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.

An American Agenda for Education Reform

Recently, the National Center on Education and the Economy released a report entitled "Standing on the Shoulders of Giants: An American Agenda for Education Reform" by Marc S. Tucker. The report examines the education systems of Finland, Japan, Singapore, Shanghai and Ontario, Canada as a point of comparison for the American system. Below are excerpts from that report:

"...Put these three points together—highly qualified college educated women and minorities abandoning teaching as a career, the drop in admission standards following the baby boom and the decision by many capable students to avoid teaching because of the widespread teacher layoffs, and we can see the danger ahead for the United States. All we need to do to acquire a very poor teaching force is nothing. Inaction, not action, will bring about this result. It is critical that this trend be reversed. We cannot afford to continue bottom fishing for prospective teachers while the best performing countries are cream skimming.

...There are no “alternative routes” to entering the teaching force in Finland. The only way to become a teacher in Finland is to get a university degree in teaching. 

...At the International Summit on the Teaching Profession convened by Secretary Duncan in New York City in March 2011, the Minister of Education of Singapore offered the observation that the goal of compensation policy ought to be to “take compensation off the table” as a consideration when able young people are making career decisions. There was wide agreement on that point among the ministers of the other top-performing countries around the table.

 

...The United States is far from the Singapore minister’s standard. According to the National Association of Colleges and Employers, teachers earn a national average starting salary of $30,377. That compares with $43,635 for computer programmers, $44,668 for accountants and $45,570 for registered nurses. None of these occupations are among the leading professions, which provide starting salaries that are even higher. Not only do teachers make markedly less than other occupations requiring the same level of education, but census data shows that teachers have been falling farther and farther behind the average compensation for occupations requiring a college degree for 60 years.

...As we have seen, the prevailing view in the United States is that our teachers need not come from the more able strata of the college-educated population. We behave as if we believe that only a few weeks of training is needed to do what they have to do, a sure sign that we do not believe teaching is a profession at all.

 

...Any country that recruits its teachers from the higher ranges of the applied ability distribution will quickly find that—in order to keep them—it has to train them in high quality, high status universities, support them well once hired and offer them decent pay and professional work environments, and—not least—trust them to do the right thing.

...It turns out that neither the researchers whose work is reported on in this paper nor the analysts of the OECD PISA data have found any evidence that any country that leads the world’s education performance league tables has gotten there by ...implementing any of the major agenda items that dominate the education reform agenda in the United States. We include in this list the use of market mechanisms such as charter schools and vouchers, the identification and support of education entrepreneurs to disrupt the system, and the use of student performance data on standardized tests to identify teachers and principals who are then rewarded on that basis for the value they add to a student’s education or who are punished because they fail to do so.

 

...They insisted on high standards but they listened hard to what the teachers had to say about the support they needed to raise student achievement to those standards. They decided that the highest leverage strategy available to them was to ...build the capacity and professional skill and commitment of their in-place teaching force. They focused on what it would take to build capacity at every level of the system to deliver, and wherever possible, supplied it. They made a point of trusting teachers and the teachers returned their trust.”

 

Continue Reading the Full Report:

An American Agenda for Education Reform 

Vouchers Make a Comeback, But Why?

On April 12, 2011 educational historian Diane Ravitch discusses the recent popularity of vouchers and charter schools. Here is a portion from that article:

"The latest state test scores for Wisconsin revealed that students in Milwaukee public schools got higher scores than those in the voucher schools. Among low-income students, those in voucher schools scored the same as low-income students in the Milwaukee Public Schools. Some voucher schools did better than the Milwaukee public schools, but most did no better or worse. But voucher schools do not have as many high-needs students as the public schools in Milwaukee. According to state data, only 1.5 percent of voucher students are in special education, while in the public schools, the figure is about 19 percent.

By coincidence, the University of Arkansas released the fourth-year portion of its five-year study of the Milwaukee voucher program a day after the Wisconsin state scores were reported. Once again, the Arkansas research group, led by Patrick Wolf, found no difference in test-score performance in reading or math when comparing matched students from voucher schools and public schools. The voucher students had slightly higher rates of graduation and college enrollment, but some part of the difference may relate to their family background, especially their mothers' higher levels of education."

