Battelle For Kids To Double Value-Added Teacher Reports This Year

This report from Gongwer News Service was shared by Join the Future. This information will be interesting to teachers in Ohio as the state and districts develop their new teacher evaluation systems.

The report mentions the increased costs to districts that will incurred as Race to the Top Districts in the state comply with the new requirements for teacher evaluations tied to measures of student growth. The report also mentions the many challenges of developing valid and reliable measures of student growth for classes without a standardized test. Many researchers also continue to question the reliability and validity of the value-added measures that do exist--such as those being sold by Battelle for Kids.

"Reports on how student learning has grown under a teacher's tutelage will be provided to 60% of eligible educators this year, developers said recently.

The Department of Education has contracted with Battelle for Kids to work with Ohio schools on implementing teacher reports on how much growth their students show during the course of the year. The State Controlling Board released $2.9 million in Race to the Top money to the organization last April to facilitate the work.

Thirty percent of reading and math teachers covering grades four through eight received reports in the 2010-11 school year and that proportion is planned to double for the current year, Battelle for Kids Senior Director of Research and Innovation Mary Peters said. By 2014 all teachers in those grades and subject areas will receive the feedback.

"The piece that value added provides is the opportunity to be looking at teachers' contribution specifically to student outcomes," she said.

Ms. Peters, along with her team of a dozen professional developers, technology staff, and communications personnel, have been training regional value added leaders to prepare the new set of teachers to be incorporated into the evaluation system.

The next step is to prime principals on how to use the reports, and in May the team will train individuals in a roster verification system that ensures teachers get reliable reports, she said.

"Those two things together then help us bring capacity so that these new 30% of districts that heretofore have never participated in teacher-level value-added reports will be prepared not only on the data side but also with tools and strategies that they can use to help their teachers understand these reports," Ms. Peters said.

"It's equally important that not only are these measures available but that school leaders know how to use this information not in a gotcha kind of way but in a school improvement, teacher improvement kind of way."

The reports use value-added data that is calculated to determine whether a student achieves one year's worth of growth or more or less than that. Because the current value-added measure relies on data from statewide assessments, it can only be computed for reading and math education in grades 4-8.

The state budget (HB 153) requires all eligible teachers to be receiving reports on student growth by the 2013-14 school year. The information is to be tied into teacher evaluations that will eventually be linked to performance pay.

"I think Battelle for Kids feels very strongly that multiple measures are really an important feature of this new teacher evaluation system," Ms. Peters said. "And of course we strongly endorse the idea of using value added as part of that group of multiple measures."

Battelle for Kids, however, is also involved with those districts that on their own want to do more. "Our work is also to provide an opportunity for districts who want to go beyond grades 4 through 8 reading and math," Ms. Peters said.

Developing the technique for calculating student growth in other subjects is done at a cost to districts, but ODE recently issued a "mini-grant" that provides opportunity to build capacity around "extended testing and reporting," she said.

"The idea is to use the most reliable and valid measures that we have on the student growth side. So if in fact we can help by extending the value-added reporting beyond grades 4 through 8 reading and math, that obviously is a preferable option," Ms. Peters said.

"In areas where there are no state tests and where districts need to use local measures, you start getting down into issues around who pays for those measures, how are those measures administered, do they provide adequate information for the purposes of teacher evaluation, or are they even appropriate to use to create a growth measure from it."

About 100 districts currently do extended testing in a variety of areas and the Ohio Appalachian Collaborative is working to use value-added information for evaluations and compensation decisions, she said. "Really the idea is to be able to support those districts that want, for example value-added information at the high school level."

Battelle for Kids and its network of more than 90 facilitators around the state have so far trained more than 1,200 educators from 68% of districts along with nearly 100 community school buildings. Nearly 10,000 online value-added courses have been completed since June, Ms. Peters said.

"In short order it's a lot of training, it's a lot of work and I think a lot of impact," she said. "That's our work, to make sure that teachers and school leaders are using this information well and that they are clear, they understand it."

She said 84% of surveyed participants said they agreed or strongly agreed that they felt comfortable using the value added information reports."

Source: Gongwer News Service via Join the Future

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 

A Worthington Teacher's Testimony Against Ohio HB153

OEA member and WEA President Mark Hill's written testimony against HB 153

"Chairman Widener, Ranking Member Skindell, and members of the Senate Finance Committee, my name is Mark Hill. I am a math teacher in the Worthington City Schools currently serving as president of the Worthington Education Association. Thank you for allowing me to offer testimony on HB153.

I come today to talk to you about the teacher accountability provisions in HB 153. I have some concerns about the structure for accountability that is in the version passed out of the House. 

I would like to begin by saying that I don’t have a problem with a rigorous evaluation system for teachers nor do I disagree with the notion of removing ineffective teachers from the classroom. That may sound unusual coming from a leader of a local teachers union but I am a parent, too, and I care about access to a high quality education for my kids. The teachers I represent take a great deal of pride in teaching in an excellent school district; many of them live in the district and all of them want it to remain excellent; none of them want to work alongside a bad teacher. 

HB153, as passed by the House, goes too far. It requires teachers to be rated highly effective, effective, needs improvement, or unsatisfactory based on an evaluation in which 50% of the score is measuring student growth through value added scores averaged over three years. It requires the Superintendent of Public Instruction to set a minimum level value added measure for a teacher for each of the rating levels. Furthermore, it imposes draconian penalties for teachers who are rated as unsatisfactory or needs improvement including imposition of unpaid leave on a teacher rated at those levels if their principal does not consent to placing them in their building the next year effectively ending their careers. 

Value added scores are a great concept but as a statistical measure, they are fraught with error. Scores fluctuate by random error; in Houston’s value added system only 38% of the top fifth remained in the top rating the next year. 23% of the top fifth in performance ended up being in the bottom fifth the next year and vice versa. Fluctuations like that defy reason; it is highly unlikely that a fourth of the top teachers in Houston one year were poor performers the next. 

According to another study done for the US Department of Education’s National Center for Education Evaluation found that, using three years of data, a teacher who should be rated as average has a 25% chance of being rated significantly below average. A teacher who should be rated as a top performer has a 10% chance of being rated significantly below average. This means under HB 153, 25% of the average teachers in Ohio and 10% of the good teachers in Ohio would be in jeopardy of losing their jobs due to statistical error. I hope the Ohio General Assembly would not want to add a “Wheel of Fortune” element to teachers’ careers. 

Under this system, who would take care of the kids? There are teachers who ask for the students with behavior problems and learning disabilities because they care about them and believe they deserve an education. Under HB 153, these teachers would be putting their career at risk to do so. My own son has Aspergers Syndrome, which is a condition on the autism spectrum – who will want to teach him? Under HB153, math and reading teachers are far more at risk for losing their jobs than other teachers because those are the only areas with enough scores to build a value-added modeling system. Who would want to work in an area where you are constantly worrying about losing your job due to a statistical error? 

I don’t come just to complain but to offer solutions. First, you’ve already passed this framework for evaluation in Senate Bill 5. There is no logical reason to duplicate it in HB153 – frankly, I don’t believe it belongs in either bill but should be a subject of debate on its own. Second, instead of mandating 50% value added, allow the local education agency to decide how to best fit value added in their evaluations. This is the system under Race to the Top – Worthington is a Race to the Top district, so we have already agreed to rate teachers’ effectiveness through evaluation using value added modeling. A top down statewide approach will have serious unintended consequences. 

Thank you for listening."