Evaluating Teachers Based On Standardized Test Scores

Evaluating teachers based on the current standardized tests is not going to improve education in America. We need to improve the quality of our tests before we should require this. The tests need to focus more on problem solving and critical thinking. Standardized tests can be used as a diagnostic tool to meet students’ needs and assess progress, but they should not be used to evaluate the quality of teaching. We do not want our teachers to be pressured into viewing students as “Value-Added” and “Value-Subtracted” as they walk into the classroom each day because of the learning differences inherent in each student.

Research shows that more than 60% of student achievement is attributable to factors outside of the teachers’ control—such as family income and parenting effectiveness. We should not evaluate teachers based on these factors outside of their control. We should evaluate teachers on what they control—their own professional practice as educators. A criteria for effective teaching, such as Charlotte Danielson’s Framework for Teaching, provides a system for evaluating teachers on their work as educators. Quality teaching cannot be reduced to the standardized test scores of students. We do not want to take more time and resources away from classroom instruction to devote it to annual standardized tests simply for the purpose of evaluating the teachers—not the teachers.

We should raise the standard for entering the teaching profession and empower teachers as professionals. This includes dramatically improving the quality of teacher preparation programs at the university level. Too many universities view their education programs as a cash cow because they do not require the expensive equipment of other programs like the sciences and they can attract a lot of students. Education programs should be some of the rigorous to get into because of they influence every aspect of society, but they are not because many in this country think that teaching is easy and than anyone can be a decent teacher with just a little training. If we made teaching more difficult to get into as a profession, we would have to make sure that we are compensating teachers well enough to attract talented individuals with the expectation that they will have to work hard to be successful. Then, teachers should be evaluated annually by their administrators and peers based upon their professional practice as educators—not student scores.

The public at large also needs to consider what can be done to improve the behavior of students at schools to put teachers in a better position. Too many teachers face impossible classrooms with students who do not behave themselves and do not value an education. Mythical superstar teachers will not solve this problem. Student behavior needs to be improved before educational outcomes will improve. Teachers need to be given the opportunity and freedom by politicians and administrators to design engaging learning experiences and not restricted by scripts and lock step curriculum mandates because they do not trust their teachers. Scripts and lock step curricula do not engage students in the learning process and turn them off to education.

Charter schools and vouchers are not the answers to this problem. Nationwide charter schools are not better than public schools. Those that do outperform public schools often provide wrap-around services with private money to provide students and families the nutrition, health care and services necessary to be more successful. Meeting these needs begins to address the underlying social problems that manifest themselves in less than desirable outcomes for our educational system. The lack of success is not caused by the schools it is caused by the society and individuals within the society who do not do their part to make the system function properly. We all need to take a hard look at ourselves to evaluate if we our doing our part to help our nation’s young people be successful before we blame schools and teachers.

Matt Damon's Mom Discusses Education on CNN

Nancy Carlsson-Paige (Matt Damon's Mom) and Bill Bennett (former U.S. Secretary of Education) tell CNN's Christine Romans what they think of high stakes testing. Nancy Carlsson-Paige expresses her concerns with the misuse and overuse of standardized tests in American schools. She is concerned about the movement to evaluate teachers based on students' standardized test scores and tie their compensation to these results. She is worried that this will stifle the creativity and development of our children by labeling them at early ages and reduce the time devoted to art, music and other opportunities for children to develop as individuals. Bill Bennett agrees that there is too much standardized testing, but defends its appropriate use.

CNN Video of Education Lessons from Finland

Experience Matters

On August 13, 2011 Steven Brill wrote a piece for the Wall Street Journal entitled "Super Teachers Alone Can't Save Our Schools." This article makes several important points based on his experience of studying schools in America. One of the people quoted in the article is Dale Levin, the co-founder of the Knowledge is Power Program (KIPP). Levin says that he was questioned by friends and families 18 years ago why he "would go teach in some ghetto school in Houston." Recently, we seem to be hearing every day that teaching is a cushy job, with high salaries and lots of vacation time. This rhetoric does not seem to match up with the reality of Levin's experiences. Apparently, some people think Yale graduates are too good for to be teachers, but it is a cushy job for "regular" people.  

