Interim Superintendent of Ohio Schools Works for ETS

On May 29, 2011 Greg Mild reported that the Superintendent of Ohio Schools works for the Educational Testing Service being paid to administer many of the new assessments being required under recent legislation. Here is a portion of that article:

Stan Heffner, Interim Superintendent for Ohio, provided testimony to the Senate expressly supporting a provision that would direct over 2.2 million dollars annually to ETS, the company that announced his hiring just three weeks earlier.  He provided opinions that contradict previously published documents from the Ohio Department of Education.  While it is true that he will not actually cast the votes to make this law, he has used his position as Superintendent to represent himself as an expert in this area. Nowhere in his testimony did he declare his existing financial relationship with ETS.

And this is not his only conflict of interest between ODE and ETS.

In the beginning stages of the development of the Common Core curriculum, Heffner clearly stated that Ohio wouldn’t participate.  And yet his latest ODE Profile states that “Heffner is an innovative leader in the national effort to create model curricula and common assessments aligned to the national Common Core State Standards in English language arts and mathematics.” 

Heffner has reversed course to the benefit his future (current) employer and has been collaborating with ETS’s newly formed department since as early as January when this “leader in the national effort” began promoting ETS as his primary source for information about the development of common assessments.

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Interim Superintendent of Ohio Schools Works for ETS

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."

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The Service of Democratic Education

Teach For America: From Service Organization to Self-Promoting Industry

Rachel Levy a self-described former teacher, writer, and stay-at-home mom recently wrote an excellent article on Teach for America on her blog, "All Things Education." Many education writers, including Diane Ravitch and Kenneth J. Bernstein, view it as the best article to date on the Teach for American program. Here are some excerpts from the article:

"If the impact of TFA teachers is not entirely clear, their rates of attrition and financial costs are. According to the review of literature cited earlier, fifty percent of Teach for America teachers leave after two years and eighty percent leave after three. They don’t become lifelong teachers or even ten-year teachers. Their improved effectiveness would only come into play after they would have left. Since the corps members don’t stick around long enough for their students to benefit from their experience, TFA doesn’t, in fact, ultimately lead to higher teacher quality.

TFA teachers cost taxpayers more money than traditionally educated teachers. The afore-mentioned review  shows that the average cost of a TFA teacher is $70,000 per recruit. Public school districts are paying twice for recruiting: from $2,000 to $5,000 to TFA per recruit plus funding recruitment by their internal human resources departments. Recruitment costs should be one-time expenditures, but at the current rate of attrition, districts must pay anew every time a TFA teacher leaves. According to Barbara Miner’s investigations, on top of their school district-paid salaries, Teach for America candidates also receive taxpayer-funded Americorps stipends, plus because of their TFA member status, they qualify for funding that people who take traditional teacher training routes don’t. Finally, TFA receives millions in local, state, and federal dollars. TFA annual reports show that about a third of costs are borne by the public—add in a $50,000,000 grant they received from the Department of Education this past spring, and that share has probably risen. How can the federal government subsidize a jobs program for the privileged as it struggles to extend unemployment benefits for those who have lost their jobs?"

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Teach for America: From Service Organization to Self-Promoting Industry

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."

Phil Hayes' Testimony In Opposition to the Ohio HB153

Written Testimony
Ohio Senate
Senate Finance Committee, Chris Widener, Chair
Testimony in Opposition to Sub. HB 153 by:
Philip W. Hayes, Educator,
Brookhaven High School
Columbus City Schools

Tuesday, May 17, 2011

"Good morning Chair Widener, Vice Chair Jones, Ranking Member Skindell, and members of the Senate Finance Committee. I thank you for giving me the opportunity today to speak candidly and personally regarding my opposition to Substitute House Bill 153.
I am a high school social studies teacher at Brookhaven High School in Columbus, Ohio. It is my first and only teaching assignment; I’ve taught there since 1998 and cannot imagine teaching anywhere else.

I want to tell you all that for the past four months, I wake up each morning at 5 a.m., angry. I go to bed each night, often at 10 or 11 p.m., tired, frustrated, hoarse from talking and arguing, and wake up angry again the next day, only to start the process over.

I am angry because of the various pieces of legislation that have been proposed or passed by the Ohio General Assembly that deal with education matters. This includes the items in HB 153 that threaten to change my profession, my calling, my life’s work into something much less—a job. Teaching is not what I do; it is who I am. Most importantly, the proposed changes will affect my students.
Who are my students? According to the latest state report card, each class of 30 students at Brookhaven has 25 that qualify for free or reduced-price lunch. Seven of the 30 have transferred from another school. Five students have an identified learning disability. Three students were learning how to read, write and speak English as they were being instructed in that language. Roughly one student in each class of 30 was homeless.

Here are just some of the proposed “solutions” that have been included in HB 153 that will affect my students, my colleagues and their students.

Why has an overall K-12 funding decrease been touted as a state foundation increase? While the promise has been made that the state will not increase taxes, the truth is that local school districts will have to put levies on the ballot at an ever-increasing rate to make up for the shortfall in state funding. This proposed budget shifts the burden from the state to local governments.

I take issue with the provision that gives teachers a $50 bonus if their students achieve more than a year’s worth of academic growth. This transforms our students from human beings into fifty-dollar bills. Why would you want to create a situation where a teacher walks into a class and sees their students with dollar signs hovering over their head? Our students are equal human beings, and should be treated as people, not profits.

I disagree with the section that calls for retesting teachers that teach in core academic areas if they work in a school that is identified as one of the lowest 5 percent statewide. We have already passed a national test, selected for use by the state’s Department of Education to establish our subject area competence. Just weighing a pig doesn’t make it fatter.

I object to the House’s inclusion of teacher evaluation provisions from SB 5 into HB 153. It is, at its best, disingenuous; at its worst, it is duplicitous, divisive and devious.

The basis of merit pay within the bill, as proposed, is completely without merit. There are many areas where state achievement test scores or growth data cannot be used to inform the evaluation process. How can anyone possibly determine the worth of an art, music or physical education teacher that inspires and motivates a student to become an artist, musician or more physically fit, enriching, changing and perhaps saving their lives?

For the past four years, I have my students pick the best teacher they’ve ever had and write them a letter, thanking them and explaining why they were chosen. Often times, those teachers write back to my students and their share stories and recollections from when my students were in their classroom.

Over the course of those four years, none of the student letters have contained the sentence “Thank you for helping me pass the test.” Not one. But these are the best teachers these students have ever had; they have made their subject come alive for them, encouraged them, inspired them, fought for them, laughed with them and cried with them. All of those are teacher attributes that cannot be tested, surveyed or measured.

Chair Widener, Vice Chair Jones, Ranking Member Skindell, and members of the Senate Finance Committee, I thank you for your time and attention. I would be happy to answer any questions you might have at this time."