2011 Medley #17

Testing, Testing, and more Testing, Corporate Reform, NCLB Waivers, School Prayer

Once Upon a Time, Not Too Long Ago, Teaching Was Considered a Profession, But Then Came Standardization, Tests, and Value-Added Merit Pay Schemes That Ate All Humanity for Breakfast...

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

...[While] teaching the basics is important, it is not enough. Of course children need to learn to read and to write and to add numbers. But they also need to know how to decide what is worth reading and what those numbers add up to. And talented teachers need the freedom and professional autonomy to work the magic of their art in a myriad of different ways that defies standardization.

When Test Scores Become a Commodity

When student scores become like orange juice, pork bellies, or yen, the people with the greatest incentive to cheat are the weakest teachers and administrators. These people might be weak, but that doesn’t mean they are stupid. Weak but clever educators will inevitably find ways to game the system, sometimes by cheating, but more often by coming close, but not stepping over the line: Educators could turn their courses into nothing but test-prep machines; they could refuse to collaborate with colleagues; they could curry favor with students to encourage better results; or take other steps we can’t imagine. Many of these weaker teachers, even short of cheating, might well end up with excellent “value added” scores, while stronger teachers who are honest and don’t play the sharp game end up looking bad.

This is not just a possible bad outcome, it is inevitable. It is inevitable because markets generate such behavior and dislocations, and the more volatile the market, the greater the undesirable behavior and dislocations will be.

...If this is the kind of public school system the American people want, then fine. Let’s just be honest about it.

Testing Gone Wild

The growth of testing has all the characteristics of the formation of a bubble. Once it pops, which all bubbles eventually do, the full damage will become apparent. The trouble, however, is that by then it will be too late to remedy matters.

10 Years of Assessing Students With Scientific Exactitude

Michael Winerip gives us a timeline of school "reform" in New York. Why aren't Joel Klein and Mayor Bloomberg being held accountable?

JULY 2010 Finally someone — Dr. Tisch, the chancellor of the Board of Regents — has the sense to stand up at a news conference and say that the state test scores are so ridiculously inflated that only a fool would take them seriously, thereby unmasking the mayor, the chancellor and the former state commissioner. State scores are to be scaled down immediately, so that the 68.8 percent English proficiency rate at the start of the news conference becomes a 42.4 proficiency rate by the end of the news conference. Shael Polakow-Suransky, chief accountability officer for the city, offers the new party line: “We know there has been significant progress, and we know we have a long way to go.” Whether there has been any progress at all during the Bloomberg years is questionable. The city’s fourth-grade English proficiency rate for 2010 is no better than it was in February 2001, nine months before the mayor was first elected.

Tides Are a-Turnin’

Those of us who believe in “real reform” do have the power of passion which compels us to be active on blogs, comment sections, and social media sites. I think Arne Duncan, Education Nation, Michelle Rhee, Teach for America and The Gates Foundation have all become more careful in what they tweet because we have become pretty darn good at flooding twitter when they post some ridiculous, unproven, pro-corporate propaganda.

Duncan's Dilemma: What will be Done to States without NCLB Waivers?

Duncan and Obama are not friends of public education. The current administration's education policy is just more of the same. The fact that the Republican candidates for President would be even worse doesn't excuse the Democrats from their role in destroying America's public schools.

In fact, the requirements for Race to the Top and the NCLB waivers are even MORE prescriptive than NCLB ever was. In order to be granted a waiver from the onerous effects of the law, states were required to submit plans for teacher and principal evaluations that include student test scores, the embrace of the Common Core standards, and new standards for College and Career Readiness. Secretary Duncan has repeatedly defended the Common Core Standards from the charge that they are stealth national standards by claiming that they are an initiative of the states that are involved. But does not this become a federal project when essential federal aid is made contingent on implementation of these standards?