Read the Full Article:
Vouchers Make a Comeback, But Why?

Facts on Ohio Senate Bill 5-Ohio Issue 2

Myth: "Senate Bill 5 enacts reasonable reforms by only requiring public employees to contribute 10% of their salaries to their retirements and pay 15% of their health care costs."	FACT: ·  Ohio Senate Bill 5 is 304 pages long. Retirement contributions and health care costs are only a tiny portion of the changes enacted by this bill. In reality, it gives governing bodies executive power (as they should have) as well as judicial power in the labor dispute resolution process. This violates constitutional checks and balances by ending the separation of powers. (SB5 is 304 Pages Long) ·  Ohio Republican State Senator Tim Grendell stated that Senate Bill 5 was unconstitutional before the Ohio Senate on March 30, 2011 based on the 1989 Ohio Supreme Court case City of Rocky River v. State Employment Relations Board. (Source)
Myth: “Private sector workers in the state have faced cutbacks, while public workers haven’t sacrificed anything.”	FACT: ·  State and local employees have accepted wage freezes, health premium increases, mandatory furloughs, and other concessions in response to economic conditions. (James J. Brudney of the American Constitution Society)
Myth: “Salaries and benefits paid to public employees are out of line with the private sector.”	FACT: ·  Public employees make 6.8% less than their private sector counterparts (Economic Policy Institute, Rutgers University) ·  According to the Wall Street Journal, teachers work the same number of hours as the average full-time worker in the United States (Source: Teacher Hours)
Myth: “It isn’t fair that taxpayers pay for teachers’ retirement.”	FACT: ·  Teachers earn compensation in two forms: cash salaries and deferred salaries. The cash salary is their paycheck. 10% of each paycheck is deducted and contributed to their retirement. An amount equal to 14% of the cash salary is contributed on behalf of the employee as deferred salary to their retirement. Teachers’ accepted deferred salaries in lieu of cash salary increases. (Rick Ungar of Forbes magazine)
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. (National Research Council, Economic Policy Institute, New York Times, Washington Post, National Education Policy Center, Rethinking Schools) ·  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 University) ·  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
Myth: “Charter schools outperform 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 (Stanford University CREDO Study) • 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 (Stanford University CREDO Study in Ohio) • Three out of four public schools are rated excellent or effective, while only one in six charter schools are rated excellent or effective (Ohio Department of Education)
Sources Online: www.americansocietytoday.blogspot.com

  This is a link to a sheet that explains facts about Ohio Senate Bill 5. I would like to thank everyone who contributed to the development of this document. Feel free to share it, download it and pass it along.

On Scribd:
Myths vs Facts on Ohio Senate Bill 5

On Google Docs:
Myths vs. Facts on Ohio Senate Bill 5

Just Say No to Voucher Expansion

This article was written by Barbara Miner for the Milwaukee-Wisconsin Journal-Sentinel Online on March 12, 2011.

"For those who worry about taxation without representation, vouchers should send shivers down your spine. Voucher schools are defined as private even though subsidized by taxpayers.

As a result, voucher schools do not have to abide by basic accountability measures such as releasing their test scores to the public or providing data on teacher pay. They also can ignore basic democratic safeguards such as open meetings and records laws or due process rights for expelled students."

Read the Full Article:
http://www.jsonline.com/news/opinion/117830148.html

The Myth of Charter Schools

"...For many people, these arguments require a willing suspension of disbelief. Most Americans graduated from public schools, and most went from school to college or the workplace without thinking that their school had limited their life chances. There was a time—which now seems distant—when most people assumed that students’ performance in school was largely determined by their own efforts and by the circumstances and support of their family, not by their teachers. There were good teachers and mediocre teachers, even bad teachers, but in the end, most public schools offered ample opportunity for education to those willing to pursue it. The annual Gallup poll about education shows that Americans are overwhelmingly dissatisfied with the quality of the nation’s schools, but 77 percent of public school parents award their own child’s public school a grade of A or B, the highest level of approval since the question was first asked in 1985.

