2012 Medley #5

Poverty, the Economy, Politics,
Accountability, Evaluations, Testing.

Income More Important Than Race in Achievement Gap

...we should be grateful that the subject is given such prominence. After all, critics insist that any such explanation is nothing but an excuse. They minimize the implications for schools that more than one in five children now live in poverty...almost a ten percent increase over 2008...To put this data into human terms, the increase brings the total number to 15.5 million children. As a result, the U.S. retains the dubious distinction of having the highest rate of childhood poverty in the industrialized world...

Are public schools unfairly blamed for America’s economic woes?

...schools are being blamed for the economic failures of the communities in which they are located and for the educational failures of their students. Their teachers are publicly pilloried as overpaid, selfish and a drain on a national economy that requires schools to be run with the efficiency of American business.

My reaction: “What? American business? Efficient?” Whose failing enterprises left 10 miles of waterfront in Youngstown a wasteland of rusting steel, rotting lumber and old tires? And took three quarters of the jobs away from the largest auto producing center in the nation? And left the majority of its adult males without employment? And created a 150-mile stretch of Amtrak from Newark to Baltimore with at least 500 abandoned factories and warehouses that have never been rebuilt? And that was just in he ‘80’s and ‘90’s!

Whose uncontrolled financial speculation led to the more recent troubles of Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch and the American International Group, along with the disappearance of $7 trillion Dollars in wealth once owned by individuals, pension funds, banks and insurance companies? Are 28 percent of the homes in the United States under water because of union teachers? Can they also be blamed for the 44 percent black unemployment rate in the city of Milwaukee?

Dear Mr. President

If only the policies your administration advocates were...supportive of teachers and what we see as the best interest of our students.

There are words - Secretary Duncan saying to Roland Martin of NBC

The best thing that happened to the education system in New Orleans was Hurricane Katrina.

...and the Secretary and you approving of the firing of all the teachers at Central Falls High School in Rhode Island. Things like these do not give us confidence that your administration has the best interest of students at heart, and give us great pause in thinking that you really care about teachers.

Education as "Politically Contested Spaces"

Every choice made by an administrator, a teacher, and a student is a political choice. Humans are always in a state of politics, a negotiation of power. To deny this is to push our political nature beneath the surface (that which shall not be spoken) and relinquishing the power to the status quo.

Who is Accountable for Teaching Contexts?

The people supporting school closures and turnarounds act as if all teachers were being given the same level playing field to work from, and were simply not good enough thus justifying mass firings. We all know this is simply not the case.

Some principals are supportive and helpful, while others are vindictive and cruel. Who is accountable for this? Some schools put special education as a priority while others warehouse students with special needs in the “resource rooms”. Who is accountable? Some schools are given funding for arts, music, and gym class every day, while others can only afford one part-time position music OR art. Who is accountable? Some schools invest in small class sizes while others have huge split classes squeezing 40+ students into one room. Who is accountable? Some schools have a full-time social worker and nurse, while many only have a social worker and nurse one day a week at best. Who is accountable? Some schools rely on far too many untrained and uncertified teachers meaning a cohort of children will not be prepared well. Who is accountable? Many schools have excessive teacher turnover. Who is held accountable for the terrible teaching conditions which drive teachers away?

...So let’s hold the people who distribute the resources accountable! Let’s grade our politicians and chief financial officers! “Ineffective” does not even begin to describe the rating they should get....

Phony Stories About Schools

Most find it unbelievable that there was no past golden age of schooling, or that our economy didn't tank because of school failure. (Were GM workers less skilled than Japan's in the 60s? Do the Chinese have a more technologically sophisticated workforce than the USA? Be honest Mr. Gates et al—you went to China for cheap labor.)

What makes folks so susceptible to an almost entirely phony story? Aside from widespread ignorance about statistics. I remember how annoyed I was in the '70s to hear reporters note that, alas, after so much effort, half the kids were still reading below grade level—which was statistically how grade level was defined.