The truth about school prayer

Wherever there are algebra tests (or physics tests, English tests, or chemistry tests) there will be prayer in school. God wasn't taken out of school in 1963...only state sponsored prayer was removed. Any student may pray at any time, as long as they don't disrupt the educational process. Students are free to pray before tests, before meals, during football games, and before they combine chemicals in chemistry class. That's what voluntary prayer is. The people who tell you otherwise are simply lying.

Truth be told, students of all faiths are actually free to pray alone or in groups during the school day, as long as they don’t disrupt the school or interfere with the rights of others. Of course, the right to engage in voluntary prayer or religious discussion does not necessarily include the right to preach to a captive audience, like an assembly, or to compel other students to participate.

NEA and TFA

Last month NEA released a report on teacher effectiveness. Based on the report, NEA President Dennis Van Roekel announced a three part agenda for improving the teaching profession.

The agenda has three major components:

1. Raising the Bar for Entry: The Commission on Teacher Effectiveness and Van Roekel call for rigorous preparation and a one year internship for everyone who wants to enter teaching.
2. Teachers Ensuring Teacher Quality through peer assistance and peer review programs.
3. Union Leadership to Transform the Profession: Local educators need to take leadership roles in the improvement of the teaching profession.

The three part agenda for the improvement of the teaching profession along with the report on teacher effectiveness has gotten some pushback as falling into the trap of giving teachers and public schools the entire responsibility of improving education's many "gaps." However, it's not the teaching profession's responsibility to solve all the societal problems which effect education. Teachers and teachers unions can lobby, encourage, and complain, but nothing will be accomplished until the wealthy in the country understand that it's in their best interest to eliminate poverty and other class issues.

In fact, it's refreshing that a professional teacher organization has taken the debate out of the hands of the "reformer" billionaires and politicians who have emphasized teacher quality as the only way to improve schools despite research to the contrary.

Last summer the NEA Representative Assembly passed a "New Business Item" which the first part of the three part agenda confirms. The New Business Item 93 correctly identifies Teach for America (TFA) as a source of unprepared teachers. Raising the bar for entry to the teaching profession would ensure that new teachers received more than a 5 week crash course. It reads as follows:

NEA will publicly oppose Teach for America (TFA) contracts when they are used in Districts where there is no teacher shortage or when Districts use TFA agreements to reduce teacher costs, silence union voices, or as a vehicle to bust unions.

New Business Item 93 as well as the Commission on Teacher Effectiveness have stated clearly the NEA position which is -- fully trained teacher professionals should be responsible for educating the children in America's public schools. NEA specifically opposed TFA as a path for teacher professionals.

So why has NEA President Van Roekel joined with TFA CEO Wendy Kopp in a USA Today op-ed which states

One in three K-12 students will be assigned a teacher who is in the first three years of his or her career. As a new generation embarks on a career in teaching, we must commit to giving them the best preparation possible.

The presence of Kopp's name on the editorial implies acceptance of TFA as one of those "best preparation possible" routes.

Anthony Cody asks the question about the USA Today piece in his Living in Dialogue blog...

Here, the first item on the list has changed. No longer is there discussion of "raising the bar for entry," or a year of full residency. Here, the first item is "Use data to improve teacher preparation." In other words, judge teacher preparation programs by the test scores of the teachers they produce. Do we really want this? One more piece of leverage aimed at pressuring schools of education to tow the line and encourage their students to teach to the test? Teach For America figured this out years ago, and a visit to a TFA classroom will reveal the posters on the wall tracking student test scores, and exhortations to reach the big goal of 80% mastery.

The column states, "Unfortunately, not all teachers are getting the high-quality preparation they need to excel with students in the classroom."

Unfortunately indeed.

Does Mr. Van Roekel believe that Teach For America's five or six week long training is adequate preparation?

Teacherken, at Daily Kos, takes it one step further.