Waiting for “Superman” and the other films appeal to a broad apprehension that the nation is falling behind in global competition. If the economy is a shambles, if poverty persists for significant segments of the population, if American kids are not as serious about their studies as their peers in other nations, the schools must be to blame. At last we have the culprit on which we can pin our anger, our palpable sense that something is very wrong with our society, that we are on the wrong track, and that America is losing the race for global dominance. It is not globalization or deindustrialization or poverty or our coarse popular culture or predatory financial practices that bear responsibility: it’s the public schools, their teachers, and their unions.

...Some fact-checking is in order, and the place to start is with the film’s quiet acknowledgment that only one in five charter schools is able to get the “amazing results” that it celebrates. Nothing more is said about this astonishing statistic. It is drawn from a national study of charter schools by Stanford economist Margaret Raymond (the wife of Hanushek). Known as the CREDO study, it evaluated student progress on math tests in half the nation’s five thousand charter schools and concluded that 17 percent were superior to a matched traditional public school; 37 percent were worse than the public school; and the remaining 46 percent had academic gains no different from that of a similar public school. The proportion of charters that get amazing results is far smaller than 17 percent.Why did Davis Guggenheim pay no attention to the charter schools that are run by incompetent leaders or corporations mainly concerned to make money? Why propound to an unknowing public the myth that charter schools are the answer to our educational woes, when the filmmaker knows that there are twice as many failing charters as there are successful ones? Why not give an honest accounting?

...The propagandistic nature of Waiting for “Superman” is revealed by Guggenheim’s complete indifference to the wide variation among charter schools. There are excellent charter schools, just as there are excellent public schools. Why did he not also inquire into the charter chains that are mired in unsavory real estate deals, or take his camera to the charters where most students are getting lower scores than those in the neighborhood public schools? Why did he not report on the charter principals who have been indicted for embezzlement, or the charters that blur the line between church and state? Why did he not look into the charter schools whose leaders are paid $300,000–$400,000 a year to oversee small numbers of schools and students?

...The movie asserts a central thesis in today’s school reform discussion: the idea that teachers are the most important factor determining student achievement. But this proposition is false. Hanushek has released studies showing that teacher quality accounts for about 7.5–10 percent of student test score gains. Several other high-quality analyses echo this finding, and while estimates vary a bit, there is a relative consensus: teachers statistically account for around 10–20 percent of achievement outcomes. Teachers are the most important factor within schools.

But the same body of research shows that nonschool factors matter even more than teachers. According to University of Washington economist Dan Goldhaber, about 60 percent of achievement is explained by nonschool factors, such as family income. So while teachers are the most important factor within schools, their effects pale in comparison with those of students’ backgrounds, families, and other factors beyond the control of schools and teachers. Teachers can have a profound effect on students, but it would be foolish to believe that teachers alone can undo the damage caused by poverty and its associated burdens.

Guggenheim skirts the issue of poverty by showing only families that are intact and dedicated to helping their children succeed. One of the children he follows is raised by a doting grandmother; two have single mothers who are relentless in seeking better education for them; two of them live with a mother and father. Nothing is said about children whose families are not available, for whatever reason, to support them, or about children who are homeless, or children with special needs. Nor is there any reference to the many charter schools that enroll disproportionately small numbers of children who are English-language learners or have disabilities.

...Today, charter schools are promoted not as ways to collaborate with public schools but as competitors that will force them to get better or go out of business. In fact, they have become the force for privatization that Shanker feared. Because of the high-stakes testing regime created by President George W. Bush’s No Child Left Behind (NCLB) legislation, charter schools compete to get higher test scores than regular public schools and thus have an incentive to avoid students who might pull down their scores. Under NCLB, low-performing schools may be closed, while high-performing ones may get bonuses. Some charter schools “counsel out” or expel students just before state testing day. Some have high attrition rates, especially among lower-performing students.

