NEPC Best of the Ed Blogs

My Discussion with Matt Barnum Part 3

elaine — Fri, 24 May 2013 17:14:12 +0000

Gary Rubinstein

Source:

Dear Gary,

I’ve often heard teachers complain about the latest reform “fad.” It’s understandable insofar as veteran teachers have been around for many rounds of “reform,” only to see each and every one swept abashedly into a locked closet in the back of the class (right next to where I surreptitiously put those pre-tests I never got around to grading).

I think there’s a lot of truth to that, and I suspect that you agree. Where we’d probably part ways is the takeaway from this insight. You might say that this goes to show how temporal the current regime of reform is; I would say that the faddish nature of past reform shows that we need to stay the course.

You write that Michelle Rhee and Kaya Henderson’s reforms in Washington DC have not worked. (Disclosure: I previously spent a couple months working as an intern at StudentsFirst. And I had one very brief, very pleasant conversation with Michelle Rhee. I have no affiliation with StudentsFirst now, though, and my views are my own.)

I think it’s misleading to say that based on a few years of inconclusive data we can determine that a reform has “failed.” There is mixed evidence regarding the results of the changes made in D.C., but as Matt DiCarlo pointed out in a takedown of some of Rhee’s overstatements, it’s inappropriate to draw broad conclusions, pro or con, based on just a few years of observational data.

The goal, by the way, of some of these changes – albeit not always articulated well by reformers – is to raise overall teaching quality by attracting some people into the profession who might not otherwise become teachers. It is, to use your baseball analogy, to try to make all hitters bat .300 (or more to my liking, have an on-base percentage of .400). Baseball of course, is a zero-sum game – a batter’s success is a pitcher’s failure – but in education it’s at least theoretically possible for all teachers to be excellent. That’s why many reformers believe in increasing teacher compensation in order to attract top talent, and this is what D.C. is trying to do. This sort of reform, though, will by its nature take time.

I know you believe that these new-fangled evaluation systems are doing far more harm than good, but I can’t accept that after a few districts have implemented them for a few years, they can be trashed as complete failures. If we’re not seeing improved results in another couple decades, then I will be the first one to say that these reforms need to go.

The completely understandable response is, well, what happens to the students who are (in your view and many others’) getting worse results because of such reforms? I have no glib answer to that. What I can say is that students in D.C. were struggling greatly before Rhee’s reforms. Thespending per student sits at $30,000 and the results were among the worst in the country.

Gary, I know that you believe that schools can only do so much for their students, but certainly DC schools had and have a lot of room to improve. Was there not space to try something new, even if it didn’t align with many educators’ intuitions about what will work? Isn’t this especially true considering the shaky (though mixed) evidence for more traditional reforms, such as class-size reductions and Head Start?

What I feel disillusioned about is that many teachers that I worked with were so negative towards our pay-for-performance system that they sought to tear it down rather than build it up. You’re upset that StudentsFirst spends a great deal of money on elections, rather than trying to improve teacher preparation; well, I hope you’re equally upset that NEA and AFT have spent huge amounts of money backing candidates who oppose teacher evaluations. What if that money were spent on making teacher evaluation systems be as effective as possible?

Few alternatives have been suggested. Yet, I don’t think even you would agree with the notion that a decade ago teachers were being fairly and effectively evaluated. As you know, many “evaluations” consisted of an annual pro forma visit by the principal into the teacher’s classroom; meaningful feedback was not consistently given. I know you think the pendulum has swung too far, but perhaps you could acknowledge that reformers were responding to some bad circumstances.

Am I wrong? I know that the AFT has backed peer review programs, which I think could be great, but it also seems like a blip on the radar. Perhaps reformers have to account for the failure to work with unions on this – but isn’t always a two-way street?

Yours in dialogue,

Matt

PS I hope you saw Matt DiCarlo’s recent piece on VAM. I agree that it’s not junk science or a “sham.” I also think that some districts have a way to go in using it effectively – hence my comments above about teachers being partners in creating such evaluation systems.

My response:

Dear Matt,

“another couple of decades”? No, I don’t think this would be a good idea. I do appreciate your desire to apply the scientific method to education, however. And yes it can be premature to label an experiment as a failure before it has been given time to run its course. But if we’re going to act like scientists, we have to do it right. For education, it is a bit like medicine. There is a ‘disease’ — poor kids getting low test scores — which we want to ‘cure.’ The vital first step is to identify the cause of the disease. If you misdiagnose this, any remedy based on fixing the wrong cause is doomed to fail. Even if ‘bad teachers’ were a big cause for low student test scores, I’m not confident that corporate reforms strategies would work, but treating the wrong cause is definitely counterproductive. In this case it is like trying to cure a strained knee with chemotherapy.

To treat the problem scientifically, the people controlling the experiment should have some idea about what ‘success’ should look like at various stages of it. Yes, I suppose there could be experimental drugs where they seem to be not working at all and then at the last minute they kick in and cure the disease, but in this case we should be seeing some benefits, particularly in places that have embraced the reforms most like Washington D.C.. Their lack of progress so far suggests to me that I am correct that they are fixated on the wrong root cause. The problem with waiting for a few decades, from my perspective, is that there is too great of a risk that these remedies come with severe side-effects.

This may seem non-scientific to you, but my very traumatic first year created in me a keen ability to tell when something in education just isn’t going to work. My first year I was very naive and ideas about how to teach or about how to manage a classroom would sound so good to me until I tried them only to learn, the hard way, that they had serious loopholes. So since that first year I’ve developed an innate sense for these sorts of things. When I hear new ideas about how to teach or about how my school’s bell schedule is going to be altered or, at a macro level, how to ‘turnaround’ certain schools, I just ‘know,’ even sometimes when I haven’t been able to verbalize exactly why, it isn’t going to work.

In the case of the ‘bad teacher’ cause I also have some strong first hand evidence that this is not the major issue. For one, I taught at three failing schools that all had what I’d call ‘above average’ teachers. Also, two of the smartest friends and TFA alum that I know have been principals of un-miraculous schools. I feel like if they weren’t able to turn around their schools (at least from a test score perspective) that it can’t be done without some kind of cheating.

You are correct that many schools and districts, pre-reform movement, were not fulfilling their potential. Though I think there is a limit to what a school can accomplish, I do think it is worthwhile to try to achieve that limit and, yes, schools did have a lot of problems: money being used unwisely, terrible organization where on the first day of school some classes have 50 students and others have 10 students, bad curricula, etc. I’m not surprised that ‘reformers’ have been given an opportunity to show that they could do things better. My hope is that once this wave of ‘reform’ is shaken off, a new movement led by people who actually know something about students, teachers, and schools take over and guide us forward. I look forward to the day when I can stop playing defense and participate in that endeavor.

I mentioned my ‘sixth sense’ which I’m sure could invite some ridicule, but here is what I believe will happen as a result of this misguided ‘reform’ movement. Within five or ten years there will be a massive teacher shortage. Already, I’ve read that in California the number of new teacher applicants is way down this year. The promise of big bonuses to young superstars will just not be enough to get people to replace all the teachers retiring or otherwise fleeing the profession. Maybe TFA and other alternative certification will be expanded to fill the void and maybe we may even be able to get test scores to the same, or even marginally higher, level with enough focus on that goal. But the other metrics, the more important ones that are so tough to measure, will suffer. Maybe we will drop from the top of the Nobel prize winners category. Or, like we see in New Orleans, we will have more crime. We may win the ‘test score’ battle, yet lose the war. I know that this might sound extremely speculative, but that is where I see things going, at this rate.

As far as the unions spending money to back candidates to go against the ‘reformers’ I think that is exactly what they should be doing right now. When you’re under attack, you have to defend yourself as your first priority.

You know, the basic premises of ‘reformers’ are not crazy to me. Certainly we want schools and teachers to be as effective and efficient as possible. And yes, a good teacher gets kids to learn. It may be tough sometimes to measure that learning, but still, a teacher should be able to present some evidence that students have progressed. But these modern measures of progress for students and schools are being misused. Maybe they are not complete ‘junk’ but they certainly have a large margin of error so using them as a way to rank teachers is not very fair. Matt Di Carlo does seem determined to keep the possibility that one day these measures will be improved and used appropriately.

But the big problem is that the ‘reformers’ are not as wise as Di Carlo. The whole ‘reform’ movement is led by people who I really don’t admire. I haven’t figured out if they are well-meaning but just not wise about things or if they are devious and excellent liars. I can see the case for either argument. As a litmus test, compare some of the writers and bloggers on both sides. A good starting place that will hit home with you is to look at the pieces that you wrote and appeared in The Answer Sheet and in Dropout Nation. I can’t think of another person besides you who has had pieces in such different forums. In your Dropout Nation ‘Testing is good for teachers and children‘, editor RiShawn Biddle is so insecure that he constantly interrupts your essay (I counted four such intrusions). Compare to your ‘It’s time for TFA to fold‘ where Valerie Strauss, after the introduction, allows you to say what you want without interruption.

Anyway, I hope I have not seemed to ‘dodge’ any of your questions. I’m wondering what you think about the mythical highly-effective teachers and high-performing charter schools. Do you think they prove that ‘poverty is not destiny’? Also, what do you think that TFA makes the right decision when they try to convince the new CMs that they are very capable of achieving ‘transformational’ teaching where they change the life trajectory of their students? Realistically, I don’t think that my impact on students, even in my ‘teacher of the year’ year, was so great that it changed any life trajectories. Do you think that you did? Do you think that the alum who trained you did? If this is unrealistic, is it still OK to train people with that mindset since it will keep them optimistic, like telling someone that a diet and exercise program is likely to work, thus motivating them to stick to it? Or is is more like telling someone that they can climb mount Everest if they just have high expectations for themselves and little practical training?

Look forward to continuing the dialogue.

Gary

What I Learned in Chicago

elaine — Fri, 24 May 2013 17:04:31 +0000

Stephanie Rivera

Source:

Teacher Under Construction

This morning, filled with high spirits mixed with exhaustion, I shared my reflection to those in Chicago before my flight took off. Since I think most saw that post this morning, I’ll instead start off this post with a few things I didn’t know about Chicago & the battle to save their schools that I know now. I’ll also throw in some key moments and pictures that stick out in my head from the 48 hours I got to spend in Chicago:

I didn’t know Chicago was so large that it could be split into West, South, and North side

Interesting thing with that is, although each are a part of the Chicago Public School system, not all of them all treated the same. From a student when he recognized Northside students at the rally:

“You can tell right from looking at them how different they are, not just by their race, but also by just looking at how they just got out of school. They have regular bookbags on–we’re [South and West side] only allowed to use clear bookbags in our school because we’re looked at as dangerous. We’re all a part of Chicago Public School system, but we’re all treated so differently.”

The Board of Education–whose members are appointed by Mayor Rahm Emanuel–will be voting tomorrow, Wednesday, May 22 on whether all 53 elementary schools will be closed. One of the board members went into only 4 classrooms as a way to help him\her make his\her decision. FOUR classrooms, out of…jeeze…I can’t even imagine how many other classrooms exist inside those 53 schools.

Photo Credit: “OccupyCPS” – https://www.facebook.com/OccupyCPS

Williams Elementary School was put on emergency lock down and had cops stand outside the school to prevent them from walking out and joining the march

Photo Credit: Sabrina Joy Stevens (Click photo for direct link)

This e-mail was sent out to parents Sunday night in response to the students organizing a boycott:

Hundreds of high school students still boycotted regardless of threats

Photo Credit: Chicago Students Organizing to Save Our Schools (https://www.facebook.com/csosos?fref=ts)

26 brave teachers and community organizers performed civil disobedience and occupied the first floor of City Hall by blocking elevators. They were arrested and released.

Photo Credit: Fred Klonsky (Click photo for direct link)

Barbara Byrd-Bennett has no clue about the reality of Chicago schools and streets. As you’ll see in the powerful speech by the 3rd grader below, he recognizes there is something wrong when a woman from Detroit is trying to claim she knows what’s best for Chicago kids.

Barbara Byrd-Bennett: “Every adult in this city has a responsibility to help ensure we offer our children a bright future. Right now that is not happening, with too many of our children trapped in underutilized, under-resourced schools without the supports they need to succeed.” (See: Fewer than 5 CPS schools expected to be spared)

BUT, from talking with the students, teachers, and parents yesterday, they believe that in Barbara & Rahm’s eyes, the idea of a school not being “underutilized” is having over-crowded classrooms.

Not sure who made this sign! But it was the protest & just pulled it off a friend’s page.

I already knew that the high school students we’re incredible, but I had no idea that even their 3rd graders were unstoppable…

No, seriously. Watch that video.

Have you not watched it yet?

Just in case you scrolled past it, I’m going to provide you the script from it until you’re compelled to spare 2 minutes and 59 seconds to watch this young man speak.

“But there’s kids in them! They need safety. Rahm Emanuel is not carin’ about our schools, he is not carin’ about our safety. He only cares about his kids, he only cares about what he needs, he do not care about nobody but himself! He let Barbara Byrd-Bennett, a woman from Detroit, who don’t even know the streets of Chicago [audience's cheers make it hard to hear what he says here]. We need safety and protection!

You should be invested in these schools, not closin’ em! You should be supportin’ these schools, not closin’ em!

We shall not be moved today, we goin’ to City Hall! We are not toys, we are not goin’ down without a fight!

[CHEERS!]