Vince Marsala: Politicians are Wrecking Our Schools

...a successful school vision has an involved community, students, and parents, a stable, experienced staff, adequate resources, and a balanced curriculum. As conservative and liberal politicians continue dragging education back and forth to earn votes and the media's praise, teachers, principals and their professions are being unfairly bashed, and their students are being thought of solely as test scores. When Mercutio died in Romeo and Juliet, he yelled," A plague o' both your houses!" Many educators would say the same to both political parties today.

Evaluating Teacher Evaluation

Using VAMs for individual teacher evaluation is based on the belief that measured achievement gains for a specific teacher’s students reflect that teacher’s “effectiveness.” This attribution, however, assumes that student learning is measured well by a given test, is influenced by the teacher alone, and is independent from the growth of classmates and other aspects of the classroom context. None of these assumptions is well supported by current evidence.
Most importantly, research reveals that gains in student achievement are influenced by much more than any individual teacher. Others factors include:

• School factors such as class sizes, curriculum materials, instructional time, availability of specialists and tutors, and resources for learning (books, computers, science labs, and more);
• Home and community supports or challenges;
• Individual student needs and abilities, health, and attendance;
• Peer culture and achievement;
• Prior teachers and schooling, as well as other current teachers;
• Differential summer learning loss, which especially affects low-income children; and
• The specific tests used, which emphasize some kinds of learning and not others and which rarely measure achievement that is well above or below grade level.

However, value-added models don’t actually measure most of these factors. VAMs rely on statistical controls for past achievement to parse out the small portion of student gains that is due to other factors, of which the teacher is only one. As a consequence, researchers have documented a number of problems with VAM models as accurate measures of teachers’ effectiveness.

Report: Test-based incentives don’t produce real student achievement

This is a report which was released last May. It's worth reading again. Pay close attention..."The report, together with a number of other studies...serve as a warning to policymakers..."

Incentive programs for schools, teachers and students aimed at raising standardized test scores are largely unproductive in generating increased student achievement, according to a new report researched by an expert panel of the National Research Council.

The report said that standardized tests commonly used in schools to measure student performance — including high school exit exams and tests in various grades mandated by former president Bush’s No Child Left Behind law — “fall short of providing a complete measure of desired educational outcomes in many ways,” according to a summary of the lengthy document.

The report, together with a number of other studies released in the past year, effectively serve as a warning to policymakers in states that are moving to implement laws, with support from the Obama administration, to make teacher and principal evaluation largely dependent on increases in students’ standardized test scores.

What We Know

A KWL chart is a simple graphic organizer which we can use to guide research and learning.

We use the KWL chart by simply filling in the columns. The first column, What I Know, is used to activate prior knowledge and organize what we already know. The second column, What I Want to Know, sets our learning goals. The third column, What I Learned, is the place to record what we have learned about our research.

I decided to try applying the KWL chart to current controversies in public education. I only got as far as the What I Know...

A. We know that standardized tests don't measure what children learn.

"Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted." -- Albert Einstein

Measuring What Matters Least

Test results don't necessarily indicate achievement, but rather, tend to be much more accurate indicators of the size of a student's house or the income of the student's parents. Research has indicated that the amount of poverty found in a community, and other factors that have absolutely nothing to do with what happens in the classroom, account for the great majority of differences in test scores from one area to another.

Standardized tests don't measure:

the ability to listen, appreciation, artistic ability, assimilation of ideas, attitude, beauty, character, clear thinking, commitment, constructing an argument, cooperation, curiosity, diligence, discernment, discovery, effort, encouragement, enthusiasm, ethical reflection, exploration, foresight, good will, higher order thinking skills, honesty, honor, humility, humor, imagination, integration of information, integrity, initiative, insight, intuition, irony, joy, judgment, kindness, leadership, motivation, musical ability, nuance, optimism, organizing information, originality, patience, perceptiveness, perseverance, personality, potential, respect, responsibility, self-control, social sensitivity, spontaneity, strength, teamwork, tolerance, understanding, virtue, vision, wisdom

Also see:
Misconceptions of Achievement Testing
What's Wrong With Standardized Tests?
Standardized Testing and Its Victims


B. We know that standardized tests shouldn't be used for teacher evaluations.

A Dangerous Obsession by Linda Darling-Hammond

Recent research shows that test score gains are highly unstable and error-prone for measuring individual teachers, and that making high-stakes decisions based on these tests causes schools to reduce their teaching of important content and skills not measured by the tests. As a group of leading researchers warned last week before the New York Regents voted on such a scheme, we can expect teaching and curriculum to be narrowed further as teachers focus more intensely on these tests, and we can expect teachers to seek to avoid serving special education students, new English learners and others whose learning is poorly measured by the tests.