I fail to see how a commitment to giving new teachers "the best preparation possible" is in accord with the practice of TFA taking its applicants - who may be outstanding students from elite colleges and universities - giving them only 5 weeks of training, with no meaningful practice teaching, then placing them in schools with high needs children, sometimes in positions of responsibility for which they lack the appropriate background (Special Education), where their primary support mechanism may be former TFA teachers who themselves had only 2 years of experience in the classroom.

Quite rightly, teacherken names his blog entry What if you feel betrayed by your union's leadership?

The NEA Representative Assembly specifically rejected TFA as a source of adequately trained teachers. The NEA Commission on Teacher Excellence recommends a full year of internship thereby rejecting TFA's minimal teacher preparation. Yet the president of NEA seems to ignore this by teaming with Kopp in this manner.

Do we, as a profession really want to team with TFA and the woefully inadequate preparation it provides?

You might be interested in these articles about TFA.

A Closer Look at Teach for America's Research Page

The data showing experience matters is overwhelming, in fact one of the reports on TFA's "research" page acknowledges this fact (it's the "Portal Report" which is a pdf ): "Teachers with 4 years or more experience out perform teachers with 1 year of experience on 9 out of 10 indicators."

Ravitch: The Problem with Teach For America

TFA is a huge success story, but there is also something scary about seeing so much money and power assembled around its core belief that a brand-new college graduate with only five weeks of training is just right to educate our nation's most vulnerable students.

TFA, Brainwashing, and Not Playing Nice

This is not a mere difference in perspectives. Not even in ideologies. This is not the old "whole language" versus "phonics" reading debate or even the history curriculum battles of past education wars. This is a fundamental fight between those who would sell our education system to the highest bidder while actively ignoring the poverty and inequalities that infest our nations's schools and those who stand for a quality equitable public education for all. And it will take a fight, as all social change requires, to actually change the discourse.

Why I did TFA, and why you shouldn’t

TFA has highlighted their few successes so much that many politicians actually believe that first year TFA teachers are effective. They believe that there are lazy veteran teachers who are not ‘accountable’ to their students and who are making a lot of money so we’re better off firing those older teachers and replacing them with these young go-getters.

Cheaters Never Win -- Part 9

More cheating in Georgia.

Valerie Strauss reports...

New major test cheating scandal revealed in Georgia

A new investigative report details a second major standardized test cheating scandal in a Georgia school system, implicating 49 educators, including 11 principals. A key reason for the “disgraceful” cheating, investigators said, was pressure to meet No Child Left Behind requirements.

The report cites three key reasons for the cheating:

• Pressure to meet the adequate yearly progress under the No Child Left Behind Act, a provision that requires school districts to annually increase the number of students who score at the proficient level on math and reading standardized tests.
• A fear by teachers and principals of being perceived as failures.
• The failure of principals, as well as the system’s administration, to lead.

Not all 11 principals had the same level of culpability; some actively participated in cheating, while others did not ensure the tests were properly administered. The distinction is important but hardly exculpatory. It is one thing to explain how high-stakes testing has led to more cheating, and even to understand how some people might feel pressured to cheat. There is, though, no good excuse for this kind of behavior, no matter how wrong it is to use these tests to assess students, teachers, principals, schools and districts.

A conclusion in the report was this: “Since the enactment of NCLB, standardized testing has become more about measuring the teachers, principals and schools than accurately assessing the children’s academic progress.”

There have been numerous cheating scandals reported in school system after school system around the country in recent years, according to FairTest, a nonprofit organization whose mission is to reduce the misuse of tests. FairTest has documented confirmed cases of test cheating in 30 states and the District of Columbia over the past three academic years.

The report can be found here and here. You can also read a news article complete with a list of cheaters.

The fact that this was in Georgia, like the last cheating scandal (Atlanta) means nothing. It's going on all over the country. Administrators and teachers alike are trying desperately to keep their schools alive despite the insanity of No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top.