"Making all those things work is the job," [Levin] continued. "It's exhausting, and it's not exciting, but it's what you have to do."...Yes, teaching is hard work and a lot of it is not glamorous. I would argue that it is just as difficult, if not more difficult, in the public schools than in the charter schools. Maybe people like Levin and Brill should encourage and support public schools teachers as well as their supposed "super teachers" in charter schools instead of denigrating them as inferior and incompetent. But I guess that would not be good for business. Maybe they just have different motives than most teachers...

"I feel overwhelmed, underappreciated and underpaid," a teacher told me one morning at one of the Success Charter Network schools in Harlem. "I work from 7:30 to 5:30 in the building and then go home and work some more," the teacher told me. "I get disrespectful pushback from parents all the time when I try to give their kids consequences. I get feedback from my [supervisors], who demand that I change five or six things by the next day. I think we are doing a great job, so I keep at it. " This is exactly what good teachers around the country do every day--whether they are in charter schools or traditional public schools. It is too bad this woman does not have the support and encouragement from her administration and colleagues to feel like she can continue teaching. Maybe their management practices and philosophy are not sustainable, and instead just burning out teachers every few years. This is supported by the data of many studies showing that charter schools have a high staff turnover rate. 

Brill continues, "They[traditional public school teachers], too, need to respond to the emergency, but they won't do it if all that we give them is a choice between sprinting and sitting down. The lesson that I draw from Ms. Reid's dropping out of the race [quitting] at the Harlem Success school is that the teachers' unions have to be enlisted in the fight for reform. The unions are the organizational link that will enable school improvement to expand beyond the ability of extraordinary people to work extraordinary hours." Brill seems to come to the realization that maybe we should not fire all 3.3 million public teachers, but instead should work with them and the teachers' unions to improve education. What a novel idea. I wonder if any "education reformer" governors will agree.

According to Brill, improving education "means creating work lives and career paths for teachers that will motivate a good portion of them to stay for a while....If there is anything that I have learned from trying to figure out the problems of American public education, it's...that teachers get far better at what they do when they've been doing it for a few years. Working long, hard hours helps." I agree--we should make teaching a career that people want to continue in their whole careers because good teachers get better each year with more experience and lifelong learning. I wonder what policy makers could do to attract high quality people into education and make it so attractive that they want to continue teaching their entire careers...If only we could come up with something...I know, maybe we could pay teachers more each year to give them an incentive to stay and grant them some sort of due process to protect them from the political whims of schools boards and administrators who may not like them for personal reasons. We could call it tenure or something like that. Of course we should have a process where formerly effective teachers who become ineffective teachers would have their employment terminated, but as Brill points out we need to try to find a way to keep good teachers because experience matters. 

Can Teachers Alone Overcome Poverty?

Dana Goldstein recently wrote an article for The Nation entitled "Can Teachers Alone Overcome Poverty? Steven Brill Thinks So" that discusses Brill's coverage of education issues in America. The article summarizes some of his past work and provides analysis of his recent book entitled Class Warfare. Here is an excerpt from the article:

"One of Class Warfare’s stars, a charter school assistant principal named Jessica Reid, unexpectedly quits her job at Eva Moskowitz’s Harlem Success Academy in the middle of the school year; the charter chain’s rigorous demands pushed the 28-year-old Reid, a dedicated and charismatic educator, to the brink of a nervous breakdown and divorce. “This wasn’t a sustainable life, in terms of my health and my marriage,” she tells Brill, who concludes that he agrees (at least in part) with education historian and charter school critic Diane Ravitch. You can’t staff a national public school system of 3.2 million teachers, Ravitch tells Brill, with Ivy Leaguers willing to run themselves ragged for two years. Most of these folks won’t move on to jobs at traditional public schools, as the uncommonly committed Jessica Reid did, but will simply leave the classroom altogether and head to politics, business or law, where they’ll be paid more to do prestigious work, often with shorter, less pressure-filled hours."

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"Can Teachers Alone Overcome Poverty? Steven Brill Thinks So"

Education Week's Coverage of the SOS March

Education Week's Video Coverage of the Save Our Schools March on Wasington DC on July 30, 2011.

The Truth About Teachers

For more information related to the video, see the chart below.