Evaluating Teacher Evaluation by Linda Darling-Hammond, Audrey Amrein-Beardsley, Edward Haertel and Jesse Rothstein

Using VAMs [Value-Added models] for individual teacher evaluation is based on the belief that measured achievement gains for a specific teacher’s students reflect that teacher’s “effectiveness.” This attribution, however, assumes that student learning is measured well by a given test, is influenced by the teacher alone, and is independent from the growth of classmates and other aspects of the classroom context. None of these assumptions is well supported by current evidence.

Most importantly, research reveals that gains in student achievement are influenced by much more than any individual teacher. Others factors include:

• School factors such as class sizes, curriculum materials, instructional time, availability of specialists and tutors, and resources for learning (books, computers, science labs, and more);
• Home and community supports or challenges;
• Individual student needs and abilities, health, and attendance;
• Peer culture and achievement;
• Prior teachers and schooling, as well as other current teachers;
• Differential summer learning loss, which especially affects low-income children; and
• The specific tests used, which emphasize some kinds of learning and not others and which rarely measure achievement that is well above or below grade level.

C. We know that teachers aren't in it for the money and so-called "merit pay" schemes don't work.

Teacher performance pay alone does not raise student test scores

Rewarding teachers with bonus pay, in the absence of any other support programs, does not raise student test scores, according to a new study issued today by the National Center on Performance Incentives at Vanderbilt University’s Peabody College of education and human development in partnership with the RAND Corporation.

D. We know that Poverty is not an excuse. It's a condition and it has implications for learning.

Stephen Krashen questions whether our schools are broken

Reduce poverty to improve education, not vice-versa

The fact that American students who are not living in poverty do very well shows that there is no crisis in teacher quality. The problem is poverty. The US Department of Education insists that improving teaching comes first: With better teaching, we will have more learning (higher test scores, according to the feds), and this will improve the economy. We are always interested in improving teaching, but the best teaching in the world will have little effect when students are hungry, are in poor health because of inadequate diet and inadequate health care, and have low literacy development because of a lack of access to books. Also, studies have failed to find a correlation between improved test scores and subsequent economic progress.

The relationship is the other way around: “We are likely to find that the problems of housing and education, instead of preceding the elimination of poverty, will themselves be affected if poverty is first abolished.” (Martin Luther King, 1967, Final Words of Advice).

E. We know that class size matters.

The 7 Myths of Class Size Reduction -- And the Truth

The Institute of Education Sciences, the research arm of the United States Department of Education has concluded that class size reduction is one of only four, evidence-based reforms that have been proven to increase student achievement through rigorous, randomized experiments -- the "gold standard" of research.

Also see:
Class Size: Counting Students Can Count


F. We know that teachers unions aren't responsible for poor schools.

Do Teacher Unions Hinder Educational Performance?: Lessons Learned from State SAT and ACT Scores

"Do teacher unions hinder educational performance?" Focusing on two of the best-known standardized tests, the Scholastic Assessment Test (SAT) and the American College Test (ACT), the authors examine whether interstate variation in standardized test performance is negatively linked to interstate variation in teacher unions. They find a significant and positive relationship: that is, the presence of teacher unions appears to be linked to stronger state performance on these exams. These findings challenge the position that teacher unions depress student academic performance, and in so doing invite further empirical scholarship on this topic from a range of academic disciplines.

