of increased learning or even measuring teacher quality.

Further, the school district has built no case for why do BRIDGE in terms of what we want for our children, teachers, and classrooms. BRIDGE appears to be a large, well-funded ($23.7 million) solution to vague, and even non-existent problems. It is a solution the district apparently intends to impact every classroom and hence every student in Charleston public schools.

Here’s the thing. There are students in all schools who are not learning to their potential. There are also schools that have issues, academic and otherwise, that need addressing. There are also schools and students doing amazingly well.

The success of those students and schools cannot be attributed to evaluation (of teachers, schools, or even the students), nor is there any evidence that evaluation will fix the problems that do exist. Hint: we already know where the problems are. To base a massive restructuring of how schools, teachers, principals, and certainly students do business and spend their days is bogus, and the impacts of flawed, misdirected programs in education usually drive us to a cliff.

The bottom line is this: Charleston County School District has embarked on a very large experiment, called BRIDGE, with vaguely defined goals (except, perhaps raising test scores) with the plan of “let’s see if this works, because we have to do something”. Of course, in science, when you’re out there exploring the unknown, you don’t know what you’ll get.

Perhaps I’m missing the point here, so maybe I need to ask my six year old granddaughter and her teacher and principal, all of whom are doing quite well, thank you.

I would like to hear an answer from the school board and superintendent addressed to Grace (who understand quite a bit) to this question:

Why are you doing this BRIDGE thing?

Go ahead. I dare you.

Categories Accountability, Broad Foundation, Duncan, Arne, Education Reform, Teacher Evaluations, Teacher Tenure, Testing

Syracuse, N.Y., Superintendents Says High-Stakes Testing Destroys Promise of Common Core

By dianeravitch
December 7, 2013 //
48

Casey Barduhn, superintendent of the Westhill Central School District, warns New York Commissioner John King that his reliance on high-stakes testing is destroying the promise of the Common Core standards.

Barduhn wrote to King that he was intrigued by the standards when they were unveiled and hopeful that they would lead to creative and innovative teaching and learning.

But with the advent of the high-stakes testing, that sense of joyful anticipation was replaced by an undue emphasis on testing, test prep, and misallocated time and resources.

The rebellion against Common Core testing continues to grow. At some point, John King will have to listen to experienced educators nd change course. One cannot lead without followers.

Categories Administrators, superintendents, Common Core, New York, Testing

Suicide is Leading Cause of Death in China among Young

By dianeravitch
December 6, 2013 //
64

The high pressure to compete for limited spots in university is a contributing factor to the high suicide rate in China among young people ages 15-34, according to this news report.

The story says:

Amid growing competition for university places and rising graduate unemployment, suicide is now the leading cause of death for Chinese people aged between 15 and 34, official media reported this week.

Nationwide, suicide is also the fifth leading cause of death across the entire population, the Beijing Evening Newsreported.

“We should prevent suicide in young people; in particular, suicides over the fact that they didn’t get high enough grades in the university entrance exam to get a place at their ideal university, and other reasons like that,” said Chinese U.S.-based medical doctor Jin Fusheng, who runs a private practice in Maryland.

“This is why we need to get the message out that all roads lead to [their goal],” he said.

“Suicide prevention requires a collective effort from communities, the media, families and the whole of society.”

According to figures from the Geneva-based World Health Organization (WHO), 30 percent of the world’s suicides take place in China, where 250,000 people take their own lives annually.

Categories International, Testing

Add This Event to My Speaking Schedule: January 16

By dianeravitch
December 6, 2013 //
9

I will be speaking to the Westchester-Putnam Counties School Boards Association on January 16 at 7:30 p.m. about testing and the Common Core.

The event will be held at Fox Lane High School in Bedford, New York.

All are welcome, but please register in advance.

The registration link is on the flyer, and is listed here for your convenience as well:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/viewform?fromEmail=true&formkey=dG85NDc0VzhSeF9TYkJ0aGJ2WmtEOFE6MA

Thus far, more than 350 board members, superintendents, administrators, teachers and community members have registered to attend.

You are invited too!

Categories Education Reform, Testing

New York City: Commissioner King Brings His Show to NYC Next Week

By dianeravitch
December 6, 2013 //
22

Until now, Commissioner John King and the New York Regents have played their Common Core testing show on the road. You might call them out-of-town tryouts.