The Truth About Teachers
Myth:  “Teachers are overpaid.”	FACT: · According to the report, "What's It Worth: The Economic Value of College Majors" from the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce funded by the Gates and Lumina Foundations, Education majors earned the least for all college majors among 15 sector groupings. · According to a 2008 report from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), American primary-school educators spend 1,913 hours working a year including hours teachers spend on work at home and outside of the classroom. Data from a Labor Department survey that same year showed that the average full-time employee in the United States worked 1,932 hours spread over 48 weeks.  This statistic shows that teachers work about the same number of hours as the average worker in the United States. This statistic refutes the argument that teachers should be paid considerably less than other workers because "teachers only work 9 months of the year."   Source: http://cew.georgetown.edu/whatsitworth/   More Info: Teachers Work the Same Number of Hours as Average U.S. Worker   More Info: US Teachers Work Longer Hours Than Anywhere In The World, While Earning Less
Myth: “It isn’t fair that teachers receive pensions.”	FACT: · Teachers do not receive Social Security. Teachers in Ohio, for example, have 10% of their pay deducted for their pensions and school districts contribute 14% of the teachers' salaries in the form of deferred compensation--much like how a corporation will match employee contributions to a 401k. Teachers accepted deferred compensation in the form of pensions and health care benefits in lieu of salary increases in the past when teachers' salaries never kept pace with the compensation of other college-educated professionals.   More info: "Taxpayers Actually Contribute Nothing To Public Employee Pensions"
Myth: “We should at least cut back benefits for new teachers.”	FACT: ·    According to McKinsey and Company report “Closing the Talent Gap,” to be on par with other high-performing nations high-needs schools in the U.S. would need to pay new teachers around $68,000 with a maximum career compensation of $150,000 per year. Research shows that teacher quality is extremely important to the success of our education system, so we need to attract and retain the most talented individuals to the teaching profession Source: www.mckinsey.com/clientservice/.../Closing_the_talent_gap.aspx
Myth:  “Charters schools perform better than traditional public schools.	FACT: ·   According to a 2009 Stanford University study, only 17% of charter schools perform better than public schools while 37% of charter schools perform worse ·   According to 2006 Ohio state report cards, 1 in 2 charter schools were either in academic emergency or academic watch, while only 1 in 11 traditional public school buildings were in academic emergency or academic watch ·   Three out of four public schools are rated excellent or effective, while only one in six charter schools are rated excellent or effective   Source: http://credo.stanford.edu/reports/MULTIPLE_CHOICE_CREDO.pdf
Myth:  “Public schools need to operated like   businesses.”	FACT: •   Education is a public good that cannot turn away “inputs” (i.e. students and parents)  to the  “production process” •   Our political system requires that every citizen is well educated to exercise their civic duties not just the wealthy who could buy a good education in a privatized system     More Info: A Business Leader Admits He Was Wrong About Education
Myth:  “We should pay teachers based on merit because this will encourage teachers to work harder and perform better.”	FACT: · Value-added formulas for teacher performance based on standardized test are not statistically valid and reliable. (Economic Policy Institute, New York Times, National Education Policy Center) ·  Merit pay systems for teachers have been tried in New York City, Chicago, Washington D.C. and Nashville where studies have shown that they did not increase student achievement (Mathematica Policy Research, Economic Policy Institute, National Educational Policy Center, Vanderbilt) ·  Value-added measures based on standardized narrow the curriculum and work against creativity, innovation and intrinsic motivation (Drive by Daniel Pink) ·  Requiring administrators to evaluate every teacher for at least 30 minutes twice every year will increase administrative costs and mean that more money is spent on administrative costs instead of less. ·  According to University of Washington economist Dan Goldhaber, about 60% of student achievement is attributable to non-school factors, such as family income and poverty—factors that the teacher cannot control ·  Research has shown that collaboration among teachers improves the quality of instruction, but merit-pay systems based on standardized test scores for the students of individual teachers creates incentives opposed to collaboration and cooperation ·  Merit pay based on standardized tests punishes teachers for working with students who have disabilities or are disadvantaged More Info:  Evaluating New York Teachers, Perhaps the Numbers Do Lie
Myth:  “If teachers aren’t satisfied with their jobs, they should do something else."	FACT: • According to a report from the Alliance for Excellent Education, “A conservative national estimate of the cost of replacing public school teachers who have dropped out of the profession is $2.2 billion a year. If the cost of replacing public school teachers who transfer schools is added, the total reaches $4.9 billion every year.  For individual states, cost estimates range from $8.5 million in North Dakota to a whopping half a billion dollars for a large state like Texas. Many analysts believe that the price tag is even higher; hiring costs vary by district and sometimes include signing bonuses, subject matter stipends, and other recruiting costs specific to hard-to-staff schools. Others believe that the cost of the loss in teacher quality and student achievement should also be added to the bill.”   Source:  www.all4ed.org/files/archive/publications/TeacherAttrition.pdf
Myth:  “New legislation passed in states was just about balancing budgets.”	FACT: • Teachers are being singled as a convenient scapegoat for economic problems caused  by the collapse of the housing market and corruption that was evident in corporations associated with America’s mortgage industry.   More info: Teachers Under Attack (CNN Money)   More info: American Teachers Under Attack (Fortune)   More info: Are Public Unions Our Convenient Economic Scapegoats? (CNN Money)
More Information Online: www.americansocietytoday.blogspot.com