The cheaters were wrong, but so are the state and federal legislators, governors, the president, and the state and federal departments of education. There is cheating because the tests are given too much importance. The tests are being used in ways which are inappropriate and therefore wrong. Children are being denied a complete education because so much of what needs to be learned in school, and in life, cannot be measured. It's a system in which everyone loses and it's been going on too long.

Let's go back to learning?

Mrs. Mimi told a story about administering a literacy assessment to second graders. In this little playlet there are two characters: Me, the teacher, in this case Mrs. Mimi and Friend, a second grader who struggles in reading. Get a tissue and then read it...

I Am Chilled To The Bone

Setting: My fabulous classroom. Although on this day, instead of sitting at desks arranged in collaborative groups, my friends sat in single rows. Rows I had to waste precious instructional time teaching them how to form because of an administrative demand that insisted on the Re-Creation Of The Testing Environment.

Scene: I have just passed out a literacy assessment, in which I have to ask my second grade friends (whose reading levels span mid-first grade all the way through mid-third grade) to read forty FORTY! paragraphs about the most boring and mundane un-relatable shit known to man and then answer a multiple choice question on that paragraph. They then have to successfully transfer their answer to a separate bubble sheet which, at the start of second grade, can feel like asking them to climb Mount Everest in flip flops. Yes, they are that prepared. Oh, the best part? EACH child has to finish. Which means that I have to make some of them sit there for OVER AN HOUR while those who are finished (and those who simply think they are finished) must sit in silence as their opportunity for real learning ticks away.

Sounds like a party, no?

Don't tell anyone, but I used to just call it quits after a while. I mean, enough is enough, right?

Me: (noticing that one friend, a friend who struggles in reading... I mean STRUGGLES) (kneeling down and whispering) Are you okay?
Friend: (tears streaming down face) (STREAMING!) I just can't do it anymore. (Is your heart breaking yet?)
Me: I know it's hard, sweetie, but you just have to do your best.
Friend: The words are just too hard. I'm not smart enough.
Me: (trying not to let tears stream down my face because I have to get this kid to try and finish) Just try a few more and then we'll stop.
Friend: And we'll go back to learning?
Me: (choking back sob) Yes, honey, we'll go back to learning.