Perhaps the greatest distortion in this film is its misrepresentation of data about student academic performance. The film claims that 70 percent of eighth-grade students cannot read at grade level. This is flatly wrong. Guggenheim here relies on numbers drawn from the federally sponsored National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). I served as a member of the governing board for the national tests for seven years, and I know how misleading Guggenheim’s figures are. NAEP doesn’t measure performance in terms of grade-level achievement. The highest level of performance, “advanced,” is equivalent to an A+, representing the highest possible academic performance. The next level, “proficient,” is equivalent to an A or a very strong B. The next level is “basic,” which probably translates into a C grade. The film assumes that any student below proficient is “below grade level.” But it would be far more fitting to worry about students who are “below basic,” who are 25 percent of the national sample, not 70 percent.

Guggenheim didn’t bother to take a close look at the heroes of his documentary. Geoffrey Canada is justly celebrated for the creation of the Harlem Children’s Zone, which not only runs two charter schools but surrounds children and their families with a broad array of social and medical services. Canada has a board of wealthy philanthropists and a very successful fund-raising apparatus. With assets of more than $200 million, his organization has no shortage of funds. Canada himself is currently paid $400,000 annually. For Guggenheim to praise Canada while also claiming that public schools don’t need any more money is bizarre. Canada’s charter schools get better results than nearby public schools serving impoverished students. If all inner-city schools had the same resources as his, they might get the same good results.

But contrary to the myth that Guggenheim propounds about “amazing results,” even Geoffrey Canada’s schools have many students who are not proficient. On the 2010 state tests, 60 percent of the fourth-grade students in one of his charter schools were not proficient in reading, nor were 50 percent in the other. It should be noted—and Guggenheim didn’t note it—that Canada kicked out his entire first class of middle school students when they didn’t get good enough test scores to satisfy his board of trustees. This sad event was documented by Paul Tough in his laudatory account of Canada’s Harlem Children’s Zone, Whatever It Takes (2009). Contrary to Guggenheim’s mythology, even the best-funded charters, with the finest services, can’t completely negate the effects of poverty.

Guggenheim ignored other clues that might have gotten in the way of a good story. While blasting the teachers’ unions, he points to Finland as a nation whose educational system the US should emulate, not bothering to explain that it has a completely unionized teaching force. His documentary showers praise on testing and accountability, yet he does not acknowledge that Finland seldom tests its students. Any Finnish educator will say that Finland improved its public education system not by privatizing its schools or constantly testing its students, but by investing in the preparation, support, and retention of excellent teachers. It achieved its present eminence not by systematically firing 5–10 percent of its teachers, but by patiently building for the future. Finland has a national curriculum, which is not restricted to the basic skills of reading and math, but includes the arts, sciences, history, foreign languages, and other subjects that are essential to a good, rounded education. Finland also strengthened its social welfare programs for children and families. Guggenheim simply ignores the realities of the Finnish system.

In any school reform proposal, the question of “scalability” always arises. Can reforms be reproduced on a broad scale? The fact that one school produces amazing results is not in itself a demonstration that every other school can do the same. For example, Guggenheim holds up Locke High School in Los Angeles, part of the Green Dot charter chain, as a success story but does not tell the whole story. With an infusion of $15 million of mostly private funding, Green Dot produced a safer, cleaner campus, but no more than tiny improvements in its students’ abysmal test scores. According to the Los Angeles Times, the percentage of its students proficient in English rose from 13.7 percent in 2009 to 14.9 percent in 2010, while in math the proportion of proficient students grew from 4 percent to 6.7 percent. What can be learned from this small progress? Becoming a charter is no guarantee that a school serving a tough neighborhood will produce educational miracles.

Another highly praised school that is featured in the film is the SEED charter boarding school in Washington, D.C. SEED seems to deserve all the praise that it receives from Guggenheim, CBS’s 60 Minutes, and elsewhere. It has remarkable rates of graduation and college acceptance. But SEED spends $35,000 per student, as compared to average current spending for public schools of about one third that amount. Is our society prepared to open boarding schools for tens of thousands of inner-city students and pay what it costs to copy the SEED model? Those who claim that better education for the neediest students won’t require more money cannot use SEED to support their argument.