Like Martin Luther King said, like, um, I forget his name, but he said it is 90% of school closings is African Americans, this is racism right here! This is racism! We are black and we are proud! We are white and we are proud! No matter what your color is, no matter if you’re Asian, Chinese–it doesn’t matter! You should not be closing down these schools without walkin’ into them, seein’ what is happenin’ in these schools!

[CHEERS!]

Education is a right, that is why we have to fight!

….[Crowd joins in chant]“

The city is going to be devoting $125 million to build a basketball arena for a private university (well, I knew this already coming to Chicago, but I want to make sure everyone knows this). But, they still want to make the argument that “there isn’t enough money to keep the schools open.” No, the money is there, it’s just in the wrong hands.

In response to the students’, parents’, and teachers’ concerns about the increase of violence the school closings will cause due to forcing students to cross gang lines, Rahm proposes the idea of using more cops and even firefighters to escort children to school. The response?

The Mayor’s idea of using firefighters to ensure children’s safety while crossing gang borders and contested turf lines was greeted with guffaws and looks of bewildered disbelief. Tom Ryan, president of Chicago Firefighters Union said that if violence occurs,”We don’t have the training or the equipment to deal with that.” [Source]

The students who were arrested this past Wednesday for protesting their school closings are even more incredible in person.

I had no idea there was a such thing as the “big bean”

And here is my reflection written this morning waiting for my flight:

 *What’s not included that I would like to add now is that I want to thank the Chicago teachers for continuously redefining what it means to be a teacher. As a future teacher, you’re portraying the type of educator I hope to be in 2 short years. We shouldn’t just aim to change lives within the classroom, but aim to do that outside the classroom as well.

This has seriously been the most indescribable past 48 hours of my life. Chicago students, teachers, parents, & community organizers, it was empowering watching you all over the internet since September, but having the privilege to march alongside you, cause disruption, exchange “WTFs” when we heard an elementary school was put on lockdown & surrounded by cops so they couldn’t walkout to join the march, hugging our civil disobey-ers after they were released from arrests for occupying City Hall, and being in the heart of the education revolution with the most fearless people in the world…that was something else.

Thank you for illuminating the hard truth of the extremity of racism, oppression, teacher, union, and student bashing that is flourishing in our country. Thank you for showing that we can’t just “accept things how they are” because those men in suits told us so, but actually showing how paramount it is to recognize it doesn’t matter who says what’s right or wrong, if it’s unjust, morally wrong, and threatening to our civil and human rights, we don’t just sit there, we stand up and fight like hell.

As sad as I am that I’m leaving Chicago in 2 hours, I’m grateful I can head back to NJ and start my summer with high spirits and really sore legs, ready to help cause some good trouble at home. Regardless of the decision on Wednesday, I know you all won’t stop fighting until all Chicago students get the education and justice they deserve, and you know thousands across the country will be right in spirit with you. Thank you for letting me be a part of history with you all, and I know we’ll all meet again soon.

With endless love and solidarity.

—————————————————————————–

Rest of Photo from Monday’s March:

Parents protesting at Peabody Elementary School – A school on closing list

Peabody Elementary School Students Protesting their School’s Closing

Every ed reformer’s worst nightmare. Israel Munoz, bad-A high school organizer getting his fellow students to organize and into the streets to fight for justice. Admire this comrade from the moon and back!

People from Bridge Looking At Protest

South side and West Side marches converging! One of the most powerful things I have ever been a part of.

Police trying to keep protesters from getting into street

Students at Plaza

Student from Philly Student Union Speaking at Plaza sharing the similar struggles and fight her and her fellow youth are facing in Philly.

Rally around City Hall

Photo Credit: Sarah-Ji Fotógrafa

The Ecology of Innovation in Teaching and Learning

elaine — Fri, 24 May 2013 16:25:58 +0000

Jack Hassard

Source:

The Art of Teaching Science

In this post I want to show that innovation in teaching & learning is a form of deep ecology in which collaborative relationships among teachers and students opens the classroom to new ways of thinking. These actions and subsequent innovations can be local and global in nature. For most of my career I majored in bringing the local to the global and vise versa through the Global Thinking Project (GTP), headquartered at Georgia State University.

Innovation in teaching results from a process in which democratic principles are put into practice to foster experiential and collaborative work. The innovative teacher takes a holistic view of students and the world they live in, and engages them in projects and activities that help them make sense of the world, and applicable to their own lives. Thinking in wholes was beautifully described by the Russian scientist Vladimir Ivanovich Vernadsky in his book, The Biosphere, published in Russia in 1926. It wasn’t until the time of Gorbachev’s perestroika that Vernadsky’s ideas came of age in the West. I began my collaboration with the Soviet Union in 1981, and later in the decade, I met Dr. Anatoly Zakhlebny, a leader in the Russian ecological movement. He introduced me to Vernadsky’s ideas. Vernadsky viewed the biosphere as “a region of transformation of cosmic energy,” and as such the biosphere is a life sustaining space born of innovation and transformation. The concept of biosphere as explained by Vernadsky became an organizing principle for the Global Thinking Project.

In 1993 I met Narcís Vives a teacher in Barcelona who was using the Internet to make education more humanistic and creative. In 2013, I came across the work of Grant Lichtman, an innovative educator from San Diego who is exploring the creative and leadership qualities that are essential for education in a democratic society.

For these educators, innovation in teaching and learning is a progressive ideal that each has worked on for decades. Narcís has been engaging students, teachers and citizens in global communication to instill democratic thinking from Catalonia to other cities and nations globally. Grant has worked locally within his school in San Diego to foster thinking conducive to learning in a democratic school and society, and has expanded his reach to other schools in this nation through his outreach and writing.

In February of 1991 I received an e-mail message from Narcís Vives, who at the time was a teacher and director of a telmatics project in Barcelona. He said he had learned about the Global Thinking Project (GTP) from his involvement in another telecommunications project (iEARN) and since Barcelona and Atlanta were linked via the Olympics, he wondered if we would be interested in some form of collaboration. At the time I was director of the Global Thinking Project, a hands-across the globe environmental and Internet-based program. In May he traveled to Atlanta to visit the GTP project, as well as schools he had made contact with through his telecommunications activity. After visiting some of the project schools, and examining the Global Thinking materials, he suggested that some Barcelona schools join the project for the 1992-1993 school year. Nine schools joined the project. The GTP Center in Barcelona grew to include many schools across in Catalonia.

Two Innovators

Narcís Vives now is President of Fundació Itinerarium and a Spanish Ashoka Fellow. Each of these organizations works with teachers, students and citizens around the world to promote innovation to solve local problems. Since I have known Narcís he has been instrumental contributing to a humanistic paradigm shift, especially in informatics and cooperative learning.

I have met Grant Lichtman through his writing, and I have viewed his TEDx video that he presented to teachers in Denver. Not only do we share a background in geology, but we also believe that the progressive ideas of John Dewey provides many answers to some of the pressing issues facing education in the U.S.

For each of these educators, I will show how their progressive views have resulted in the transformation of the thinking of many educators, and provided students and their schools with an innovative approach to teaching and learning.

Telecommunications in the Service of People and Innovation

In 1993, the Global Thinking Project held the first of many summer institutes for teachers at the Simpsonwood Conferences Center in Norcross, Georgia. Teachers from the U.S., Russia, Czech Republic, Australia, and Spain participated in these conferences. Narcís made arrangements for Anna Pinyero, a teacher in Barecelona, to attend the conference. When she returned to Spain, she and Narcís recruited teachers from schools in and around Barcelona. Eventually, more than 30 schools from Spain joined the project.

Figure 1. Ramon Barlam, Unnamed colleague, Anna Pinyero, and Narcis Vives on our first visit to Callus, Spain, 1996. We returned two years later for an international telecommunications conference organized by Ramon Barlam’s school.

In 1994, I made my first visit to Barcelona at the invitation of Narcís and the teachers in the Barcelona area. The schools in the Barcelona and Callus are part of Catalonia where the language spoken is Catalan. During that trip, Narcís and Anna took us to Callus, a small town about 60 miles northwest of Barcelona at the foothills of the Pyrenees. We were going to Callus to visit a school, and there we met Ramon Barlam, who was coordinating and directing a global communications and Internet project far more advanced than any I had been associated with in the U.S. Here in this small school, students were engaged as leaders of a telecommunications project bringing together schools throughout Europe to find how the Internet could be used to foster collaboration and innovation. The school was staffed with teachers from across Europe, and there was an atmosphere of creative and progressive thinking. The principal of the school provided the administrative leadership and realized that she needed to enable Ramon and the other teachers to work with students to develop new skills, and new knowledge.

Innovation can take many forms, but at the heart of innovation in teaching is the humanitarian aspects engaging students in real issues and problems. Narcís and I were brought together because of our interests in using new technologies to humanize teaching, and provide an environment for students in different regions of the world to collaborate and work together to deal with real issues.

For decades now, Narcís Vives and other educators in the Catalonia region of Spain have been on the forefront of using new technologies in humanistic ways. At the center of their work with technology was the goal of enabling students and teachers to participate in and contribute to solutions of real problems facing the world.

In an article written in 1995, but only recently published online, A Telematics Forum on the Family in Countries from Around the World, Narcís Vives explains one of the most powerful and humanitarian ways that the Internet is being used to enable “boys and girls in far-away places to join together in educational projects.” That way is to use the Internet as a way to make it possible for people to connect with each other; to talk to each other; to act together on a project. And it doesn’t matter where one lives, access to the Internet is far reaching, and has since 1995 grown exponentially. In 1995 we had email and electronic bulletin boards. Today we have smart phones, tablets, Twitter & other social networks, the World Wide Web, blogging, podcasting, and on and on.

My point here is that collaboration is one of the most potent tools of the Internet, the tool that Narcís and many colleagues in Catalonia have been pioneers in working out practical ways to this kind of participation to people around the world.

Participation has local and global components. Action locally is based on a view of environmental education which is described as “education for the environment.” In this view students not only become knowledgeable about their environment, but aware of environmental problems, how to solve them, and motivated to work toward their solution (Michel, 1996). The design of learning experiences includes an action-taking component that is fundamental to the idea of participation. The other component of participation is global. The use of telecommunications enables students to extend participation beyond their own communities. Telecommunications sets up cross-cultural partnerships, global communities, and global summits for studying common global concerns. Dr. Jenny Springer, Principal of Dunwoody High School, suggests that telecommunications used for dialog with peers on the other side of the globe is based on the work of the Russian psychologist Vygotsky. Vygotsky viewed knowledge being constructed in a social context, with student’s ideas being influenced by the ideas and interactions with others (Springer, 1993).

In this context I want to describe an example of how Narcís Vives used telecommunications to engage students around the world during the Bosnian War, 1992 – 1995.

I received the following email message from Narcís Vives on December 20, 1992 (please see Figure 2).

Figure 2. A 1992 E-mail message from Narcis Vives asking the Global Thinking Project schools to
join his effort in reaching out to children in a refugee camp in Zagreb, Bosnia

This message was forwarded on to all of the GTP schools in Australia, Czech Republic, Russia, and United States. Narcis’ proposal to the Global Thinking Project resulted in bringing together students and teachers from three continents to focus their thoughts and actions on a refugee camp in a remote location in Bosnia, thousands of miles from their schools. The events that followed Narcís’ original invitation reflect the humanistic potential of global thinking in general, and telecommunications in particular. Here are some of the events that followed.

1. Message from a Young Bosnian Boy.On January, Narcís Vives posted a message on the Global Thinking bulletin board written by a young Bosnian boy, Sanel Cekik who lived in the Veli Joze camp. The original telecommunications message was written in a Servo-Croatian dialect and was translated by three American high school students from the Coldspring Harbor High School (New York). The message written by Sanel was as follows:

The war slowly but surely came over our city. After some time, it happened; Serbs took over the city as everywhere they started with their terrible torture. My incident is next. One night in my apartment where unfortunately was my father, came four Serb soldiers. First they beat him (my father is 60 years old). Then they made horrible wounds on his back, on his forehead, and his hands with razor blades. The next day when I came and saw him in this condition, I was very shaken. This picture is going to forever stay in my mind as the pictures of many other people and children who were killed by the Serbs. A message to the whole world from me and all the children, my friends, and from all other refugees. Thank you for all the help. Stop this damned war!!

2. Solidarity Day. In early February, 1993, Narcís announced on the GTP electronic bulletin boards that Friday, February 26, 1993 would be a Day of Solidarity for camp Veli Joze. He said this:

We are planning to organize a solidarity day on Friday the 26th February. A very well known Catalan clown is traveling with two teachers to act for the Bosnian children. I have received a lot of drawings and writings from Veli Joze which will be exposed at Centre Educatiu Projecte on the 26th. Student from the eight schools in Barcelona will meet together to see these drawing, see slides from the camp, sing peace songs and know each other. Till now they have only used telecommunications to coordinate the campaign in favour of Veli Joze.

The Solidarity Day. Barcelona schools met and celebrated a solidarity festival among eight schools. The day before Solidarity Day, three Catalan teachers and a clown left Barcelona for the camp with a lot of school material. In the morning of the 26th, Veli Joze and the Catalan schools participated in a live teleconference. All the Catalan schools and the camp were connected by computer seeing each others’ messages at the same time. Narcís posted this message a few days later:

It was very moving to start receiving messages from Bosnian children and then sending them solidarity messages which they read at the moment. They also answered questions posted by Catalan children. Half an hour later I was invited to a radio program to talk about the solidarity day. We could also talk to a Catalan Volunteer in Veli Joze who explained what they were going to do during this solidarity day. All the Catalan schools were listening to the radio and happy to listen to the impact that their project is having not only in Catalonia but also in other countries (I have received messages from Australia, Israel, Chile, Russia, Denmark, Germany, Holland, Croatia, and different states in the United States). In the afternoon the Catalan schools were invited to Centre Educatiu Projecte where they could see an exhibition of drawings made by Bosnian children at Veli Joze. They could also attend a Lumaphone conference between Veli Joze, two schools in New York, and Barcelona. It was very moving for them to see Sanel Cekik’s picture on the screen and listen to him and to other Bosnian children.