It would be nice if we could all go back to learning.
~~~

A Lifetime of Elementary Schools -- Part 5

Part 5 in a self-indulgent virtual trip reminiscing about my years of teaching elementary school...

Moving can be a emotionally wrenching experience. I had taught at Monroeville Elementary School for 11 years. I had made some good friends there and gotten to know hundreds of students. Monroeville Elementary School, however, was a 45 - 50 minute drive from my house...each way. It was hard to leave what had become my professional home, but after 11 years and thousands of driving miles, I decided it was time to move closer to home, so I applied and received a transfer to Woodburn Elementary. In the Fall of 1987 I started teaching fourth grade. During the four years I was at Woodburn I taught a different grade configuration each year. I went from fourth grade to second grade, to a combined second and third grade, and finally finishing, like I did at Monroeville, with third grade.

Woodburn was built as an "Open Concept" school. The walls between the classrooms did not reach the ceiling, were moveable and didn't prevent noise from traveling from one classroom to another. There were some serious drawbacks to that kind of school building...it was noisy, discipline was hard to maintain because of the constant buzz of noise around the building, teaching had to be done at a low sound level. Teachers must be trained to effectively utilize a school building without walls and that training hadn't occurred. The result was a building full of traditional classrooms with no permanent walls.

There were however two important advantages. The first was that the walls could be moved and rearranged to accommodate larger or smaller classes. The shape of the classrooms could be adjusted as well. In the four years I was there I had a different shaped wedge of classroom...of different sizes...each year. The adjustment was not hard and after a few weeks of school each year the size and shape of the classroom was not an issue.

The second advantage was with collaboration between and among teachers. In the primary area of the building, where the walls were only 4 feet high (as opposed to 6 feet high in the intermediate area), it was possible for teachers to observe each other, as questions, make suggestions, and see different teaching styles. I learned a lot just watching the excellent teachers on either side of me during the four years I was there.

Challenging Students: Teaching at Woodburn was my first experience with teaching Amish students. It turned out that it was not much different than working with "English" students in terms of ability, behavior and personalities. I taught one student (third grade) who stands out in my mind, however. She was an average student, well behaved, responsible, but she woke up very early every morning to do her chores on the family farm. When she got to school she had been working with animals, hay, and other farm related allergens. By the time she walked up to my desk my eyes were itchy and the sneezing had begun. I was literally allergic to this student!

...and parents of course. Woodburn was the school where a parent requested that her child NOT be in my class because she didn't want her daughter in a classroom taught by a man. It was also the school where a parent walked into my second grade classroom literally yelling at me and emptied her child's desk announcing that she was never coming back. The child was having difficulty learning and the parent didn't want to acknowledge that.

Staff: Just like any school building Woodburn had a range of below average to above average teachers. When I started at Woodburn the kindergarten teacher was the same person with whom I student taught. I could now observe her as a colleague and realized that I had been very lucky to have had the opportunity to student teach in her classroom.

The teachers I got to know best were in the second and third grades. I'm now volunteering for one of the former third grade teachers at Cedarville Elementary School, another building in the same school system. There are several other people at Cedarville, who were at Woodburn when I was there...including the RtI specialist and the secretary.

Principal: When I started at Woodburn, I must admit that I was not impressed with the principal. He seemed just average...and not especially ineffective. However, as the years went on...even after I left, I began to realize the strengths he brought to his job which made him one of the best principals I worked for. John, knew every child in the building. He went on field trips with classes, was outside at recess frequently, and was in the cafeteria every day helping with crowd control, cleaning tables, and talking to students.

During a conference with the parents of the child mentioned above (the one who was pulled from my classroom by her mother) the parents began to talk about how bad the kindergarten teacher had been. John told them that the conference was about their child and finding ways for her to succeed. The parents persisted in their critique of former teachers. John stood up, went to the door, opened it, turned to us and said, "If you're going to continue to focus on past teachers instead of how we can help your child do better in class...then this conference is over." He didn't just defend his teachers blindly. He would listen to criticism and bring that information back to the teacher if needed, but this was a case of parents trying to blame others, in this case an above average teacher, with no basis. His focus was on the students.

Finally, when I was packing up my files during my last year of teaching I looked back on my evaluations. John's evaluations were among the best I had received. He didn't necessarily score me higher than other principals had, however he included constructive criticisms and detailed suggestions. It was clear that he knew me and had analyzed my teaching style...the evaluations I got from him were among the most helpful during my 35 years of teaching.

I left Woodburn after the 1990-1991 school year. Since that time the principal has retired, staff members have moved to other buildings and Woodburn Elementary School, now called Woodlan Primary School, is slated to be closed after this year.

~~~

A Lifetime of Elementary Schools

Part 1 Phillip Rogers Elementary School (K-8), Chicago, Illinois: 1953-1962
Part 2 Sunnymede Elementary School (K-6), New Haven, Indiana: Fall Semester 1975. Grades K, 1.
Part 3 Coesse Elementary School (K-8), Coesse, Indiana: Spring Semester 1976. Grades K, 1.
Part 4 Monroeville Elementary School (K-8, then K-6), Monroeville, Indiana: Fall 1976 - Spring 1987. Grades 1, 3.
Part 6 Harlan Elementary School (K-6), Harlan, Indiana: Fall 1991 - Spring 2010. Grades 2, 6, Resource, Reading Recovery

Total Teaching Career
Kindergarten 3 years
First Grade 5 years
Second Grade 4 years
Third Grade 10 years
Fourth Grade 1 year
Sixth Grade 1 year
Resource (pull out tutorial program) 16 years
Reading Recovery 7 years
*The total adds up to more than 35 years because of split assignments.