...It bears mentioning that nations with high-performing school systems—whether Korea, Singapore, Finland, or Japan—have succeeded not by privatizing their schools or closing those with low scores, but by strengthening the education profession. They also have less poverty than we do. Fewer than 5 percent of children in Finland live in poverty, as compared to 20 percent in the United States. Those who insist that poverty doesn’t matter, that only teachers matter, prefer to ignore such contrasts.

If we are serious about improving our schools, we will take steps to improve our teacher force, as Finland and other nations have done. That would mean better screening to select the best candidates, higher salaries, better support and mentoring systems, and better working conditions. Guggenheim complains that only one in 2,500 teachers loses his or her teaching certificate, but fails to mention that 50 percent of those who enter teaching leave within five years, mostly because of poor working conditions, lack of adequate resources, and the stress of dealing with difficult children and disrespectful parents. Some who leave “fire themselves”; others were fired before they got tenure. We should also insist that only highly experienced teachers become principals (the “head teacher” in the school), not retired businessmen and military personnel. Every school should have a curriculum that includes a full range of studies, not just basic skills. And if we really are intent on school improvement, we must reduce the appalling rates of child poverty that impede success in school and in life.

There is a clash of ideas occurring in education right now between those who believe that public education is not only a fundamental right but a vital public service, akin to the public provision of police, fire protection, parks, and public libraries, and those who believe that the private sector is always superior to the public sector. Waiting for “Superman” is a powerful weapon on behalf of those championing the “free market” and privatization. It raises important questions, but all of the answers it offers require a transfer of public funds to the private sector. The stock market crash of 2008 should suffice to remind us that the managers of the private sector do not have a monopoly on success.

Public education is one of the cornerstones of American democracy. The public schools must accept everyone who appears at their doors, no matter their race, language, economic status, or disability. Like the huddled masses who arrived from Europe in years gone by, immigrants from across the world today turn to the public schools to learn what they need to know to become part of this society. The schools should be far better than they are now, but privatizing them is no solution.

...In the final moments of Waiting for “Superman,” the children and their parents assemble in auditoriums in New York City, Washington, D.C., Los Angeles, and Silicon Valley, waiting nervously to see if they will win the lottery. As the camera pans the room, you see tears rolling down the cheeks of children and adults alike, all their hopes focused on a listing of numbers or names. Many people react to the scene with their own tears, sad for the children who lose. I had a different reaction. First, I thought to myself that the charter operators were cynically using children as political pawns in their own campaign to promote their cause. (Gail Collins in The New York Times had a similar reaction and wondered why they couldn’t just send the families a letter in the mail instead of subjecting them to public rejection.) Second, I felt an immense sense of gratitude to the much-maligned American public education system, where no one has to win a lottery to gain admission."

Read the Entire Article:
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2010/nov/11/myth-charter-schools/?page=1

Fact-Challenged Policy

Richard Rothstein

Research Associate, Economic Policy Institute

Last week, Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates published an op-ed in the Washington Post, “How Teacher Development could Revolutionize our Schools,” proposing that American public schools should do a better job of evaluating the effectiveness of teachers, a goal with which none can disagree. But his specific prescriptions, and the urgency he attaches to them, are based on the misrepresentation of one fact, the misinterpretation of another and the demagogic presentation of a third. It is remarkable that someone associated with technology and progress should have such a careless disregard for accuracy when it comes to the education policy in which he is now so deeply involved.
Gates’ most important factual claim is that “over the past four decades, the per-student cost of running our K-12 schools has more than doubled, while our student achievement has remained virtually flat.” And, he adds, “spending has c...
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Last week, Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates published an op-ed in the Washington Post, “How Teacher Development could Revolutionize our Schools,” proposing that American public schools should do a better job of evaluating the effectiveness of teachers, a goal with which none can disagree. But his specific prescriptions, and the urgency he attaches to them, are based on the misrepresentation of one fact, the misinterpretation of another and the demagogic presentation of a third. It is remarkable that someone associated with technology and progress should have such a careless disregard for accuracy when it comes to the education policy in which he is now so deeply involved.