3. Moscow School 710. Teachers and students in GTP School-Gymnasium 710, Moscow joined the Barcelona schools on the Day of Solidarity. They sent this message to the children in the Bosnian camp via Barcelona and posted it on the gtp.earthconf.

Dear friends!

Teachers and students of school-gymnasium #710 in Moscow, Russia send you our best greetings. From radio, TV and newspaper reports all of us know about the events in your country. We are very much concerned about the situation. We sympathize with you. Please, mind that in this difficult hour you are not alone, you have many friends on our planet. Today, we have talked about your beautiful country, recited poems, thought about you and about the hard life you are living now. We don’t want any war to happen and we hope, that very soon people all over the world will live in peace and friendship. Women and children will not cry; men will not fight. Please, be brave and don’t lose your heart. We are sure that the smoke of war will disappear and peaceful sun will shine again above your country.

Your friends: students of the 7th class, and teachers Galina Zhuravskaya and Vera Rizhova

4. North Heights school, Rome, Georgia. The Global Thinking class at North Heights posted this report on May 21, 1993.

North Heights recently completed a project to help Camp Veli Joze.

We did three projects. One was a school dance. The way we raised money was we charged $1.00 per head. We also paid to see the teachers dance! The students were responsible for planning the details for the dance, for collecting money, and selling refreshments. We raised $156.74. The next thing we did was a charity softball game at the school during field day. We raised $99.00. We also put out money jars in local stores. We designed posters to tell the story of Veli Joze and Global Thinking to display in the businesses to encourage people to donate their money. One 5th grade student thought of the slogan “Your Change Will Change Camp Veli Joze” to put on the canisters. We haven’t gotten the results from this yet. Messages from Narcis Vives about Camp Veli Joze, the sad message from Sanel Cekik, and the poem “I’d like to go alone” inspired us to try to do something to help the camp. Within two weeks, our teacher will be sending a check and some photos to Narcis Vives for the camp.

5. Melbourne Girls Grammar School, Australia. The GTP class at the school posted a message on June 7, 1993.

Topic 157. The Bosnian Boy

Peg:mggs: Global Thinking Project

This poem is our reaction from the letter from Sanel Cekik who is a Bosnian boy who at the time was living at a refugee camp called Veli Joze and we hope through this poem that he and everyone else can see we care.

Boy, in your room I heard you weeping,

Boy, in his room you saw him sleeping,

Then from his peace he was awaking,

Only to a hell that today is creating.

Boy, with all the terror you must be sinking,

I wonder how many lives they are

SHATTERING

The Veli Joze experience was considered by many students to be an important event in their lives. Brief reports written by students from schools in Australia, Russia and the United States at the end of the school year supported this assertion. As Springer noted, global thinking facilitates interactions and partnerships that allow students to experience the social nature of knowledge.

When we began our work with Narcís Vives and other educators in Catalonia, Russia, Australia, the Czech Republic, and later other countries, the telecommunications technology available to us was primitive. In the beginning we used e-mail and electronic bulletin boards to send, receive and read each other’s ideas. We sent pictures to each other using slow scan TV. We did not have browsers and the World Wide Web, and clearly we didn’t have FaceBook or Twitter. But we were able to launch and carry out telecommunication projects that were grounded in cooperative and collaborative learning, and mutual trust and support of teachers and students in different countries.

Narcís Vives has for more than two decades promoted innovative global collaboration amongst students and teachers. Most recently, he participated in the Global Education Conference, a collaborative, world-wide community initiative involving students, educators and organizations at all levels. Narcis presented is most recent efforts in connecting students and educators through Fudacio Itinerarium.

Searching for Innovation

Grant Lichtman, (author of The Learning Pond blog), for 15 years, has been involved with independent school education, as trustee, chief of finance and operations, teacher, parent, and volunteer at Francis Parker School in San Diego, one of the largest independent schools in the United States. He recently completed an 89 day automobile trip to visit and explore schools across the U.S. At present he is working on a book based on that experience.

In his book, The Falconer, Grant Lichtman explains that few problems and issues in life and learning are “clean and linear.” As he says, we all learn better by experience than instruction. Dewey wrote about experience and thinking many years ago, and it seems that he and Lichtman are on the same wavelength. Dewey explains that experience has two parts, an active and a passive which are “peculiarly” combined (Dewey, 1924). Experiential learning is not simply an activity or simply hands-on learning. Experience means on the one hand, trying, and on the other hand undergoing. So when we have students experience something, they act upon it, or what might say we do something with it. Then, as Dewey says, we “suffer or undergo the consequences. Participation in experiential learning activities does something to the participants, and what happens will determine the value of the experience. Lichtman’s book is an experiential account of his journey as a teacher. Dewey would suggest that Grant’s book is a good example of his experience as a teacher.

But you can learn about Grant’s ideas garnered not only from that trip to these schools, but from his experiences as a educator for many years. Included here is a video of the talk that he gave at the TEDx Denver Teachers event.

Grant Lichtman’s ideas are rooted in a number of progressive thinkers from the past, including John Dewey. In fact, in his talk in Denver, he asked where do we want to be in education in the future, and his answer came down to one word: DEWEY.

His philosophy, much like Narcí Vives’ is rooted in experiential and humanistic conceptions. Grant is involved in working with educators around the country who are interested in transformational education. He was recently named a Senior Fellow of The Martin Institute for Teaching Excellence in Memphis.

According to Grant Lichtman, in order for schools to evolve to offer transformational education that is relevant the present world “we must change the ways we are structured and oriented, and we must change how and what we teach. These changes will involve all aspects of our schools, and some aspects that are not even present today. (Lichtman, 2013) According to Grant Lichtman, we will have to:

Question the sacred cows that drive our budgets and define the parameters of our teaching corps.
Fundamentally change the relationship between teachers, students, and knowledge.
Adopt the lessons of innovation and change management that are now foreign to our ivy towers.
Engage the world outside our classrooms in fundamentally different ways.
Re-write curriculum.
Learn to embrace risk rather than fearing it…

Innovation in education, according to Grant Lichtman and Narcís Vives, involves teachers and students working collaboratively, and in an environment in which taking risks, and working at the farther reaches of human nature are essential components.

What do you think about the ideas of Narcis Vives and Grant Lichtman? What is your view of innovation in education?

References

Dewey, J. (1924). Democracy and Education: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Education. New York, The Macmillan Company.

Hassard, J. (1990a) The AHP soviet exchange project: 1983-1990 and beyond, Journal of Humanistic Psychology, Vol. 30 No.3, Summer 6-51.

Hassard, J. (1992). Minds on science: The art of teaching middle and high school science. New York: HarperCollins Publishers.

Hassard, J. (1990b). Science experiences: Cooperative learning and the teaching of Ssience. Menlo Park: CA: Addison-Wesley.

Hassard, J., et.al. (1994). The global thinking project: Linking students together around the world through the communication highway. Curriculum Perspectives, 14, 19-23.

Hassard, J. & Cross, R. T. . (1993). The global thinking project: Shared concerns and shared experiences across the continents.Australian Science Teachers Journal, Vol. 39, No. 3, 18-23.

Hassard, J. & Kolb, S. (1996). Citizen scientists: Student experiences in the gtp– georiga/russia exchange project. Paper presented at the conference on Telecommunications and Education, Callus, Spain, April 27.

Hassard, J. & Weisberg, J. (1995). Global thinking Teacher’s resource guide. Atlanta, GA: Global Thinking Project.

Lichtman, G. (2008). The Falconer: What We Wish We Had Learned in School: A Primer for 21st Century Education. New York: iUniverse, Inc.

Maslow, A. H., Maslow, B. G., and Geiger, H. (1993). The Farther Reaches of Human Nature. New York: Penguin

Michel, Rachel (1996). Environmental education: A study of how it is influenced and informed by the concepts of environmentalism. Doctoral Dissertation. La Trobe University, Melbourne, Australia

Robinson, W. (1996). The Effects of the global thinking project on middle school students’ attitudes toward the environment. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Georgia State University, Atlanta, Georgia.

Springer, J. L. (1993). A principal’s perspective of the global thinking project at dunwoody high school: Implications for adminstrators. Unpublished Doctoral Dissertation, The Union Institute, Cincinnati, Ohio

Vladimir I. Vernadsky. The Biosphere: Complete Annotated Edition (Kindle Locations 127-128). Kindle Edition.

The Forces Driving America’s Education Spring

elaine — Fri, 24 May 2013 16:03:34 +0000

Jeff Bryant

Source:

Campaign for America's Future

Anyone who thinks education is the “civil rights issue of our time” needs to look at what’s going on in Chicago.

In three days of protests over the weekend and lapping into Monday, people who look like they would be involved in a civil rights cause – mostly African-American and Latino/a teachers, parents, and students, many living in low-income communities – were protesting against the city’s decision to close their neighborhood schools.

City officials have claimed that the closures are for the sake of “reforming” the city’s schools, but people who the schools actually serve aren’t buying it.

Similar protests are happening in Philadelphia where communities of black and brown citizens are openly defying civic leaders’ decisions to cut education spending and close neighborhood schools, again, in the name of “reforming” them.

Also from the heartland last week, in Indiana, a parent-led rebellion against policies mandating that schools adopt new curriculum standards known as the Common Core resulted in government officials delaying implementation of the standards that have been cast as necessary “reforms” to the system.

Similar rebellions are occurring in Alabama, Georgia, and Pennsylvania.

Moving west to Seattle, teachers boycotting standardized tests that state leaders mandated in a “reform” effort got what they wanted last week when the school administration gave into the teachers’ demands that the tests not be made mandatory for high schools.

A similar resistance has been happening across the state of Texas where a coalition of educators, parents, and state policy leaders are calling for a “counterattack” against standardized testing. This time, instead of teachers leading the rebellion, the salient force are parents who have, according to a reporter for the Austin American-Statesman, “overwhelmed the powerful business and political forces that made Texas the capital of high-stakes testing.”

These events, and others, reveal an emerging American movement unifying diverse factions across the nation in efforts to reverse education policy mandates and bolster public schools instead of punishing them and closing them down.

There is little doubt now that a counterargument to the education policies championed by the likes of Michelle Rhee and Education Secretary Arne Duncan is now slipping into the mainstream of American opinion.

Even the editorial board of The New York Times is calling for a change in how that city has been administering its public schools. In an editorial this week, the newspaper, which had been a cheerleader for Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s education mandates, now states, “The school system has indeed gone overboard in relying on standardized testing. Tests need to be a means to the end of better instruction, not the pedagogical obsession they have become.”

What’s generally not understood is that these flashpoints of resistance around the country are driven by common core grievances – a grassroots “common core” if you will – that is shaping the rapidly evolving education debate.

Behind nearly every protest to the status quo policies meted out to the nation’s public education system are common grievances about resource deprivation, inequity, public disempowerment and the widespread perception that governing policies are driven by corruption.

The situation in Chicago is a microcosm of how these four grievances are converging.

Resource Deprivation

What’s not widely acknowledged is that there is a systemic and deliberate agenda across America to starve public schools of funding. This is especially true in Chicago and especially true for the schools that are scheduled for closing.

A recent report from the Chicago Teachers Union looked at schools that were closed and revealed the district’s intentional policy to starve the targeted schools of necessary funds. As local blogger and activist Kenzo Shibata recently observed at The Huffington Post, “The school closings wave is at the crescendo of years of slow and steady sabotage by the Chicago Board of Education.”

Shibata quoted a Chicago Public Schools Official who readily admitted that “If we think there’s a chance that a building is going to be closed in the next five to 10 years, if we think it’s unlikely it’s going to continue to be a school, we’re not going to invest in that building.”

Shibata correctly observed, “The very schools that needed the most support – libraries, small class sizes, and wraparound services – were starved.”

Inequity

Not only is there a nationwide effort to disinvest from public schools, there is a systemic policy in America to ensure schools that need funding the most are targeted for deeper cuts or lower funding.

This is especially true in Chicago where the schools being closed are predominantly in parts of the city that are populated with lower-income African American and Latino families.

Writing at the website Alternet, Samantha Winslow reported, ” Almost all of the 54 schools targeted for closing serve primarily black and Latino students. All are in poor neighborhoods.”

Reporter James Patrick at Substance News observed,

“Since 2001, 98 of the 100 schools being closed or phased out in Chicago have been located in predominantly African-American and Latino communities. School closures directly correspond to the locations of troubled mortgages, foreclosures, and population loss.”

Public Disempowerment

Behind nearly every protest against the nation’s education metric-driven agenda is the complaint from teachers, parents, and school children that they are being disempowered.

Whether the voices of dissent are coming from teachers objecting to unfair evaluations, parents objecting to having no voice in creating and implementing new standards, or students complaining of unjust discipline measures, the prevailing narrative is that Americans of all persuasions increasingly believe they have diminishing control over their education destinies.

Policy decisions affecting education are increasingly promulgated from governing bodies that are not elected and serve at the whim of powerful mayors and governors who take power away from locally-elected bodies and hand it over to hand-picked “managers” and committees filled with their close associates and campaign funders.