Test Teacher

Greg Gower, whose wife Linda is the founder of Parents Across America-Spokane, wrote a song lamenting the direction that education is heading in America. Hopefully, many teachers around the country will still find the freedom to teach engaging lessons that provide students with meaningful learning opportunities to learn that also help them to perform better on standardized tests; but, this is certainly a concern of many teachers around the country.

Please Mr. President Listen to Me!

Linda Gower, founder of Parents Across America, Spokane, and her husband Greg created a video for the Save Our Schools March and Rally that will be held Saturday, July 30th, 2011.

ALEC Discussed on the ED Show

Education Dean Discusses ALEC's Agenda

Illinois State Senator Shares Her Experience with Stand for Children

In this short video, Illinois State Senator Kimberly Lightford shares her experience with the political advocacy group Stand for Children. Her comments are then followed by excerpts of one of Stand for Children's Co-Founders, Jonah Edelman, explaining the group's work in Illinois.

"Reformer" Explains How Teachers' Unions in Illinois Were Taken Down

Jonah Edelman Co-founder of Stand for Children talks in detail about how they came to Illinois with the express purpose to take down the teachers unions. He revels in the fact that the general public was unsuspecting of the tactics being used against the teachers of Illinois and if they had it would have been unpalatable . He talks about how he worked to divide and conquer the teachers' and how the Illinois teachers association president went to work for Arne Duncan at the U.S. Dept of Ed. shortly after the talks were settled.

Why US Education Deserves Our Praise and Funding

John T. Harvey, an Economics professor at Texas Christian University, recently posted an excellent post to his Pragmatic Economics blog from Forbes. Here is an excerpt from that post:


"My immediate motivation for addressing this issue is the fact that over July 15-16, my wife, Melanie, and I will be attending the Save Our Schools conference in Austin. She has been a 4th grade teacher in Everman, Texas for 18 years, and I don’t know anyone who works harder than she does. I always tell people that she is the one with the real job. She gets up at 5:30am every morning, leaves the house about the time the kids and I are rising, goes in early to work to get things ready for the day, spends the school hours teaching lessons about mathematics, literature, science, civics, citizenship, friendship, achievement, disappointment, dedication, right, wrong, pride, humility, and more, and stays late to organize materials and set up special projects. During any given day, she may serve as instructor, mentor, counselor, intermediary, motivator, nurse, and disciplinarian. When she finally comes home around 5:30pm or 6:00pm, there are often papers to grade, parent calls to make, lesson plans to write, or other required (if not always important) tasks. To those looking for a cushy 9:00 to 3:00 job, this ain’t it. If it weren’t for the summers, when she finally gets to recharge her batteries and spend some quality time with the rest of the family, I would have begged her to quit years ago. Incidentally, she used to be a very successful (record-setting, in fact) office manager in the private sector. So much for, “Those who can, do, and those who can’t, teach.”

Melanie’s experience does not appear to be unique. Data from 2008 indicate that hours spent by teachers on instruction is higher in the US than in any other OECD country. And Christiana Stoddard and Peter Kuhn (2008) found that, since 1983, teacher on-the-job hours have increased by roughly one hour per week, while after school time devoted to work has jumped by 34%. It is also common for teachers to spend a not insignificant amount of their own money on materials for their students and there are at least a few training sessions they are expected to attend during the summers (on their own time).

One might interject here that there are plenty of jobs where the employees work long hours. Quite right. But teachers aren’t asking for our pity, only our respect. And this is something they sorely lack."