Gates’ most important factual claim is that “over the past four decades, the per-student cost of running our K-12 schools has more than doubled, while our student achievement has remained virtually flat.” And, he adds, “spending has climbed, but our percentage of college graduates has dropped compared with other countries.” Let’s examine these factual claims:

Bill Gates says: “Our student achievement has remained virtually flat”
The only longitudinal measure of student achievement that is available to Bill Gates or anyone else is the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). NAEP provides trends for 4th, 8th, and 12th graders, disaggregated by race, ethnicity, and poverty, since about 1980 in basic skills in math and reading (called the “Long Term Trend NAEP”) and since about 1990 for 4th and 8th graders in slightly more sophisticated math and reading skills (called the “Main NAEP”).[*]

On these exams, American students have improved substantially, in some cases phenomenally. In general, the improvements have been greatest for African-American students, and among these, for the most disadvantaged. The improvements have been greatest for both black and white 4th and 8th graders in math. Improvements have been less great but still substantial for black 4th and 8th graders in reading and for black 12th graders in both math and reading. Improvements have been modest for whites in 12th grade math and at all three grade levels in reading.

The following table summarizes these results, for the earliest and most recent years for which disaggregated data were collected.
The Main Assessment is not shown for 12th grade because it was not administered until 2005.
Source: NAEP Data Explorer: http://nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard/naepdata/


We can see that in 4th grade math, black students now have higher average achievement than white students had when the assessments began. Average black students’ gains have been a full standard deviation, a rate of progress that would be considered extraordinary in any area of social policy. The black-white score gap has narrowed some, but not very much, because white students have also shown improvement.

Bill Gates may think that these improvements are insufficient, and perhaps he is correct. But, as Daniel Patrick Moynihan reportedly quipped, “everyone is entitled to their own opinions, but not to their own facts.” No rational reading of these NAEP data can support Bill Gates’ claim that “student achievement has remained virtually flat” over the last four decades.[†] And, to repeat, no other longitudinal data are available that describe student achievement over time.

These facts also don’t support the story that the typical teacher of disadvantaged children is ineffective. Certainly, some teachers are ineffective, and schools should do a better job of removing them. But that should not, if facts are to be believed, be the main story.

Yet it seems to be. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan recently asserted that “many, if not most, teacher-training programs are mediocre.” This may be true, but how does he know? What is his evidence? It wouldn’t seem that mediocre teacher training programs could consistently be turning out teachers who have posted the kinds of gains we’ve seen on NAEP in the last generation and more.
It is important to investigate why, in the most recent period, typical teachers have been more effective with elementary school children than with high-schoolers, but curiously, the reforms Bill Gates and like-thinking policymakers are pursuing concern elementary school teachers almost exclusively – because the student value-added scores on NCLB-required standardized tests by which they propose to evaluate these teachers are available only for elementary, not secondary school students. It is also important to investigate why teachers have apparently been more effective during most (though not all) of the last few decades in teaching math than reading, but it is difficult to motivate anyone to investigate this if our vision is clouded by the myth that all student achievement has been flat.

Bill Gates says: “The per-student cost of running our K-12 schools has more than doubled.”
Here, Bill Gates is nominally correct, but misleading. When properly adjusted for inflation, K-12 per pupil spending has about doubled over the last four decades, but less than half of this new money has gone to regular education (including compensatory education for disadvantaged children, programs for English-language learners, integration programs like magnet schools, and special schools for dropout recovery and prevention). The biggest single recipient of new money has been special education for children with disabilities. Four decades ago, special education consumed less than 4% of all K-12 spending. It now consumes 21%.[‡]

Detailed tables documenting these trends are available here: http://epi.3cdn.net/1726cc68ca1a71563a_o3m6bhrub.pdf

American public education can boast of remarkable accomplishments in special education over this period. Many young people can now function in society whereas, in the past, children with similar disabilities were institutionalized and discarded. But it is not reasonable to complain about the increase in spending on such children by insisting that it should have produced greater improvement in the achievement of regular children.