Education policies are increasingly the product of Washington-based technocrats who have little or no contact with the schools and communities whose schools are being affected by their plans.

Even charter schools – often promoted as a authentic “choice” for parents who want to escape “government monopoly schools” – are increasingly operated by distant executives and appointed boards with little accountability to local constituents.

This sense of disempowerment is an especially prevalent force behind the Chicago protests. Bloggers and activists have recorded countless stories of parents who have done everything they can to provide their children access to good schools only to see their efforts undone by the city’s action.

One account, appearing in the local independent newspaper Catalyst, told how parents have seen these Chicago neighborhoods completely transformed by forces out of their ability to address. In one neighborhood, “Over the past decade, three of the schools that served the area’s children have been closed and reopened – one as a charter school, one as a selective enrollment school and the third as a lease by a private Catholic school that costs about $8,000 a year.”

In other words, the option to choose a school that accepts all children is no longer available.

This is not an isolated example, noted reporter Sarah Karp. “The end result of the school [administration's] actions is that traditional, district-run neighborhood schools will become scarcer. Schools to which students have to apply and those run by private organizations will continue to take over, casting an ever-bigger shadow over the district.”

Widespread Perceptions Of Corruption

Prominent news stories about charter school profiteering, massive cheating on standardized tests, and the heavy involvement of Wall Street investment firms and the publishing industry behind the scenes are creating widespread perceptions that education policy is driven by corruption.

People to the right of the political spectrum accuse efforts to align all state curricula to Common Core standards of being driven by a federal government intent on spreading “propaganda” and invading our privacy.

Those who tend to lean left see corporations as the primary benefactors of education policies like the Common Core and charter school proliferation.

Either way, the core grievance is that education policies are being sold to the American people with very deceptive language and with occasionally ulterior motives.

These perceptions are not confined to the extremes of the spectrum. Recently at The New Republic, Nicholas Lehmann wrote that education reform poster-person Michelle Rhee has “misled” education advocates who favor current policies.

“Rhee simply isn’t interested in reasoning forward from evidence to conclusions: conclusions are where she starts,” Lehmann observed. “She gives us little or no discussion of pedagogical technique, a hot research topic these days, or of curriculum, another hot topic owing to the advent of the Common Core standards, or of funding levels, or class size, or teacher training, or surrounding schools with social services.”

Lehmann concluded that Rhee’s leadership in “the education-reform movement” has had the damaging effect of making the whole enterprise take on “a narrow and melodramatic frame” that remains so influential mostly because “it depends so heavily on the largesse of people who are used to getting their way.”

Certainly the people of Chicago know what it’s like to be misled by influential and local officials threatening their schools. A local radio station, WBEZ, took the time to fact check what school district officials have been reporting and found lots of gaps in the truth.

For instance, Chicago Public Schools says “30,000 children will be impacted by school closings. But the district’s plan actually will touch more than 46,000 children.”

Although school and city officials have “claimed a loss of 145,000 students, between 2000 and 2013, actual enrollment in Chicago Public Schools has not decreased dramatically.” And, “since 2000, the proportion of Chicago kids attending public schools has actually increased.”

Also, “Mayor Rahm Emanuel has said the key reason to close schools is about getting children ‘trapped’ in low performing schools to a better place.” But the reporters found that in previous closings, “most students whose schools were closed by the district re-enrolled in schools that were academically weak.”

School and city officials have stated the school closures are scheduled to save $43 million and help close $1 billion shortfall in the district’s operating budget. But again, the facts show “all cost savings, plus tens of millions of additional dollars (for a total of $233 million), will be put into receiving schools.” And “the district is borrowing $329 million to pay for improvements to receiving schools,” which “will cost $25 million in debt service every year for 30 years.”

The New Bipartisanship On Education?

The common core grievances driving the backlash to education mandates are not going to go away any time soon. Despite how the particulars of the debate pivot to issues about content standards, to assessment results, to school choice, etc. widespread feelings of resource deprivation, inequity, public disempowerment, and overwhelming corruption are not only going to remain – they are likely to grow. Any lurch from crisis to crisis – no matter how well orchestrated – will likely further intensify a popular sense of a system out of control.

The only remaining question is, now that it’s becoming more acceptable to say that education mandates have “gone too far,” how much longer will it take for those same opinion outlets to admit the mandates were mistaken to begin with?

A Modest Proposal (Guest Post by Colum White)

elaine — Thu, 23 May 2013 19:44:21 +0000

Colum Whyte

EduShyster

Source:

EduShyster.com

A Call to Create “Charter” Police and Fire Stations, brought to you by Democrats for Public Safety Reform (DFPSR)

By Colum Whyte  

The status quo is not working. “Something” has to be done. Generous direct “donations” from the Waltons and Kochs, as well as strong support from the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) have helped “Citizens First” realize our goals. Truly, public safety is a civil right; we shall overcome. Citizens First proposes a national movement to ensure that no citizen ever have to rely on union-stifled police officers or firefighter again. For too long the patrolman and firefighters unions have stifled innovation in our neediest municipalities. We need reform.

Studies show that the US is not safe, and we rank near the bottom of international rankings as defined by the Public Safety Metric (PSM). Bold action needs to be taken.

Citizens First, in conjunction with our affiliates at AEI, propose a trailblazing new vision of Public Safety Reform. Our lobbying networks have dubbed our reform efforts No Citizen Left Behind. Below is a synopsis of how our federal legislation will work to ensure national safety proficiency for all by 2025.

No Citizen Left Behind

Firstly, we will track all police stations and fire stations in every municipality in the United States. We will collect public safety data and then grade all states, cities, towns and municipal districts accordingly using our public safety metric (PSM) devised by public safety scientific experts. Underperforming police and fire stations will now be held accountable. As part of a “turnaround” plan these stations will receive a “fresh start.” All police officers and fire fighters will reapply for their positions. Department chiefs at these stations will hire no more than 50% of the former staff. Certainly, accountability will shake up the status quo.

Innovation Stations 
Through this “incubator of innovation,” new charter stations will rise from the ashes. These charter stations will create a board of directors, most notably bankers and politicians who have no experience in police work or fire. These stakeholders will create charters that will operate outside the jurisdiction of traditional stations. “Police Facilitators” and “Fire Stoppers” will be non-stifled employees at will. Licenses, experience, pensions and pertinent training will no longer be a barrier for stakeholders to create a culture of innovative transformation. The charter board of directors will ensure that the safety improvement plan is carried out. In this way real accountability will be realized on a national level.

In order that this bold, innovative, and trailblazing venture be realized a few earmarks must be incorporated into NCLB. Most notably a corporate enterprise tax credit must be adopted in order to stimulate reform “buy in”. Listen up hedge funders! After NCLB passes, an enterprising tax loophole, which will benefit ALL citizens, will be enacted. Through venture philanthropy bankers can now raise money for their innovative charter stations. These monies can now be used as tax deductible donations for your “for profit” companies. Other benefits include real estate, building contracts, and inside knowledge of public-safety buying trends. We encourage all police and fire related corporate enterprises to hop on board this gravy train. If you don’t, one of our subsidiaries certainly will and you may be on the short end of our free market! Remember, SAFETY FIRST!

Colum Whyte has been a union-stifled teacher in the Boston Public Schools since 2004. Send comments to columwhyte@yahoo.com

What a Fact? And Who Can We/Should We Trust?

elaine — Thu, 23 May 2013 15:47:13 +0000

Deborah Meier

Source:

Deborah Meier on Education

Dear readers. Even if this is far too long for a blog—2000 plus words!–please, if you read it, respond.

Thanks.

The number one “habit of mind” that we based our work at Mission Hill, Central Park East schools on: “how do we know what we know and how credible is it?” With all the education talk about “evidence-based” and “data driven” reform you’d think we’d stop for a moment and ask ourselves how much school evidence/data we can truly count on? Or even scarier—how do we know anything beyond our first-hand knowledge?

I just finished reading a blog by Diane Ravitch about Geoffrey Canada’s work in Harlem which, in turn, is based on a blog by Gary Rubenstein. Rubenstein gives facts and figures to (1) prove Canada’s proclaimed graduation rates aren’t honest, (2) show that Canada’s success depends heavily on the incredible fiscal resources he has access to, 3) remind us that Canada built his rep without acknowledging that he kicked out two entire classes because they didn’t get good test scores, and (4) that he denies all the above.

But in a field in which I no longer believe anyone’s data, exposing Canada hardly matters! Not even my own “facts” sometimes don’t convince even me! I know too much about my own temptation to pick and choose evidence that confirms my beliefs to assume that my allies—and enemies– aren’t similarly influenced. At any one moment the temptation to lie, fudge or obscure negative data can be trivial or critical. The higher the stakes that rely on the data the greater the temptation—like e.g. bonuses, reputation, livelihood, jail– to look for the best and hide the worst. The GAO claims that 33 states cheat, but I believe it relies on an old-fashioned rule—no explicit prepping for a specific test.

So I wonder, is my nostalgia for a time when I “believed” most “facts” just that—false memory? Or even worse, stupidness on my part? I suspect some of it is. After all, I long ago noticed that the NY Times never got a story quite right if it was one I happened to know a lot about—where I was there, for example. But I still kept/keep, sort of, believing all the information they offer on what I don’t know much about at all.

I remember an anarchist friend of mine disputing my claim that people were living longer today than they had a hundred years earlier. When asked why I believed it, I mentioned as one example, census data. He lashed into me about my naiveté in believing government-sponsored data. I felt sorry for him because how can one cope with a world where you cannot know who and what is “a fact”. It surely makes even flawed democracy a utopian dream.

I’m in his boat now, and it feels awful.

Close to home, for example, I know how easy it is to fudge graduation data, drop-out data, class-size data, attendance data, GPA averages, test scores, and on and on. I’ve even dabbled in a few of these myself. It’s hard to get caught—unless someone is really after you or you’ve let too many people in on the secret.

Therefore should we stop collecting the stuff? Maybe. At least I feel comfortable saying we (1) shouldn’t be collecting new stuff with high stakes attached, and (2) should remain very skeptical—especially if, on the basis of ones personal knowledge, the data seems miraculous or peculiar.

I used to carefully scan the ranked test score reports in the NY Times. (It began in the1960s). Schools were ranked in order of scores, and the story indicated both this year’s scores and last year’s. What I soon noticed were occasional great leaps or declines—which seemed unlikely if we were actually comparing oranges to oranges. Either something happened—such as the school having suddenly become the site of the District’s gifted program, or a new principal was no longer inflating scores as his/her predecessor did. (She/he may not have even known they were inflated.) I checked some and it confirmed my suspicions. Others I had no way to confirm or deny. Similarly, years ago I witnessed an enormous rise in attendance in our high schools following a new chancellor’s demand that we focus on attendance (“they can’t learn if they’re not there.”) Until I realized we had simultaneously, and not secretly, changed the class period when attendance was officially taken—from first to third, I believe.

Drop-out figures? They are hard to count and aren’t simply the difference between the number of 8th graders vs 10th or 9th vs 12th. (Although big discrepancies in either requires some explaining.) After all, kids leave one school for another—some of which can be verified, some not. After all, families move to other cities, states and countries. Also some can be accounted for by hold-overs unless one looks into the 5 and 6 year graduating rate. We’d need a team of detectives per school to follow-up and even then it’s problematic how much they could discover. Except for rare drop-in visits to count a random sample of classes we are pretending schools are telling the truth. Maybe there are more honest principals out there than one might think. But even the few who are more careless, let’s say, are rarely “accused.” Both the cost and the morale impact of being continually inspected for the truth would be beyond immense. (Store-keepers, bankers, you name it have reached the same conclusion and have invented annoying ways to keep “us” honest, but not themselves).

I could go on and on. Every time we institute a new policy to catch wrong-doers most of us act just like our students, we put our minds to new ways to get around the new rules. The last fiscal crisis being a good example. It’s easier than improving the school (economy) in ways that will show up on high stakes rank-order lists.

A wonderful friend of mine (and of many other school people) ran a high school that took all the kids others wanted to get rid of. He never said “no” if there was a space. And the kids he took were grateful because he really cared about them. But after many years some reporter decided to expose him by noting the school’s relatively low attendance rate and relatively high drop-out data. He was, the story suggested, a phony who had been getting away with this for years. My friend soon retired and afterwards died under sad circumstances. Of course, were it not for him other feeder schools would have had worse data. And, I wonder. would he have served his students better had he been willing to fudge the data?

The world is a worse place when we feel that maybe we “should” lie in order to “do good.”

So where do I go with this? I’ve reached a few possibly useful conclusions—to start with. To lessen the reasons to lie the stakes must not be too high and to increase the reasons to tell the truth the consequences must be helpful. Then, 3rd, we need to make it easier for the truth to be naturally exposed—where lying would require too much collaboration from too many people to last long. (That’s what I usually count on–truth will win out over time–when I hear outrageous conspiracy theories.) That’s one reason I like small schools. Assuming that people generally trust data that supports what they otherwise know first-hand, school size helps check lying too much. If I say 100% graduated, hopefully some kids, teachers and parents simply know better because they know better; they remember. And on and on. There was a story in the media some years ago about a speech in which the valedictorian started off by asking the graduates to look round and think about their freshman classmates–those who were no longer with them, who hadn’t made it.

But, we have to rely on some “facts”–just to get out of bed each morning. But how much further from our own self-knowledge can we rely on “the evidence”? In short, not far. Restoring confidence in “the facts” while retaining sufficient skepticism is a tough balancing act. It’s what, ideally, schools, the media, the courts (and friends) are there for. I’ve come to believe that the first order of the day for any reformer is: figure this puzzle out. The answers must, I fear, finally rest in human judgment; but judgment can be trained, improved upon and what better place for doing this than schools..