Now the show is coming to New York City, on short notice.

Next week, parents, educators, and other community members in Brooklyn and Manhattan will have a chance to voice their concerns on December 10 (Brooklyn) and December 11 (Manhattan). The other boroughs will be announced later.

Here is the schedule, courtesy of Class Size Matters.

Categories Common Core, New York City, Testing

A Balanced Assessment of High Test Scores in Asia

By dianeravitch
December 6, 2013 //
15

This is an excellent and balanced article that explains why Asian nations swept the top places on PISA and at what cost to the students.

In the U.S., we have long had a belief in a “well-rounded” education, and many teachers believe they educate “the whole child,” thus putting concerns about social, emotional, and physical development in context with academic learning. Historically, there have been heated battles between those who want more or less emphasis on academics.

But in the test-centric Asian nations, academics come first, and some education officials in these nations are concerned about the lack of other dimensions of youth development.

It says:

“As a ninth-grader, Shanghai’s Li Sixin spent more than three hours on homework a night and took tutorials in math, physics and chemistry on the weekends. When she was tapped to take an exam last year given to half a million students around the world, Li breezed through it.

“I felt the test was just easy,” said Li, who was a student at Shanghai Wenlai Middle School at the time and now attends high school. “The science part was harder… but I can handle that.”

“Those long hours focused on schoolwork — and a heavy emphasis on test-taking skills — help explain why young students like Li in China’s financial hub once again dominated an international test to 15-year-olds called the Program for International Student Assessment, or PISA, coordinated by the Paris-based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, or OECD.

“Students from Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan, South Korea and Japan — all from Asia — were right behind.

“Students in the wealthy city of Shanghai, where affluent families can afford to pay for tutors, are not representative of China overall, although they are ranked as a group alongside national averages for countries such as the United States and Japan. Still, they are indicative of education trends in China and elsewhere in Asia — societies where test results determine entrance into prestigious universities and often one’s eventual career path.”

But listen to the educators, who worry about what is sacrificed to get high test scores:

“Still, Chinese educational experts are taking a more somber view in the face of the stellar achievements by their students, saying the results are at most partial and covering up shortcomings in creating well-rounded, critical thinking individuals.

“This should not be considered a pride for us, because overall it still measures one’s test-taking ability. You can have the best answer for a theoretical model, but can you build a factory on a test paper?” asked Xiong Bingqi, a Shanghai-based scholar on education.

“The biggest criticism is that China’s education has sacrificed everything else for test scores, such as life skills, character building, mental health, and physical health,” Xiong said.

“Even the party-run People’s Daily noted the burden on Shanghai students. “While many countries have been urged to increase more study time and more homework for their students, Shanghai clearly needs some alleviation,” the editorial reads.

“Japan’s education minister, Hakubun Shimomura, pointed to the test results as evidence of success in reforms aimed at reducing class sizes — despite continued criticism of the pressure-filled university entrance examination system. Many Japanese students also attend cram schools to get an extra edge.

“Asian countries do better than European and American schools because we are ‘examination hell’ countries,” said Koji Kato, a professor emeritus of education at Tokyo’s Sophia University. “There is more pressure to teach to the test. In my experience in working with teachers the situation is becoming worse and worse.”

Categories International, Students, Testing

G.F. Brandenburg: Words of Wisdom About PISA

By dianeravitch
December 5, 2013 //
13

G.F. Brandenburg, as you would expect, has a pithy and wise commentary about the PISA scores.

Here are his first three observations:

“1. There is a lot of evidence that being a good test-taker does not necessarily overlap with other desirable properties, either on the individual level or on the local or national or international level.

2. A lot of silly things are read into comparing how many questions they get right in one country versus another.

3. The United States has now TEN FULL YEARS in which it has based essentially ALL educational decisions on test scores, with a small but well-funded and powerful group claiming that it would produce miracles in raising American students’ test scores on every level that they can be measured.”

And here is his most brilliant, unforgettable, unassailable point:

“Arne Duncan and his ilk say that the fact that the same approach has failed for 10 straight years, means we need to keep doing it harder. Sensible people would say no, let’s forget about measuring with stupid standardized tests. Let the kids learn, remember that humans LOVE to learn stuff — it’s what we do as a species. And precisely nobody knows what knowledge of today is going to be the most useful or fun tomorrow. So let’s get rid of the idiotic focus on standardized tests and Big Data, and stop wasting so much money and time and energy on them. We’ve got all sorts of art and sports and drama and dance and music and technology and building stuff and real science and history and psychology to learn and to perform.”