The increase in regular education spending has still been substantial, even if not nearly as great as Bill Gates implies. Should this spending increase have produced even greater improvement in achievement than has in fact occurred? This is a more difficult judgment to make. But in light of the actual achievement improvements documented by NAEP, it is not reasonable to jump to the facile conclusion of a productivity collapse in K-12 education. A more reasonable story is that spending has increased and achievement has increased as well. Perhaps we have gotten what we paid for.
Bill Gates says: “Spending has climbed, but our percentage of college graduates has dropped compared with other countries.”

This is the Bill Gates claim that can properly be called demagogic. It attempts to agitate readers by presenting a positive development in a negative light. A climb in spending should produce an increase in the percentage of college graduates. And it has. In the last four decades, the percentage of college graduates in the United States has nearly doubled. In 1970, 16% of young adults (ages 25 to 29) were college graduates. Today, it is 31%. The improvement has been across the board: the share of African-American young adults who are college graduates has gone from 10% to 19%; for whites it has gone from 17% to 37%. Somehow, Bill Gates saw fit to present this as an indictment.

Should our college graduation rate be rising faster? Of course, that would be a good thing. Should the spending increases we have experienced have generated a faster increase in college graduation than, in fact, they have? That would be worth exploring, but Bill Gates’ phrasing suggests to the less-than-careful reader that spending increases haven’t been productive at all, because our college graduation rate has “dropped…” Would a faster increase require even greater increases in spending? That is also likely, but it is not a conclusion that Bill Gates intends to suggest.

It is commonplace to imply, as Bill Gates does in his Washington Post op-ed, that our failure to increase our college graduation rate “compared with other countries” will prevent us from “build[ing] a dynamic 21st-century economy.” Certainly, we need a sufficient number of well-trained college graduates for such an economy, but there is no reason to believe that a graduate rate in excess of 30% is too small for this purpose, or that economic dynamism can, after reaching sufficiency, increase linearly with increases in the share of young people who graduate from college. The threats to a dynamic 21st century economy are likely to come from a failure of macroeconomic policy, regulation of speculation, and investment in education, not from inefficiency in the investment we already make.
We only need to examine the list of international college graduation rates to see the absurdity of efforts to make a direct link between college graduation rates and economic success. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) publishes comparative data. One country that outranks the U.S. in college graduation rates is Ireland, whose economy has now collapsed because its regulation of the real estate bubble was even more careless and corrupt than ours. Another is Portugal, whose economic health is also worse than that of the U.S. Of course there are also nations on the list that are not on the verge of bankruptcy, but the chief lesson of the list is this: provided a nation has a sufficient number of college graduates for a dynamic economy, rankings above that point are irrelevant. Of course we should increase our college graduation rate, and there are many civic and cultural reasons to do so, even if we may already produce (as some analyses suggest) an apparent surplus, for economic purposes, of science, technology, engineering, and math graduates.
Education is complex, and the relationship between education and the economy even more so. Our ability to grapple with the challenges these present is not enhanced by factually inaccurate and hyperventilated appeals from those who should know better.


Endnotes

[*] In theory, the Long Term Trend (LTT) is distinguished from the Main Assessment because the LTT assesses the same skills, whereas the Main Assessment changes over time, as the curriculum changes. But in fact, the LTT also changes somewhat over time, and the Main Assessment is sufficiently stable to make longitudinal comparisons.

[†] If the data are further disaggregated by decade, there have been some interim periods of flatness within the overall growth. For example, gains were strongest for black elementary students in the LTT in the 1980s and 2000s, and flat in the 1990s, but on the Main Assessment they showed strong gains in the 1990s as well. Twelfth grade LTT reading scores have been mostly flat since 1990, after a dramatic leap of 24 scale points for blacks in the 1980s. Fourth grade LTT reading scores fell for blacks in the 1980s, but rebounded in the 1990s and jumped even more strongly in the 2000s. I will post tables showing these disaggregated data at the website of the Economic Policy Institute shortly. Readers who want copies sooner can request them from me at rrothstein@epi.org
[‡] Detailed tables documenting these trends are available here: http://epi.3cdn.net/1726cc68ca1a71563a_o3m6bhrub.pdf