Yes, small schools are one partial answer. Openness is another. Not getting so tangled up in our fear of intruders that we lock everything up would help. Lots of opportunities for families and schools to share information—more and more family conferences to clarify the self-serving lies that even the best kids occasionally tell. Especially if the kids are at such meetings too so they can check on misleading claims adults sometimes indulge in. It also means tackling the “isms—above all racism. It’s this—and all the small disrespectful acts that go with it, that cannot help but undermine trust.

We discovered (from others, including good private schools) the value of visiting teams of respected colleagues and experts, who come and spend time on a regular basis—as we did at CPESS and on some level also at Mission Hill. Let them look over our records, our curriculum, our assessment tools and interview a sample of parents, teachers and students. Sit in classes. Then at the end, after reading their reports, we enjoy an open free-for-all, followed often by a written faculty “response.” These were NOT for high-stakes purposes, but ways of checking for useful and helpful feedback. It helps also if the school culture rests on frequent teacher-to-teacher visits, drop-ins, etc.

How to shift the balance? How much of it must be mandated from above? How far “above”? Who should have access to what? What protections are needed from harmful or premature disclosures—or should there be none? “What we say here, stays here” may at times be critical for healthy discussion—if so, how do we provide for that too? We need to leave room for discussing those “white lies” that even the strictest truth-teller might – or might not – occasionally indulge in. And we need to help young people sort these out too, without undue fear. The value of making such “habits of mind” explicit and user friendly takes time and effort.

How might we try some of these ideas out on an experimental level? It is probably the narrative that goes with them that will or will not help persuade others to follow—not the statistical part. The primary tool of a democracy is persuasion. The facts are part of trying to persuade. Generally we stick with what we have been believing until someone we trust a lot on a personal basis presents an eye-witness report that forces us to consider the possibility that “I’m wrong.” We have to respect how hard it to persuade people they’re wrong. For as Thomas Kuhn said—in discussing the search for scientific proof—sticking with one’s current viewpoint is not a bad idea. If we have no commitment to our ideas we will never know whether they are right or wrong. We need accommodate new “truths” to old ones for as long as we can. But also it shouldn’t be too uncomfortable to switch “sides”–eventually one should be able to drop practices or beliefs that even you have begun to be skeptical about and try out a few that you used to shun. It’s easier if you are also able to revert! Watching good teachers caused me to reconsider some of my pedagogical certainties: like the value of choral reading (and not just of music). Even about lining-up routines; although I’ve also questioned why we need to line-up so often!

It was even exciting when I came back from visiting a city(Minneapolis) that never lined kids up, to ask colleagues why we needed them.

I’m also, as I finish this, thinking about how the other four “habits of mind” serve as a partial check on the first. Number 2 usually is something like this: how else might it appear, look to others? The third asks about perceived patterns, the fourth asks “what if” and the last asks, “who cares and does it matter?” There are probably dozens of other habits of mind that we use as we delve deeper and deeper into the usually unending search for knowledge. But then the dilemma is: habits depend on frequent use in many different settings.

The crisis, so-called, in American education is a symptom of a “crisis of trust” which in turn poses a “crisis for democracy” writ large—as an idea itself. If we are not to give up, we need schools, families and communities that start to carefully rebuild trust within their own four walls, and base it on losing the fear that we might, on occasion, be wrong. No institution I know, alas, presently values being wrong less than our K-12 schools. We might as well start there. Maybe if we do we can reverse the trends of the past few decades or distrust at all levels of society.

School Closing Quotables

elaine — Thu, 23 May 2013 15:38:14 +0000

Mike Klonsky

Source:

Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog

Trumbull Local Schools Council member Ali Burke hugs Wendy Kattan of Raise Your Hand following the board of education's vote to close 50 Chicago Public School, May 22, 2013. | Jessica Koscielniak ~ Sun-Times

Sun-Times headline

In less time than it takes to boil an egg -- This morning

Columnist Mark Brown

In the end, the board was so tone deaf to its audience that on the crucial vote that closed most of the schools, they used the parliamentary maneuver of adopting the previous favorable roll call — instead of taking the extra 30 seconds to each say “yes” once more. The average person in attendance didn’t even know the closings had been approved until it was over. -- "CPS closings vote shows it’s time for an elected school board"

Whitney Young students hold vigil. (Sun-Times)

Prof. Mark Naison

One key component of this strategy is demographic inversion- moving the poor out of the center city into the periphery, where they will no longer be able to physically or politically threaten the global elites who will be working and playing in the redeveloped Center. This process is already well under way in cities like New York, Chicago, Washington and Milwaukee- with the result being that more poor people now live in suburbs than in cities...
... "Erasing History In Chicago and Other Places"

Prof. Federico Waitoller, Dept. of Special Ed, UIC

This combination of factors will make school closings doubly hard for students of color with special needs. The sheer magnitude and speed of these changes will be especially painful for what is already the school district’s most vulnerable population. -- Letter to Tribune

Sports writer Dave Zirin

It all starts with the person who seems committed to win the current spirited competition as the most loathsome person in American political life: Mayor Rahm Emanuel. The same Mayor overseeing the closing of fifty-four schools and six community mental health clinics under the justification of a “budgetary crisis” has announced that the city will be handing over more than $100 million to DePaul University for a new basketball arena. -- The Nation

The Death of Private Schools is Greatly Exaggerated (& Misrepresented!)

elaine — Thu, 23 May 2013 15:34:24 +0000

Bruce D. Baker

Source:

School Finance 101

As I’ve explained on previous posts, specific to New Jersey, claims of the dying private sector in education are grossly over exaggerated.

These days, such claims are often over exaggerated with the purpose of framing some broad policy interest in supporting private schools. That is, some need for immediate public policy attention to the problem – some reason to consider how to better integrate our private sector schools into the provision of the public good of elementary and secondary education.

It is argued broadly that the loss of our ever important private sector of schooling is a threat to educational excellence – or even national security. That this loss is of particular concern for our middle and lower income populations who have now lost access to private sector schooling.

In short, policymakers must act swiftly to stabilize this “too big to fail” sector of schooling that is critical to the future of low income children in America. This is not a religious issue. It’s a public interest issue. It has no religious boundaries. No specific religious identity. It is entirely neutral of religion. Or is it?

Indeed, I’m painting a caricature of recent arguments regarding private schooling and the public good. But I would argue that this caricature is reasonably representative of Checker Finn’s recent Fordham Institute editorial on “Why Private Schools are Dying Out.”

Checker begins with bold claims of a dying private schooling industry… though noting that elite schools are doing just fine. His precision of analysis ends about there – elites okay… everyone else dying. Checker points to “other countries” (an ambiguity that drives me nuts… and is entirely pointless in its absurd imprecision), noting:

Most other modern countries have essentially melded their private education sectors into their systems of public financing

The implication to be drawn (though not entirely clearly stated) from Checker’s rant on the decline of private schooling in America is that we too must find ways to act like “other modern countries” (which obviously trounce us on international tests) and meld our public and private systems with public funding toward the greater public good.

To believe this line of reasoning, one must be entirely ignorant of the social/cultural religious demography of the United States and the history, long past and recent of private schooling in America (some data provided here). One would also have to ignore any and all publicly available data from which one might actually explore patterns of private school enrollment over time. I just can’t do that. It’s too easy to check.

Evidence from the NCES Private School Universe Survey

Let’s start with the national biennial survey of private schools conducted by the National Center for Education Statistics. First, here are estimated total private school enrollments by grade level.

As we can see, elementary enrollments do appear to be dropping.

Now, here it is by region. There appears to be some decline in the Northeast and Midwest. But, the south and West are relatively stable.

Now, by affiliation, or in the NCES dataset, an aggregate typology they’ve created. Here what we see is that most sectors of private schooling in the U.S. are, in fact stable. One is not. Parochial Catholic schools have declined appreciably in the past decade, assuming these data to be accurate (with the decline starting well before that). Yes, it’s a big sub-sector within private schooling. Formerly the biggest. But it is one specific sub-sector.

Evidence from Census Data and the American Community Survey

Now, let’s take a look at Census Bureau data from 2000 to 2011, including a breakout of children from lower income families (those below 250% of the income level for poverty). Here, I look at 6 to 16 year olds because, in states where kindergarten is half-day, larger shares attend private schools, and where full day kindergarten increases by policy change, private school shares decline. Here I’m trying to capture the core of the school aged population.

What we see is some drop among the total population, but the lower income population is relatively stable.

Clarifying the Policy Inferences

First and foremost, the graphs here are still far too highly aggregated. This issue requires much more parsing by state, metro area, by affiliation and grade ranges, and so on. National averages of anything in the U.S. tend not to be very useful.

That aside, what we see here is that lower income families are enrolled at roughly a constant rate over time. They are not declining. Not losing substantial access. That said, they have much less access than their higher income peers to begin with.

Further, most types of private schools have remained stable over time – nationally. There is an apparent small shock between 2008 and 2010. Catholic Church affiliated schools have indeed declined in enrollment over the long haul, and significantly. This includes especially parochial, largely elementary schools, and recently, church affiliated Diocesan upper schools.

Overall, high school enrollments are up. Middle school enrollments are stable. Elementary school enrollments are down, and largely due to the decline in Catholic parochial elementary schools.

So, let’s be sure to see the public policy question for what it is. And to see it for what it is, we must start with a reasonable look at the available data.

Private schooling isn’t generally in decline. Church affiliated Catholic schooling is. There may be a variety of reasons for this. Middle class Catholic families have migrated out of the cities for decades. Urban catholic school enrollments have become increasingly non-Catholic (in many regions/cities), arguably altering (if not compromising) the Catholic mission of those schools. Non-Catholic low income families in cities have been provided more non-religious choices, through expanded charter schooling (perhaps the primary reason?). While attempting to uphold their service mission, holding down tuition and providing breaks for low income families, Catholic schools have become increasingly cash strapped. Notably, Catholic schools today operate with a much smaller share of in-kind, Church staff than they used to. Staffing costs have risen dramatically.

So then, if we accept these trends among one subset of private schools as being a substantial national policy concern (which some may), then the question is not broadly how to better integrate private entities of all stripes into the provision of elementary and secondary education as a public good, but rather about whether we should be using public funding to stabilize a subset of private schools of a single religion – in other words, should we use public dollars to bail out Catholic schools in decline?

When viewed as a taxpayer subsidized bailout of Catholic Church affiliated schooling, these policy proposals are no longer religion neutral – are they? (nor are they particularly good for Catholic education)

NZ Government to Introduce Charter Hospitals

elaine — Thu, 23 May 2013 15:29:41 +0000

At the Chalk Face

Source:

At the Chalk Face

Reposted from this brilliant NZ satirical website The Civilian.

This beautifully captures the ideological nonsense behind charter schools.

————–

These minimum wage surgeons may be unsure what to do next, but with enough private funding, the Government is confident they’ll figure it out.

The National Government has today announced plans to introduce a number of charter hospitals, similar to their charter school counterparts, in major population centres around the country.

The hospitals, which would be owned, operated or sponsored by private enterprises, would dissociate themselves from the current public health system and not be required to follow the regulations that most health institutes are beholden to.

Charter hospitals would not have to produce evidence to support the treatments they provide, would not have to hire qualified doctors, surgeons or nurses, and would be largely immune from public inquiries such as official information requests.

The announcement was made today at a press conference held by Health Minister Tony Ryall, who said that the new hospitals would provide a way for poor families and their children to get quality health care at a low cost.

“Over the next two years, the Ministry of Health will be working with private companies and community organisations to establish a modest number of partnership hospitals around the country,” said Ryall. “These hospitals will seek to provide services to those patients who the current system has left behind.”

“Because of the high safety standard we demand in our public affairs, public hospitals are forced to waste a great deal of money on conducting internal reviews, hiring qualified staff and cleaning surgical equipment. Partnership hospitals, on the other hand, will be free to take their own approach, providing kiwis with choice and lowering costs for thousands of families who have traditionally been unable to afford care.”

Ryall assured reporters that while regulations would not be as strict as they are for public hospitals, the Government would institute some kind of a minimum standard.

“Contrary to what the Opposition will tell you, we are not going to let hospitals run roughshod over the health system by allowing them to hire just anyone,” he said. “We would expect doctors to have a PhD in at least something.”

He added that charter hospitals would have to demonstrate that their surgeons had used scissors “at least twice,” and fully completed popular video game Surgeon Simulator 2013, “including the secret level in outer space.”

Additionally, those hospitals would be required to have a working fleet of ambulances, where an ambulance is defined as a vehicle with a minimum of two wheels, and at least one emergency room, where an emergency room is not defined.

If the implementation of charter hospitals is successful, Ryall says he’ll consider taking a similar approach with his ministry, which he’s “getting kind of sick of, anyway.”

Dystopia: A Possible Future of Teacher Evaluation

elaine — Wed, 22 May 2013 16:25:12 +0000

Susan Ohanian

Source:

Susan Ohanian.org

Stephen Krashen thinks Anthony Cody may be too optimistic.

Reader Comment: don't forget we are graduating the next wave of future teachers who will teach as they have been taught and gradually fit perfectly into this scenario without questioning it.

Reader Comment: All the teaching and evaluation in the future will be done by robots and software programs, not human beings at all, if Gates & Co. get their way.   

Reader Comment: The dystopia of continuous online monitoring and control is already here in my district, Remote one.   