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http://blogs.forbes.com/johntharvey/2011/07/08/save-our-schools/

Education Reform vs. Education "Reform"

A Former Education Reformer Admits He Was Wrong

Diane Ravitch Discusses Education Reform with Andrea Mitchell

Michelle Rhee's Education Reform Strategy

U.S. Schools Are Still Ahead—Way Ahead

Vivek Wadhwa recently wrote an article for Bloomberg Business Week entitled, "U.S. Schools Are Still Ahead—Way Ahead." Vivek Wadhwa is a visiting scholar at University of California-Berkeley, senior research associate at Harvard Law School, and director of research at the Center for Entrepreneurship and Research Commercialization at Duke University. Here are some excerpts from that article:

"...The independence and social skills American children develop give them a huge advantage when they join the workforce. They learn to experiment, challenge norms, and take risks. They can think for themselves, and they can innovate. This is why America remains the world leader in innovation; why Chinese and Indians invest their life savings to send their children to expensive U.S. schools when they can. India and China are changing, and as the next generations of students become like American ones, they too are beginning to innovate. So far, their education systems have held them back.

...Much is made of the PISA test scores and rankings, but the international differences are actually quite small. Most of the U.S. ranking lags are not even statistically significant. The U.S. falls in the second rank on some measures and into the first on others. It produces more highest-performing students in science and reading than any other country does; in mathematics, it is second only to Japan. Moreover, one has to ask what the test results actually mean in the real world. Do high PISA rankings make students more likely to invent the next iPad? Google (GOOG)? I don't think so.

Let's keep improving our education system and focus, in particular, on disadvantaged groups. Education is the future of our nation. But let's get over our inferiority complex. America is second to none. Rather than in mastery of facts learned by rote and great numbers of accomplished martinets, its strength lies in the diversity and innovation that arise in an open, creative society."

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U.S. Schools Are Still Ahead-Way Ahead

The Service of Democratic Education

At the commencement ceremony for Columbia University's Teachers College on May 18, Stanford education professor Linda Darling-Hammond—a nationally renowned leader in education reform and former education adviser to Barack Obama's presidential campaign—was awarded the Teachers College medal for distinguished service. She responded with an elegant address on public education in America. Here are excerpts from that address:

"...During that decade, precisely 100 years ago, nationally distributed tests of arithmetic, handwriting and English were put into use. Their results were used to compare students, teachers and schools; to report to the public; and even to award merit pay—a short-lived innovation due to the many problems it caused.

Does any of this sound familiar?

In the view of these brilliant managerial engineers, professionally trained teachers were considered troublesome, because they had their own ideas about education and frequently didn’t go along meekly with the plan.

As one such teacher wrote in The American Teacher in 1912:

We have yielded to the arrogance of "big business men" and have accepted their criteria of efficiency at their own valuation, without question. We have consented to measure the results of educational efforts in terms of price and product—the terms that prevail in the factory and the department store. But education, since it deals in the first place with human organisms, and in the second place with individualities, is not analogous to a standardizable manufacturing process. Education must measure its efficiency not in terms of so many promotions per dollar of expenditure, nor even in terms of so many student-hours per dollar of salary; it must measure its efficiency in terms of increased humanism, increased power to do, increased capacity to appreciate.

 ...The new scientific managers, like the Franklin Bobbitts before them, like to rank and sort students, teachers and schools—rewarding those at the top and punishing those at the bottom, something that the highest-achieving countries not only don’t do but often forbid. The present-day Bobbitts would create “efficiencies” by firing teachers and closing schools, while issuing multimillion-dollar contracts for testing and data systems to create more graphs, charts and report cards on which to rank and sort… well, just about everything.

...And doing the right thing—meeting that professional commitment—is not easy. Whether it is standing up for a child who is mistreated, or finding the energy to go that extra mile to reach out to a troubled parent, or taking up a challenging issue in the research, or taking on a difficult concern in the public discourse, doing the right thing is often hard. As King reminded us:

On some positions, Cowardice asks the question "Is it safe?" Expediency asks the question "Is it politic?" And Vanity comes along and asks the question "Is it popular?" But Conscience asks the question "Is it right?" And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular, but he must do it because Conscience tells him it is right.

Take heart in knowing that the arc of history is long, as King noted, but it bends toward justice. Take courage in knowing that where a community of hands comes together to work toward justice, a freedom seed will grow. And take pride in knowing, when the work is challenging and setbacks come—as they must when anything important is happening—that you are building a better future for every child and family and community you touch. And remember, as Robert F. Kennedy observed:

It is from numberless diverse acts of courage and belief that human history is shaped. Each time a person stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope."

 Continue Reading Her Full Address:
The Service of Democratic Education