Categories International, NCLB (No Child Left Behind), Race to the Top, Testing

Lower Hudson Valley: The Disconnect Between the State and the Public

By dianeravitch
December 5, 2013 //
12

Most of the noise against the shoddy implementation of Common Core in New York has been heard in Long Island, but parents and educators are even angrier in the Lower Hudson Valley than in New York. Here is an excellent explanation by veteran journalist Gary Stern..

This is one of the best analyses I have read about why state officials and the public are on a collision course. Can the Regents continue to push such a wildly unpopular set of policies? How long can they continue to say they they are right and the public is wrong?

Stern writes, for example:

The big picture

The State: New York’s public schools have done a poor job of educating its students. Large numbers of students have received high school diplomas despite being unprepared for college or the workforce. They have poor writing skills, do not grasp key math concepts, and are not adept at problem-solving or working in teams. Minorities in big city school systems have been most poorly served, but even suburban schools are not where they need to be. Educational standards need to be not only higher but transformed to reflect the high-tech, constantly changing needs of industry and to keep our state and nation competitive. Get on board or get out of the way.

The LoHud: A state-imposed, one-size-fits-all approach to reform is naïve and counter-productive. Many suburban school systems do a fine job, pushing their students to excel while leaving room for creativity, individualism and local emphasis on the arts. Here’s the thing: parents and local school officials always have a better sense of their schools’ strengths and weaknesses than state and federal bureaucrats trying to adapt business models to education. The state’s approach to reform is foolish and losing credibility by the day. Get out of our backyards.

The Common Core learning standards

The State: The Common Core standards are smarter, more up-to-the-moment and, yes, tougher than our former educational goals. They present a coherent, rich framework for what students need to know and how students need to be able to think. School districts can still devise their own curricula, lesson plans and creative local programming – as long as students meet the standards. Yes, the transition to the Common Core is difficult and challenging but cannot wait. Today’s students deserve the best possible education this year and next year, not when schools feel they are comfortable with the Core.

The LoHud: The standards are pretty good, better in some areas than others. We need time to review them. However, any good will that the Common Core might have inspired is being lost because its implementation in New York has been irresponsibly rushed. We’re building the plane in mid-flight. The standards for each grade assume that students have grown up with the Common Core, but they haven’t. Teachers and curriculum leaders are grasping to figure out what the state wants instead of doing their jobs. The roll-out needs to be halted for a couple of years so we can figure out what comes next. Stop the madness.

Testing

The State: A limited amount of standardized testing is a necessary way to see if students are progressing. The results can be used as a tool to improve instruction. Our new tests are tougher but also better. We had to put them in place right away to ensure districts would align themselves to the Common Core. Without the new tests, the change would have been too slow. We need to find ways to reduce overall testing, in part by encouraging districts to use other methods for their teacher evaluations. And, yes, we will keep moving toward on-line testing until we’re ready.

The LoHud: Are you kidding? You want us to reduce testing? We set up new pre- and post-tests because we had to rush our teacher evaluations systems into place. The new 3-8 tests set us up for failure to prove your contentions that the schools are failing. Your cut scores are non-sense (which the state quietly acknowledges by not requiring remediation for all students who failed to hit state targets). Now you won’t let us see the tests, meaning that we can’t learn what our students need. And now the state is introducing new high school tests? Here we go again. Oh, by the way, we have a million questions that have to be answered before we’re ready for on-line tests.

Categories Common Core, Testing

Daniel Wydo Disaggregates PISA Scores by Income

By dianeravitch
December 5, 2013 //
86

Daniel Wydo, a teacher in North Carolina, sent this analysis of 2012 PISA:

Here’s what the mainstream media will NOT tell you about 2012 PISA. When comparing U.S. schools with less than 10% of students qualifying for free/reduced lunch, here’s how U.S. students (of which almost 25% are considered poor by OECD standards and of which nationally on average about 50% qualify for free/reduced lunch) rank compared to all other countries including one I chose to purposely compare – Finland (of which about 5% are considered poor by OECD standards):

*Shanghai is disqualified for obvious reasons.