Source:
http://education.nationaljournal.com/2011/03/focusing-on-teacher-effectiven.php#1903160

Exploding the Privatization Myth

"The most thorough summary to date of charter school studies is a book published a year ago by Teachers College Press of Columbia University and the Economic Policy Institute. That book, The Charter School Dust-Up, by researchers Martin Carnoy, Rebecca Jacobsen, Lawrence Mishel, and Richard Rothstein, looked at 19 studies in 11 states and the District of Columbia and included data from the 2003 NAEP tests.

...Overall, the researchers found that charters do not generate higher academic achievement, nor do they enroll more disadvantaged students. They also found little evidence that charters spur increased competition and force public schools to improve. And they found evidence that charters are associated with increased segregation and student turnover."

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Exploding the Privatization Myth

	Illustration: Alain Pilon

Arne Duncan and the Chicago Success Story: Myth or Reality?

"First, while we fight hard against educational privatization as well as displacement, we have to collectively develop a positive alternative, a strong and unifying vision of what education should be and a program that makes it real. We have to work for, and rally people around, what they themselves have repeatedly expressed?quality schools in every neighborhood that any resident can attend, adequate and equitable funding, qualified and caring teachers, genuine opportunity for parent input and decision-making, smaller class sizes, multiple and authentic assessments, and socially just and culturally relevant curriculum that prepares students to take their rightful place as makers of history and actors in the world. A critical means to this end is a community-based, democratic process of school improvement.


Second, it will take a social movement to push this agenda, no matter who is in the White House and Office of Secretary of Education. Our experiences and observations tell us that genuine partnerships between educators and engaged communities, and links between community wisdom and academic knowledge, can contribute to this social movement. We cannot build toward education for social justice without real partnerships in which teachers understand that their interests and those of their students' neighborhoods are fundamentally aligned and that they need to express real solidarity with the ongoing struggles of those communities. This is needed not only to defend but also to transform public education in the real interests of all students, families, and their communities."

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Arne Duncan and the Chicago Success Story: Myth or Reality?

Proving Grounds • School “Rheeform” in Washington, D.C.

The Price of Autocratic Reform

"In a Feb. 1, 2010, article, the Washington Post reported that approval ratings for Mayor Fenty and his schools chief had dropped precipitously. The poll showed Chancellor Rhee’s approval rating had sunk from 59 percent of residents in January 2008 to 43 percent in early 2010.⁽¹²⁾

The numbers are crucial for Fenty: The mayor is up for re-election this fall, and the race is being cast as hinging on public support for his school reform agenda. Fenty’s challenger, Vincent Gray, the current chair of the city council, has been a critic of Rhee’s leadership: “We need a mayor who understands that the best way to achieve real and lasting school reform is to involve the community. The best way to help every community in the District is to engage teachers, engage parents, engage principals, and engage students in the decision-making.”

Mary Filardo, director of the 21st Century School Fund, agrees. “School change should be about students, families, and communities taking ownership of their schools. Although there is the illusion that parents may have more access—that Michelle Rhee will answer their emails—there is meager civic life around the public schools.”

Cathy Reilly, who leads the Senior High School Alliance of Parents, Principals, and Educators, notes:
“It’s not an empowering model. . . . The players in the system—parents, teachers, and principals—are supposed to understand that things are being ‘fixed’ and to get with the program, or get out.”

For many parents and teachers, the problem with Rhee’s approach was best summed up by Diane Ravitch, former undersecretary at the Department of Education under President George H. W. Bush. Ravitch, speaking at a reception in D.C. last spring, was asked what she thought of D.C. school reform. Ravitch responded with the timeless adage, “It’s difficult to win a war when you’re firing on your own troops.”"

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http://www.rethinkingschools.org/special_reports/rheeform.shtml

NOT Waiting for Superman

 

"Initiated by Rethinking Schools to talk back to the filmand support efforts by teachers, students, and parents to improve and preserve public education." 

http://www.notwaitingforsuperman.org/