Also see:
Five myths about America’s schools


G. We know that most charter schools are no better than regular public schools. Some are better, but many are worse.

The Myth of Charter Schools by Diane Ravitch

Some fact-checking is in order...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...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 [Waiting for Superman] 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?

H. We know that American public education is not failing. American economic policy is failing.

Poverty is the problem that must be solved... Our Schools Are Not Broken...

Studies show that middle-class American students attending well-funded schools outscore students in nearly all other countries on these tests. Overall scores are unspectacular because over 20% of our students live in poverty, the highest percentage among all industrialized countries. High-scoring Finland, for example, first on the PISA science test in 2006, has less than 4% child poverty.

Reduce poverty to improve education, not vice-versa

See also:
Protecting Students Against the Effects of Poverty: Libraries

~~~

AR - Reading Incentive or Reading Chore?

Accelerated Reader is a Reading Incentive Program which started out encouraging kids to read...and has grown into a massive data collection project.

Susan Ohanian explains how it works in Accelerated Reader: The Data Softshoe.

With the Business Roundtable and the U. S. Department of Education preaching that teachers can’t manage what they don’t measure, Renaissance Learning™, offers Accelerated Reader, reading management software that promises teachers an easy way to let computers measure and keep track of what students read. This means that students must choose books in a computer-determined Zone, say, Grade 3.5 to 4.0. The student reads the book and takes a computer-delivered multiple choice test. The test results dictate the reading Zone allowed for her next book choice. Zones are determined by a readability formula that counts syllables and sentence length—resulting in the information that The Tale of Peter Rabbit and The Color Purple are both written at a 4.0 reading level.

They call this science.

Schools label existing library books according to the AR system and limit new purchases to books in the AR system. In many libraries, books are then shelved by AR numbers instead of by the Dewey Decimal or Library of Congress system. This means that in an AR-arranged library, the 2.6 Zone books hang out together, so Junie B. Jones Smells Something Fishy sits next to High interest/low readability titles also clocking in at 2.6--such as Nuclear Submarines and Keeping Cholesterol Low, not Junie B. Jones and Her Big Fat Mouth (2.3) or Junie B. Jones Is Not a Crook (3.0).

More often than not, librarians disappear; replaced by paraprofessionals who make sure the computers deliver the tests on schedule. The teacher’s role is reduced to that of data tracker. Here’s how AR describes it:

AR systematically gathers student-level information on daily practice. The software produces reports, which helps teachers track individual progress and consequently make instructional decisions based on the data they receive.

The “information” is student scores on multiple choice test; no enjoyment, insight, or curiosity.

Many schools require students to get a certain number of points, which encourages students to choose books with high point totals rather than books matching their interests. This has the effect of teaching students that reading is done for a reward, not that reading is a valuable learning tool or a fun activity.

Jim Trelease, author of the Read Aloud Handbook has this to say about Accelerated Reader...

Believe it or not, high reading scores have been accomplished in communities without computerized incentive programs, places where there are first-class school and classroom libraries, where the teachers motivate children by reading aloud to them, give book talks, and include SSR/DEAR time as an essential part of the daily curriculum. And the money that would have gone to the computer tests went instead to building a larger library collection. Unfortunately, such instances are rare. Where the scores are low, oftentimes so is the teacher’s knowledge of children’s literature, the library collection is meager to dreadful, and drill and skill supplant SSR/DEAR time.

Here are some serious negatives to guard against:

• Some teachers and librarians have stopped reading children’s and young adult books because the computer will ask the questions instead.
• Class discussion of books decreases because a discussion would give away test answers, and all that matters is the electronic score.
• Students narrow their book selection to only those included in the program (points).
• In areas where the “points” have been made part of either the grade or classroom competition, some students attempt books far beyond their level and end up frustrated.

Before committing precious dollars to such a program, a district must decide its purpose: Is it there to motivate children to read more or to create another grading platform?

Is this focus on reading for points rather than reading for pleasure or knowledge the fault of Accelerated Reader and Renaissance Learning? Award winning author Susan Straight (Highwire Moon, A Million Nightengales) wrote about Accelerated Reader for the New York Times Sunday Book Review a couple of years ago.

Librarians and teachers report that students will almost always refuse to read a book not on the Accelerated Reader list, because they won’t receive points. They base their reading choices not on something they think looks interesting, but by how many points they will get. The passion and serendipity of choosing a book at the library based on the subject or the cover or the first page is nearly gone, as well as the excitement of reading a book simply for pleasure. This is not all the fault of Renaissance Learning, which I believe is trying to help schools encourage students to read. Defenders of the program say the problem isn’t with Accelerated Reader itself, but with how it is often implemented, with the emphasis on point-gathering above all else. But when I looked at Renaissance Learning’s Web site again this summer, I noticed the tag line under the company name: “Advanced Technology for Data-Driven Schools.” That constant drive for data is all too typical in the age of No Child Left Behind, helping to replace a freely discovered love of language and story with a more rigid way of reading.

Parents, how is AR used at your child's school? Is it an incentive program used to open up the world of words to your child or is it adding stress to the already pressure filled data gathering which is the driving force behind America's public education system? Is it helping them enjoy reading for reading's sake, or just another chore?