We're "piloting" a program that requires teachers and students to interface assignments and turn in work through a commercial contractor, so it can be standardized and monitored, and our teacher evaluations are also brokered by outside cloud companies.   

This is a description of the plan, from the entity Al Meyer was just promoting:  
"The company collaborates with 3rd party developers to integrate access to both activities and performance reports into a single,unified experience. Click on the logos below to learn more about our partners."  
http://educationelements.com/about-us/our-partners   

Parent Comment; As a parent, not an educator, I might feel that this piece was overly alarmist - if not for the fact that we are already seeing some of this in practice. In the Education Achievement Authority, an entity created to take over the lowest "performing" schools in Michigan, students receive their curriculum via their netbooks courtesy of an online system that is both teacher and evaluator. Human teachers - which they sometimes call "facilitators" - are there to monitor the process and to watch "dashboards" on their own computers which report on student progress. The human teachers/facilitators do not have, and theoretically do not need, any significant experience because the technology is responsible for delivering appropriate content to each student. . . .    

For perspective on the Michigan EAA, please see our article here: 
http://www.miparentsforschools.org/node/183   

P. L. Thomas: Read Kurt Vonnegut's PLAYER PIANO.   

Brilliant, not as a cautionary tale, but as an insightful dramatization of the debates about technology, testing, etc.  

 http://www.opednews.com/articles/Calculating-the-Corporate-by-Paul-Thomas-110103-130.html  

By Anthony Cody

Picture our public schools in the year 2018. What follows is an attempt to see a few short years into the future, to understand how current reform proposals may develop.

I have been highly skeptical about the proposals from the Gates Foundation regarding teacher evaluation, because they do not correspond with how I have seen teachers collaborate and grow together. There is the language of feedback and growth, but I am fearful of a dystopian outline I see emerging, driven by Gates' technocratic vision. The "system" has been described in vague terms - elements of student and parent feedback, teacher observations, videotapes - and a $5 billion price tag. To offer some perspective, assuming there are five million classrooms in America, that amounts to about $1000 per classroom. What is all this money going to buy?

I want to describe the possible future I see, and I want to hear from others. Do you see what I see? Am I wrong to be uneasy or even fearful of this?
Here is the outline I find a bit scary.

The year is 2018. We have a national system of standards, curriculum, technological enhancements and high stakes tests, all aligned and built out (as described by Bill Gates in 2009.) Teachers arrive at school and are handed not just the keys to the classroom, but the whole year's curriculum, which has been developed by "experts" and "innovators" - meaning textbook publishers and educational software developers. There is an optimum way to deliver each lesson, as has been determined by field testing, and teachers are told to watch a video to ensure they know how it ought to be delivered.

There is a detailed timeline, to make sure that students cover all the material required for each grade level, so they stay on track for college and career. Much of the instruction is done online, in large "flipped" classrooms. "Personalization" is achieved by having each student work autonomously, using educational software, taking periodic assessments to track their progress. Student essays are uploaded to automated scoring systems, which quickly and efficiently return detailed feedback on punctuation and sentence structure, but offer no capacity for understanding what the student has attempted to communicate. Teachers become managers of this interface between students and the standardized curriculum.

There are computer-based benchmark tests aligned with the curriculum every six weeks, to make sure the teacher is covering the material according to the timeline. Then there is an end of year test that covers all the material learned, and this allows the student to receive credit for course completion. The teacher is also given credit for the material the students have learned. Teachers and students have unique ID numbers that are attached to all their records. Both student and teacher data are stored in the inBloom data warehouse, which is made available to school districts, colleges, and companies doing various forms of research and product development.

Each classroom has its own video camera. These cameras are networked and controlled from the school or district office. Teachers are directed to record lessons of particular topics, which are coded according to the standards that are addressed. Then when the test scores arrive, teachers who have students that have performed above expectations on their tests have their videos placed in a "preferred practices" library for reference by teachers and evaluators. Teachers whose students perform consistently below expectations are flagged for more intensive review and feedback, or fired, depending on their status and level of due process protection.

Since principals do not have sufficient time to observe and supervise teachers, this work is contracted out to "experts,"(hired by for-profit service providers) who are sent the videos to review remotely. They provide a summary of what they observe, using as their guideline the checklist of best practices and the instructions for that particular lesson. This is included in the teachers' evaluation.

Teachers are provided with this feedback, and given the chance to improve - they can review the videos of more effective teachers, and work to deliver their lesson according to the script or best practices guidelines. These key lessons are once again delivered, videotaped, and the teachers are scored on their performance.

Teachers who fail to respond to this feedback, and whose students continue to perform poorly on assessments, are fired. This system uses the following "multiple measures" of data to ensure that it is an accurate representation of a teachers' effectiveness:

Video of the teacher engaged in instruction, scored by experts.

student test scores and VAM analyses.

student and parent survey data

Principal's observations

The inBloom data system will contain a complete record of each teacher's performance. If any school district is contemplating hiring a teacher, they will enter the teacher's code number and access all this information.

This is a future I believe is possible given the systems and structures being promoted by technocrats like Gates. This is NOT the way the system has been described by Bill Gates or any of his representatives. They tend to use the language of feedback and collaboration. But as I have been asking, if collaboration is the goal, why must this be embedded in an evaluation process, which has the goal of determining who ought to be fired?

Teachers are already being evaluated based on the test scores of students they never taught. Every subject is being assigned some form of standardized test, so that student and teacher performance can be quantified and compared. Measurement has already run amok, and the plans we are seeing outlined expand this dramatically. In this climate, I believe more collection of data allows for more inappropriate uses of data, and we are far beyond the place where this data is helping.

If I thought that creating this ultimate system of alignment would result in better lives for students, I would get with the program. However, we know that high stakes tests are far more effective at reinforcing inequities than breaking them down. Students are not standardized, and teachers do their best work when they can teach creatively, building on student interests, and responding to their needs. Conformity and standardization may create efficient marketplaces, but they will drive the vitality from our classrooms.

If I am wrong, and the new evaluation system described by Bill Gates really is all about feedback and collaboration, then why not remove the model from an evaluative framework. Make the sharing of videos voluntary and low-stakes. Provide teachers dedicated time for collaboration. Offer a variety of structures such as Lesson Study, Critical Friends and Teacher Inquiry, that have been proven effective at generating authentic reflection and growth.

If I turn out to be right, then smash those cameras, boycott those tests, opt out of the data systems, and refuse to be standardized and scripted.

What do you think? Am I being alarmist? How do you imagine our future will take shape based on the systems being put into place?

— Anthony Cody
Education Week: Living in Dialogue blog
May 16, 2013
http://blogs.edweek.org/teachers/living-in-dialogue/2013/05/dystopia_a_possible_future_of_.html

Charter Schools = Wingnut Welfare

elaine — Wed, 22 May 2013 16:14:16 +0000

Jersey Jazzman

Source:

Jersey Jazzman Blog

No one who reads this blog will be at all surprised by this:

Last year, I wrote about fake Democrat Cody Bailey who had his ass handed to him by now-State Representative David Knezek. Bailey barely beat a candidate in the Democratic primary who didn’t even run a campaign and got his clock cleaned by Knezek. As I outlined in my expose, Bailey was anything but a Democrat and ran one of the sleaziest, most fact-challenged campaigns in my experience.

Imagine my (non) surprise to discover this week that Bailey, at the tender age of 22, is now the president of the Taylor Preparatory High School in ~~Grand Rapids~~ Taylor, a for-profit charter high school that opens in the fall. What qualifies Bailey to be the president of an educational institution with a lofty mission of being “a bridge to a life well lived” for high schoolers? In a word (well, two words): not much. [emphasis mine]

That's right, folks: Michigan didn't have enough money (until the last minute) to keep the public schools in Buena Vista running, but they can support a charter school run by a 22-year-old with no education training.

When Bailey ran for the Michigan statehouse, he was endorsed by StudentsFirst: that made him one of only 15 non-Republicans SF supported out of a total of 105 candidates in that cycle. After reading Bailey's story, I can't help but wonder how many of those 15 were also stealth conservatives, running as Democrats because it was the only way they could win in their districts.

Well, Bailey did his part to support Republican Governor Rick Snyder's assault on public education, and now he gets his reward: his very own charter school. What do you think the prospects are for Taylor Prep's "success"? Yeah, me too...

Mark my words: this wasn't the first, and it won't be the last time a political hack is "rewarded" this way for his fealty to the privatization cause. Charter schools are a great way to pay off cronies and fellow travelers. State education departments, if they aren't already, will soon become the new Tammany Halls, where any incompetent "reformer" can run his own school - as long as he plays for the right team.

Everybody gets a taste...

Pretty Awful Report on “Reforming” Teacher Observation Practices

elaine — Wed, 22 May 2013 16:10:27 +0000

Larry Ferlazzo

Source:

Larry Ferlazzo's Websites of the Day...

Democrats For Education Reform (DFER) has just published a report on “reforming” teacher evaluations that is — how can I put this — just awful. It’s called Culture of Countenance: Teachers, Observers and the Effort to Reform Teacher Evaluations (thanks to Alexander Russo for the tip).

I suspect, and hope, that others (maybe Bruce D. Baker at School Finance 101) will make a much more careful look at it than I have, but here are a few quick reflections. Let me know if you have others:

Here’s one excerpt:

Administrators recognize that observations are widely viewed as cursory exercises not expected to yield meaningful information. Correspondingly, today’s teachers expect little feedback, positive or negative, from the observation or the subsequent evaluation.

This seems like a pretty wide assumption to make, don’t you think? It certainly hasn’t been my experience.

Next excerpt:

It describes “The Widget Effect” as “the definitive report on teacher evaluations.” This is a widely criticized — one could almost use the word “discredited” report done by The New Teacher Project. Here’s a pretty thorough critique of that report.

Next excerpt:

I’m writing this at a computer that’s new to to me, and my technical ineptitude is preventing me from inserting a good screenshot of a “hypothetical graph” that’s included in the report. I think you can make it out in this shot, though (the text says “The hypothetical graph above offers another way to visualize administrators’ frustration with observation feedback.”). I wasn’t aware that “hypothetical graphs” were a particular genre used in research reports.

Here’s a tweet by Bruce Baker about it:

Jersey Jazzman‪@jerseyjazzman ‪
@SchlFinance101 Pls consider adding p.4 here to your "Worst Graphs" list: http:// ow.ly/lg3iA    ‪@DFER_News ‪@alexanderrusso ‪@Larryferlazzo  

Bruce Baker
‪@SchlFinance101

‪@jerseyjazzman ‪@alexanderrusso ‪@Larryferlazzo amazing when one can't even select correct graph type for hypothetical illustration?

2:36 PM - 21 May 2013

Excerpt Three:

It says that states should:

Use statutes and regulation to set a foundation for observation system.

Um, how about involving teachers in, let’s say, in something called collective bargaining?

Other comments:

It doesn’t even mention Peer Assistance and Review, which has been proven to be one of the most effective ways to use teacher evaluations (The Best Resources On Peer Assistance & Review (PAR) Programs).

And, most crticially — in my view, at least — the report lists several purposes for teacher observations, but doesn’t including anything explicit about what the most importance purpose should be: for supporting teachers so they can develop their professional skills.

Let me know what you think of the report…..

You might also be interested in The Best Resources For Learning About Effective Student & Teacher Assessments.

Course Choice Provider Who Enrolled 1100 Students Without Their Knowledge Tied to Bush, Romney, Tex. Dropout Scandal

elaine — Wed, 22 May 2013 15:31:04 +0000

Crazy Crawfish

Source:

Crazy Crawfish’s Blog

Reblogged from Louisiana Voice:

More than 1100 students in the parishes of Caddo and Webster have signed up for course choice programs with a provider whose chairman with close ties to former President George W. Bush and 2012 Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney.

An outfit named FastPath Learning of Austin, Texas, has somehow managed to obtain student information to sign up the students without the knowledge of the student or of their parents.

If true, that’s fraud, pure and simple—and a blatant violation of the Family Education Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA).

And the chairman of the board for FastPath? None other than Dr. Rod Paige, former U.S. Secretary of Education during President George W. Bush’s first term and a member of Mitt Romney’s Education Policy Advisory Group during last year’s presidential campaign.

Paige, it should be noted, also once served as superintendent of Houston’s schools and during his tenure there, he became mired in an ugly scandal when it was learned that the Houston system, seventh largest in the nation, had falsified its dropout statistics.

Course Choice, which is under the supervision of Department of Education (DOE) Deputy Superintendent of Portfolio Dave “Lefty” Lefkowith, is a DOE program whereby Louisiana public school students are allowed to sign up for online computer courses offered by providers approved by DOE.

Lefkowith, who once worked with Enron and with former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, commutes from his home in Los Angeles and is paid $146,000 per year by DOE.

Tuition for the courses ranges from $700 to $1,275 each and providers get one-half of their tuition fees up front upon registering students for courses. The second half is paid when a student successfully completes a course and the course providers have full autonomy in making the determination of when—or if—a student completes a course. The incentive to the provider, of course, is to have as many students as possible “complete” the courses.

Fox, welcome to the hen house.

The tuition is free to the student with the state picking up the tab. Students also receive a free iPad upon registering. There was no word if the 1,100 students who were unknowingly registered received iPads.

Students are allowed to take up to five classes outside their home school at taxpayer expense.

Students and parents in the two parishes say they never requested nor approved the registering of the students for the courses. One student was registered for a class he had already successfully completed in the classroom—with an A grade.