Science literacy

U.S. schools with less than 10% free/reduced – score=556 [1st in the world]

Finland – ranked 4th in the world

Reading literacy

U.S. schools with less than 10% free/reduced – score=559 [1st in the world]

Finland – ranked 5th in the world

Mathematics literacy

U.S. schools with less than 10% free/reduced – score=540 [5th in the world]

FInland – ranked 11th in the world

The NCES also disaggregated the mathematics data further based on seven total proficiency levels (Below Level 1, Level 1, Level 2, Level 3, Level 4, Level 5, and Level 6). The outcomes, as expected, were perfectly aligned with what we would expect in terms of the levels of poverty our students endure. For example, on the mathematics literacy scale, U.S. schools with less than 10% free/reduced lunch had 94% of students score at a “Level 2” proficiency or above (a “Level 2” proficiency equates to being able to use basic mathematics in the workplace), whereas schools with more than 75% free/reduced lunch had 54% of students score at a “Level 2” proficiency or above, of which 46% of the 54%, scoring at a “Level 2” proficiency or higher, scored at a “Level 2” or “Level 3” proficiency with only 6% scoring at a “Level 4” proficiency, 2% scoring at a “Level 5” proficiency, and so few scoring at a “Level 6” proficiency, the reporting standards were not met. Virtually no students from schools with less than 10% free/reduced lunch ranked at the “Below Level 1” proficiency (reporting standards were not met), and a mere 5% were ranked at “Level 1” proficiency. On the flip side, a whopping 46% of students in schools with more than 75% of free/reduced lunch scored at a “Level 1” proficiency or at “Below Level 1” proficiency (28% and 18% respectively).

The dissagregated data for science and reading, based on the various proficiency levels, followed the example set in mathematics, although maybe not quite to the extent of variability when comparing schools with less than 10% free/reduced lunch to schools with more than 75% free/reduced lunch..

This is not a new phenomenon. For every administration of PISA and TIMSS, when controlling for poverty, U.S. public school students are not only competitive, they downright lead the world. Even at home nationally, when controlling for poverty, public school students compete with private school students in Lutheran, Catholic, and Christian schools when analyzing NAEP data. This is my own synopsis of the Braun (2006) study using large samples of NAEP data and using HLM to compare private school students to public school students:

In 4th grade reading (after adjusting for student characteristics – so an apples to apples comparison can be made based on SES and other student characteristics) it’s a wash – there is no difference in scores between the private schools and the public schools. In 4th grade mathematics, after adjustments, public schools outperformed private schools significantly. In 8th grade Reading, after adjustments, private schools outperformed public schools significantly, with the exception of Conservative Christian schools, which performed similarly to public schools, both of which were outperformed by Catholic and Lutheran students. In 8th grade mathematics, it’s another wash except for a very important caveat. While Catholic schools followed the trend with and without adjustments, Lutheran school and Conservative Christian schools didn’t. Lutheran schools were significantly higher, increasing the average among private schools, while Conservative Christian schools were significantly lower, decreasing the average among private schools.

http://nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard/pubs/studies/2006461.asp

One has to wonder why our media continues to barely report the connection between child poverty and their performance at school. The school reformers want nothing to do with it other than to claim there are miracle schools and teachers out there, although upon further analysis these are the schools that usually game the system and do a ‘data dance’ – most namely, charter schools.

The reports continue to be all about our failing or “mediocre” schools and incompetent teachers. I like the simple observation made by researchers in the past – if the argument is to be made that U.S. public schools and teachers are failing, then we have huddled all of our incompetent teachers and principals in our urban and rural schools, for they are the ones that struggle or “fail” – this is evidenced in the PISA data I provided and appears at every turn when outcomes are disaggregated based upon child poverty. Or are our urban and rural schools and teachers “failing” or “struggling” any more than our urban or rural police forces? Response times are higher in urban and rural areas (for different reasons), and crime rates are higher in our urban areas, so does this mean that our urban and rural police officers are failures? Can you imagine police unions if we were to erase officer tenure, step ladder structure for pay increases, LIFO, and bust their unions – and then demonize them because they can’t seem to solve the crime problems of our urban areas? Can anyone say value-added modeling for police officers estimating their effects on crime rates during their beat? The difference between police officers and teachers, specifically in this analogy, is that we are push-overs, ah-hem, I mean caretakers.

Categories International, Poverty, Testing
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