~~~

Random Quotes

...from How to Demoralize Teachers -- Diane Ravitch

Interesting that teaching is the only profession where job ratings, no matter how inaccurate, are published in the news media. Will we soon see similar evaluations of police officers and firefighters, legislators and reporters? Interesting, too, that no other nation does this to its teachers...If ever we get past this terrible time of teacher-bashing and blame-shifting, Arne Duncan and his ignominious Race to the Top have a lot to answer for. And so will the irresponsible leadership of the New York City public schools, which cares so little for the morale and spirit of those whom they presumably lead.

...from This Absurd Takeover of Our Public Life -- Deborah Meier

I've been so used to trying to persuade powerful people that we can't base good schooling on simple tools of "measurement" that I forgot that they truly don't care.

...from Teachers Face Good Cops or Bad Cops in Push for Evaluations -- Anthony Cody

...the idea that we can fire our way to better schools has a fatal flaw. It assumes there are fresh teachers ready to take the place of those we fire. Given that our high poverty schools already have turnover rates in the neighborhood of 20% a year, and about 50% of beginning teachers wash out in their first five years, the idea that we will improve our schools by firing even more is hard to believe. Where are the high quality teachers going to come from to replace those we fire? School improvement is much more complex than this, and the foundation has to be based on building the profession.

...from A corporate reform coup d’etat in Bridgeport -- Norm Pattis

We could turn the schools over to the Koch brothers or to Donald Trump, we could pave the hallways with gold, we could buy each student a diamond studded Rolex, and it would not change the underlying fact that what causes poor performance in the schools is urban distress. Do you want better performance in school? Then provide adequate housing, employment opportunities, safe streets.

...from Why don’t top private schools adopt corporate-driven reforms? -- Bruce D. Baker, a professor in the Graduate School of Education at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey.

Private independent schools pride themselves on offering small class sizes and a diverse array of curricular opportunities, as well as arts, sports and other enrichment – the full package. And, as I’ve shown in my previous research, private independent schools charge tuition and spend on a per pupil basis at levels much higher than traditional public school districts operating in the same labor market. They also pay their headmasters well!...In fact...private independent schools may just be among the least reformy elementary and secondary education options out there.

...from In Case You Misunderstood Their Power for Something Lesser -- James Boutin

If you misunderstood corporate reform's power for something lesser, I bid you good morning. In my view, corporate reform is in the process of wiping the floor with teachers and their unions in district after district, and state after state. They have more money; they have more time; they have more powerful people; and they have better tactics. While the people who work around education on a daily basis attempt to solve the problems in their schools or districts, corporate reform is figuring out what talking points will be most effective in Newsweek and what political plays will most effectively destroy the power of teachers and their unions. Those of us who are doing meaningful work and understand the potentially devastating effects of corporate reform's solutions (BECAUSE WE HAVE REAL EXPERIENCE IN SCHOOLS) are, in a very real way, too exhausted to mount an effective defense after having dealt with real problems all day long.