State Superintendent of Education John White, asked about the apparent lack of oversight, said Course Choice providers underwent a “rigorous” four-part approval process before being allowed to offer classes and that checks and balances are in place to insure that students do not end up in an academically unsound course.

Really?

On Wednesday, White announced DOE would attempt to finance the Course Choice program through its own resources following last week’s Louisiana Supreme Court ruling upholding a lower court decision that the method of using Minimum Foundation Program funds to pay for the vouchers was unconstitutional.

White said that more than 3,000 courses have been chosen thus far at an average cost of $700 each, a total of $2.1 million. Registration will remain open through August, he said.

The revelation of the 1,100 registrations which, if true, could be construed as fraud and theft could also involve a violation of the federal Family Education Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) since FastPath would necessarily require certain student information, including names, addresses, social security numbers, etc., in order to register the students.

The question then becomes just who provided that information to FastPath? There are already questions about White’s leaking information about evaluations of three Caddo Parish elementary teachers through an intermediary to the Baton Rouge Advocate last October.

That intermediary was Rayne Martin, a former employer of DOE who currently serves as executive director of Stand for Children Louisiana.

In the wake of the flap over the negative evaluations of the teachers, the Advocate published a letter to the editor which defended the Value Added Model used by DOE to evaluate the teachers and which even cited statistics from the leaked document.

Turns out that letter was written by Monica Candal, policy and data analyst for Stand for Children Louisiana, leaving one to wonder about the connection between White and Stand for Children.

Who knew?

Louisiana Voice attempted to contact FastPath by telephone. An automated message told us to press 1 if we were a student already enrolled in FastPath or to press 2 for “all other inquiries.”

We pressed 2 and got another automated message that said, “We’re sorry we are unable to answer your call at this time.” So we called back and pressed 1 and got an automated message that said (take a deep breath and count to 10), “We’re sorry we are unable to answer your call at this time.” This was at 10:45 a.m. on Thursday, so it wasn’t because they close during lunch.

Next, we went online and clicked on “Contact us” and several boxes popped up on our computer screen asking for our name, our organization, our email address and the city and state from which we were emailing them. Strangely, it did not request our telephone number, though we would have been happy to provide that as well.

The following note was typed into the message box:

“This is for Compliance Officer David Callaway:

How did FastPath obtain the information (names, schools, home addresses, phone numbers, social security numbers, etc.) on the 1100 students in Caddo and Webster parishes who were signed up for your Course Choice courses without, the students and parents claim, their knowledge or consent?

It would appear that you would have to be in possession of certain information in order to enroll these students and I simply want to know who provided that data to you.

Thanks.”

A few minutes after we sent the message, we received a computer-generated message in our email in-box that said, “Thanks for contacting us! We’ll get back to you soon.”

Does anyone care to take odds on whether or not we’ll ever hear back from them?

The leaks would seem to validate concerns about a recent agreement, since cancelled because of a public outcry, to furnish personal information on some 700,000 Louisiana school children to a data bank run by White’s former boss Joel Klein, now with inBloom, a data storage company (or data “parking garage,” to use White’s terminology) run by NewsCorp CEO Rupert Murdoch.

inBloom had offered no guarantees that the data could not be accessed by hackers and in fact, an unrelated privacy breach on Bloomberg News occurred when reporters extracted subscribers’ private information to break news stories. That breach would seem to lend credence to security concerns about inBloom.

Recent stories by LouisianaVoice have prompted a witch hunt at DOE in an effort to determine the source of recent stories. Personal printers have been removed so that documents must now be printed at a central location more easily monitored. IT personnel have been called in to review emails.

It seems to us, security—and Louisiana taxpayers—would somehow be better served through efforts to attempt to learn who provided FastPath with personal data on 1,100 students signed up for courses without their knowledge or consent.

I wonder if White realizes we have TFA contacts too? He keeps holding "secret" meetings with them thinking that protects him. Silly rabbit, cliques are for kids.

LA and the Recovery School District Approach (SB1718): A P.T. Barnum Circus

elaine — Tue, 21 May 2013 17:36:34 +0000

Julian Vasquez Heilig

Source:

Cloaking Inequity

I suspect P.T. Barnum would be proud of the showmanship eminating from Louisiana— an educational policy circus. The Recovery School District has been acclaimed as “a game changer for New Orleans” and very likely today be up for a vote in the Texas House in Senate Bill 1718— and perhaps soon in a Legislature near you.

Phineas Taylor Barnum (July 5, 1810 – April 7, 1891) was an American showman, businessman, scam artist and entertainer, remembered for promoting celebrated hoaxes and for founding the circus that became the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus (Wikipedia).

What we know from Louisiana so far…

“The bigger the humbug, the better people will like it.” P.T. Barnum

Louisiana has trumpet their educational reforms across the nation. Secretary Duncan is also a fan. The Washington Post reported he stated:

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

Here is what is interesting about Louisiana that many people don’t know. They are desperately trying to control who accesses public information (data) to examine their “educational miracle.” I have been holding on to this story since 2012 because we have made friendly attempts to gain access to Louisiana data for 10 months. In fact, we have made requests to Louisiana on seven seperate occassions since August 2012. When this did not yield data, we made a public information request for an existing dataset already given to CREDO. Louisiana is required by law to respond to public records requests within 3 days, its been more than 90 days and Louisiana has not responded. It appears I will now have to file a complaint with the feds and the LA Attorney General.

I am not the only person who Louisiana is dodging for public information about their educational system. I reblogged a post from Louisiana Voice a few days ago. DOE agrees to pay legal costs and late fees for not producing records in settlement of LouisianaVoice’s public records suit

The organization Research on Reforms in New Orleans is also suing the state for access to data to conduct academic research. Parties to the suit are Dr. Barbara Ferguson and Dr. Charles Hatfield.

I contacted CrazyCrawfish, a Louisiana based blogger to ask about the purported success of the Recovery School District and why Louisiana only provides data to particular researchers via public requests (incidentally, or perhaps not, none of whom are people of color). His response:

I’m actually trying to get info to dispel these constant misrepresentations. The data coming out of RSD is fraudulent and the results are based on manipulating students into leaving and falsifying exit codes/reasons so the student stops getting counted in the denominator. [This sounds strangely similar to this and this] Karen Harper Royal can probably tell you more about that as she’s on the front line and has come across these students living in the street that supposedly transferred out-of-state. This is a statewide issue, but especially an issue in RSD and charters who counsel out and expel students out every year from 9th grade thru 12th grade. RSD schools and charters then essentially report their grad rates as the students who get diplomas that were enrolled in 12th grade, and those results are still crappy. I have a post describing the data misrepresentation that happened on my watch,

http://crazycrawfish.wordpress.com/2013/01/17/new-orleans-graduate-rate-miracle-or-make-believe/

But I need to graduate counts to show how off the reported grade rates are and LDOE refuses to provide them – for good reason. Other recent RSD articles. One I reblogged from Diane who pulled in from Mike Deshotels, and another one of my own calling for the dissolution of RSD.

http://crazycrawfish.wordpress.com/2013/05/01/mike-deshotels-the-facts-about-the-recovery-school-district/

http://crazycrawfish.wordpress.com/2013/04/29/the-grand-accountability-scam-kill-the-rsd/

Today I also reblogged a post from Dr. Mercedes Schneider: New Orleans’ Recovery School District: The Lie Unveiled Her article provides extensive background on LA educational policy, data, and the RSD.

Both the current RSD website and the 2012 LDOE school-level spreadsheet include information on the very first RSD school, Pierre Capdau.

Pierre Capdau, the very first school to be assumed by RSD in 2004, remains a state-run, RSD-NO school. After eight years, Pierre Capdau has a D for its 2012 letter grade. I have never heard any reformer boast of the “miracle” that is Pierre Capdau. It has not succeeded according to the reformer-determined definition of “success.” Pierre Capdau has never been “transformed” as a result of its state takeover.

That right there ought to give pause to those tempted by the veneer of a New Orleans Miracle.

There is much more:

Of the 60 state-run RSD schools (59 from the RSD website plus omitted Nelson) included on the DOE 2012 school-level data spreadsheet (both admin and public versions), none received an A as a school letter grade.

Of 60 state-run RSD schools, only 6 received a B in 2012. That’s 10%.

One RSD school, Gentilly Terrace, received a T, meaning no grade this year. A free pass.

According to Jindal’s and the State of Louisiana’s definition of a failing school, the remainder of the RSD schools given letter grades are failing. That’s 90%.

In 2012, 5 state-run RSD schools received a C.

In 2012, 19 state-run RSD schools received a D.

In 2012, 29 state-run RSD schools received an F.

She summed up the RSD approach by stating:

A lie packaged to only look appealing from afar.

In conclusion, the advertising handbill for the Louisiana circus might read like this:

There’s a sucker born every minute P.T. Barnum

Please Facebook Like, Tweet, etc below and/or reblog to share this discussion with others.

What’s the Alternative to a Well-Prepared Teacher?

elaine — Tue, 21 May 2013 16:23:53 +0000

Chris Goering

William McComas

Source:

EduSanity

The following commentary, penned by William McComas and Chris Goering, is a longer version of what appeared in the Arkansas Democrat Gazette on Sunday, May 19th.

****

Most people agree that recruiting and creating the very best teachers for the students of Arkansas is a critical goal made immediate by the significant teacher shortage in some subject areas, particularly in mathematics and science.

We are pleased to reveal that we are both professors of education at the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville with vast experience in teacher preparation and as public school teachers ourselves. Second, we are both taxpayers in Arkansas with a vested financial interest in how state money is spent. Third, one of us has seen two children through the Fayetteville public schools, one of the best school systems in the nation served by teachers who are ready from the first to the last day of school to help students become successful learners and citizens. We both want all parents across Arkansas to have such an experience for their children, but that dream could be threatened by mediocre teacher preparation programs.

This problem isn’t new nor is it limited to Arkansas. But the unfortunate response to this shortage has been to propose programs that ultimately reduce the nature and degree of training of new teachers, to get larger numbers of underprepared teachers into classrooms as quickly as possible, and to enable school districts to spend taxpayer dollars to hire these individuals.

This is a short-sighted solution and ultimately a serious threat to the future of our state. We must not lower the bar just because there is a teacher shortage; rather, we must develop and fund new high quality plans for teacher preparation.

Proponents of alternative plans for teacher licensure suggest that principals will make good choices among those applying for teaching positions (or at least will make the best choices that they can). These supporters also suggest that a well-meaning adult in the classroom is better than no adult in the classroom. The students of our state deserve better than a hope and a promise.

Though it wasn’t necessarily their goal, Teach for America launched a movement towards alternative preparation programs back in 1990 by placing highly successful college students in challenging and/or hard to fill teaching situations for two years. TFA participants sign on to work in some of America’s toughest schools and receive about five weeks of preparation prior to beginning a stint as full-time, paid teachers. Other programs have spun off of that basic idea in North Carolina, Mississippi, and now here in Arkansas.

The research on TFA has taught us is that these smart individuals may make a difference in student achievement, but they don’t stay long in the profession. The research doesn’t show how damaging it is to the teaching profession that such programs imply that anyone can be an effective teacher with little or no teacher preparation. Such programs also create a revolving door that moves people in and out of our schools, ultimately undermining the stability of the educational system.

TFA and other alternative teacher preparation programs generally produce individuals less committed to a long term career in education. Few of us would want to be treated by a doctor, dentist, or nurse who’d sailed through a five-week preparation program with minimal clinical experience, so why should we trust our children and their future to these individuals?

In Arkansas, schools typically considered “lower performing” often serve students of lower socioeconomic status who tend to score lower on tests than do students from families with higher annual income. It is understandable that alternative teacher licensure programs target the placement of teachers in the most challenging situations but there is an unintended consequence in doing so. What few talk about with respect to alternative teacher certification is a clear social justice concern.

It is likely that these inexperienced and hastily-prepared teachers will be hired in parts of the state where students could most benefit from superior educators. Thus, the disparity in student achievement already seen across Arkansas will grow if, as we predict, the top districts in our state are not likely to hire the least prepared and most inexperienced teachers. All students deserve quality instructors and if these alternatively licensed teachers are so good, why aren’t the state’s wealthiest schools lining up to hire them?

Are the taxpayers of Arkansas prepared to run an experiment on our most vulnerable students? Historically, these types of experiments have not ended well (e.g., Nuclear testing in the Pacific after WWII, biomedical studies in the South in the 1930s and other egregious plans) and are perpetrated against racially and economically disadvantaged people—those without a voice to speak up against the wrong.

So, rather than conduct a vast social experiment just because there is a need, we must make a solid commitment and offer a strategic plan to adequately prepare teachers for service in all parts of Arkansas, in all subject areas. We need excellence while working to address the challenge of teacher preparation for the long term and must not engage with untried quick fixes.

All of us must work together to determine how many teachers are needed in what subject areas to serve in particular regions of Arkansas and plan accordingly for the future rather than offer untested plans to address the problem in the near term. In Finland, for instance, which has an internationally acclaimed model of school success, they prepare only the number of teachers actually needed and thus ensure that every new teacher has a job. At the same time, teaching is held in high esteem because of the relative competitiveness in entering and rigorous training required for the profession. We should move teacher preparation here toward such a model, not away from it.

We firmly believe that all children deserve the very best educators, ones committed to and likely to stay in the teaching profession, individuals who are well-suited for the challenges they will face, and prepared rigorously and completely rather than expediently. Corner-cutting, cost-deferring methods of teacher preparation, alternative or otherwise, will net our state exactly the level of mediocrity for which it pays. People entering a profession with a minimal commitment don’t stay.

Here are a few suggestions for how Arkansas might meet the challenges of teacher education and develop or preserve the high quality our state deserves.

We should identify and nurture future teachers as early as possible. We urge Arkansas to consider following a research-based path, perhaps one like the North Carolina Teaching Fellow program that provides scholarships for high school seniors to attend traditional teacher preparation programs. This is an investment in quality that we should emulate.

Let’s provide scholarships for every teacher willing to make a long-term commitment to the students and future of Arkansas. In high-needs disciplines we should recruit individuals with appropriate undergraduate degrees and provide financial incentives so that they can enter one of the many high quality teacher preparation programs across the state and spend the time necessary to become master educators.

Finally, we call upon the state legislature to join this effort by authorizing tuition waivers at the state universities to further encourage prospective teachers to gain the necessary preparation and engage in significant student teaching experiences in key subject areas. This will permit them to join the teaching workforce with pride, skill and a greater potential for a satisfying long-lasting career.

A student-teaching program is particularly important since such experience is arguably the most important element of teacher preparation and the one most frequently minimized or even eliminated in the majority of alternative certification schemes. Arkansans should be proud of the current requirement set for such practice found in traditional programs but shamed by what passes for clinical practice in alternative programs—in some cases, there is no practice prior to taking the reigns as a hired teacher. Other professionals don’t exclusively learn on the job. Teachers shouldn’t either.

We insist that the Arkansas State Department of Education maintain the highest standards in teacher preparation. Currently it takes 1500 hours of preparation before a barber is permitted to independently cut hair. Why would we allow teachers into classrooms with perhaps as few as 180 hours of preparation and little or no supervised practice? Do we really want Arkansas hair stylists to have more training and experience than the next generation of Arkansas K-12 teachers?

Social commentator and author of Outliers: The Story of Success, Malcolm Gladwell states that “Practice isn’t the thing you do once you’re good. It’s the thing you do that makes you good.” “Achievement is talent plus preparation” and finally that it takes about 10,000 hours to become an expert. The long path to expertise should begin before an individual stands before a classroom of students.

We won’t suggest that all traditional teacher preparation programs produce universally excellent teachers and we can’t say that all alternatively prepared teachers are ineffective, but doing as little as possible just because there is a shortage is shortsighted. If someone—no matter how exceptionally qualified—won’t spend the time necessary to learn how to teach, they probably don’t really want to teach, likely won’t be successful in the classroom and probably won’t remain in education.

We are not simply advocating the preservation of the status quo and are willing to reevaluate the nature of all teacher preparation, especially in light of research-tested models. We must not allow foolish experiments with the lives and futures of the children of Arkansas—they and their parents have a right to expect that each and every teacher is the best available. They should not be forced to submit to the risk of alternative teacher preparation.

It is now time to answer the question asked in our title. What’s the alternative to a well-prepared teacher? Nothing!

****

Suggested citation:

McComas, W. & Goering, C.Z. (2013, May 19). What’s the alternative to a well-prepared teacher? Arkansas Democrat Gazette. Special Commentary.

Debunking the Persistent Myth of Lagging U.S. Schools (Guest Post by Alfie Kohn)

elaine — Tue, 21 May 2013 16:16:57 +0000

Alfie Kohn

Joe Bower

Source:

For the Love of Learning

This was written by Alfie Kohn who writes and speaks about parenting and education. His website is here and he tweets here. This post was originally found here.

by Alfie Kohn

Beliefs that are debatable or even patently false may be repeated so often that at some point they come to be accepted as fact. We seem to have crossed that threshold with the claim that U.S. schools are significantly worse than those in most other countries. Sometimes the person who parrots this line will even insert a number -- “We’re only ____th in the world, you know!” -- although, not surprisingly, the number changes with each retelling.

The assertion that our students compare unfavorably to those in other countries has long been heard from politicians and corporate executives whose goal is to justify various “get tough” reforms: high-stakes testing, a nationalized curriculum (see under: Common Core “State” Standards), more homework, a longer school day or year, and so on. But by now the premise is apt to be casually repeated by just about everyone -- including educators, I’m sorry to say -- and in the service of a wide range of prescriptions and agendas. Just recently I’ve seen it on a petition to promote teaching the “whole child” (which I declined to sign for that reason), in a documentary arguing for more thoughtful math instruction, and in an article by the progressive journalist Barbara Ehrenreich.

Unsurprisingly, this misconception has filtered out to the general public. According to a brand-new poll, a plurality of Americans -- and a majority of college graduates! -- believe (incorrectly) that American 15-year-olds are at the bottom when their scores on tests of science knowledge are compared to students in other developed countries.

A dedicated group of educational experts has been challenging this canard over the years, but their writings rarely appear in popular publications and each typically focuses on just one of the many problems with the claim. Here, then, is a concise overview of the multiple responses you might offer the next time you hear someone declare that American kids come up short. (First, though, I'd suggest politely inquiring as to the evidence for his or her statement. The wholly unsatisfactory reply you’re likely to receive may constitute a rebuttal in its own right.)

1. Even taking the numbers at face value, the U.S. fares reasonably well. Results will vary depending on subject matter, age, which test is being used, and which year’s results are being reported. It’s possible to cherry-pick scores to make just about any country look especially good or bad. The U.S. looks considerably better when we focus on younger students, for example -- so, not surprisingly, it’s the high school numbers that tend to be cited most often. (When someone reduces all student performance to a single number, you can bet it's the one that casts our schools in the worst possible light.)

But even with older students, there may be less to the claim than meets the eye. As an article in Scientific American noted a few years back, most countries’ science scores were actually pretty similar.[1] That's worth keeping in mind whenever a new batch of numbers is released. If there’s little (or even no) statistically significant difference among, say, the nations placing third through ninth, it would be irresponsible to cite those rankings as if they were meaningful.

Overall, when a pair of researchers carefully reviewed half a dozen different international achievement surveys conducted from 1991 to 2001, they found that “U.S. students have generally performed above average in comparisons with students in other industrialized nations.”[2] And that still seems to be the case with the most recent data, which include math and science scores for grade 4, grade 8, and age 15, as well as reading scores for grade 4 and age 15. Of the eight results, the U.S. scored above average in five, average in two, and below average in one. Not exactly the dire picture that’s typically painted.

2. What do we really learn from standardized tests? While there are differences in quality between the most commonly used tests (e.g., PISA, TIMSS), the fact is that any one-shot, pencil-and-paper standardized test -- particularly one whose questions are multiple-choice -- offers a deeply flawed indicator of learning as compared with authentic classroom-based assessments.[3] One of them taps students’ skill at taking standardized tests, which is a skill unto itself; the other taps what students have learned and what sense they make of, and what they can do with, what they've learned. One is a summary statistic labeled “student achievement”; the other is an account of students’ achievements. Anyone who cites the results of a test is obliged to defend the construction of the test itself, to show that the results are not only statistically valid but meaningful. Needless to say, very few people who say something like “the U.S. is below average in math” have any idea how math proficiency has been measured.

3. Are we comparing apples to watermelons? Even if the tests were good measures of important intellectual proficiencies, the students being tested in different countries aren’t always comparable. As scholars Iris Rotberg and the late Gerald Bracey have pointed out for years, some countries test groups of students who are unrepresentative with respect to age, family income, or number of years spent studying science and math. The older, richer, and more academically selective a cohort of students in a given country, the better that country is going to look in international comparisons.[4]

4. Rich American kids do fine; poor American kids don’t. It’s ridiculous to offer a summary statistic for all children at a given grade level in light of the enormous variation in scores within this country. To do so is roughly analogous to proposing an average pollution statistic for the United States that tells us the cleanliness of “American air.” Test scores are largely a function of socioeconomic status. Our wealthier students perform very well when compared to other countries; our poorer students do not. And we have a lot more poor children than do other industrialized nations. One example, supplied by Linda Darling-Hammond: “In 2009 U.S. schools with fewer than 10 percent of students in poverty ranked first among all nations on PISA tests in reading, while those serving more than 75 percent of students in poverty scored alongside nations like Serbia, ranking about fiftieth.”[5]

5. Why treat learning as if were a competitive sport? All of these results emphasize rankings more than ratings, which means the question of educational success has been framed in terms of who’s beating whom.

a) Education ≠ economy. If our reason for emphasizing students' relative standing (rather than their absolute achievement) has to do with “competitiveness in the 21st-century global economy” -- a phrase that issues from politicians, businesspeople, and journalists with all the thoughtfulness of a sneeze, then we would do well to ask two questions. The first, based on values, is whether we regard educating children as something that’s primarily justified in terms of corporate profits.

The second question, based on facts, is whether the state of a nation’s economy is meaningfully affected by the test scores of students in that nation. Various strands of evidence have converged to suggest that the answer is no. For individual students, school achievement is only weakly related to subsequent workplace performance. And for nations, there’s little correlation between average test scores and economic vigor, even if you try to connect scores during one period with the economy some years later (when that cohort of students has grown up).[6] Moreover, Yong Zhao has shown that “PISA scores in reading, math, and sciences are negatively correlated with entrepreneurship indicators in almost every category at statistically significant levels.”[7]

b) Why is the relative relevant? Once we’ve debunked the myth that test scores drive economic success, what reason would we have to fret about our country’s standing as measured by those scores? What sense does it make to focus on relative performance? After all, to say that our students are first or tenth on a list doesn’t tell us whether they’re doing well or poorly; it gives us no useful information about how much they know or how good our schools are. If all the countries did reasonably well in absolute terms, there would be no shame in being at the bottom. (Nor would “average” be synonymous with “mediocre.”) If all the countries did poorly, there would be no glory in being at the top. Exclamatory headlines about how “our” schools are doing compared to “theirs” suggest that we’re less concerned with the quality of education than with whether we can chant, “We’re Number One!”

c) Hoping foreign kids won’t learn? To treat schooling as if were a competitive sport is not only irrational but morally offensive. If our goal is for American kids to triumph over those who live elsewhere -- to have a better ranking -- then the implication is that we want children who live in other countries to fail, at least in relative terms. We want them not to learn successfully just because they’re not Americans. That’s built into the notion of “competitiveness” (as opposed to excellence or success), which by definition means that one individual or group can succeed only if others don’t. This is a troubling way to look at any endeavor, but where children are concerned, it’s indefensible. And it’s worth pointing out these implications to anyone who uncritically cites the results of an international ranking.

Moreover, rather than defending policies designed to help our graduates “compete,” I’d argue that we should make decisions on the basis of what will help them to develop the skills and disposition to collaborate effectively. Educators, too, ought to think in terms of working with – and learning from – their counterparts in other countries so that children everywhere will become more proficient and enthusiastic learners. But every time we rank “our” kids against “theirs,” that becomes a little less likely to happen.

NOTES

1. W. Wayt Gibbs and Douglas Fox, “The False Crisis in Science Education,” Scientific American, October 1999: 87-92.

2. Erling E. Boe and Sujie Shin, “Is the United States Really Losing the International Horse Race in Academic Achievement?” Phi Delta Kappan, May 2005: 688-695.

3. See, for example, Alfie Kohn, The Case Against Standardized Testing (Heinemann, 2000); or Phillip Harris et al., The Myths of Standardized Tests(Rowman & Littlefield, 2011).

4. For example, see Iris C. Rotberg, “Interpretation of International Test Score Comparisons,” Science, May 15, 1998: 1030-31.

5. Linda Darling-Hammond, “Redlining Our Schools,” The Nation, January 30, 2012: 12. Also see Mel Riddile, “PISA: It’s Poverty Not Stupid,” The Principal Difference [NASSP blog], December 15, 2010; and Martin Carnoy and Richard Rothstein, “What Do International Tests Really Show About U.S. Student Performance?”, Economic Policy Institute report, January 28, 2013.

6. Keith Baker, “High Test Scores: The Wrong Road to National Economic Success,” Kappa Delta Pi Record, Spring 2011: 116-20; Zalman Usiskin, “Do We Need National Standards with Teeth?” Educational Leadership, November 2007: 40; and Gerald W. Bracey, “Test Scores and Economic Growth,” Phi Delta Kappan, March 2007: 554-56. “The reason is clear,” says Iris Rotberg. “Other variables, such as outsourcing to gain access to lower-wage employees, the climate and incentives for innovation, tax rates, health-care and retirement costs, the extent of government subsidies or partnerships, protectionism, intellectual-property enforcement, natural resources, and exchange rates overwhelm mathematics and science scores in predicting economic competitiveness” (“International Test Scores, Irrelevant Policies,”Education Week, September 14, 2001: 32).

7. Yong Zhao, “Flunking Innovation and Creativity,” Phi Delta Kappan, September 2012: 58. Emphasis added.

On Teacher Evaluation: Slow Down and Get It Right

elaine — Tue, 21 May 2013 16:14:04 +0000

Morgan Polikoff

Matthew Di Carlo

Source:

Shanker Blog

The following is written by Morgan S. Polikoff and Matthew Di Carlo. Morgan is Assistant Professor in the Rossier School of Education at the University of Southern California.

One of the primary policy levers now being employed in states and districts nationwide is teacher evaluation reform. Well-designed evaluations, which should include measures that capture both teacher practice and student learning, have great potential to inform and improve the performance of teachers and, thus, students. Furthermore, most everyone agrees that the previous systems were largely pro forma, failed to provide useful feedback, and needed replacement.

The attitude among many policymakers and advocates is that we must implement these systems and begin using them rapidly for decisions about teachers, while design flaws can be fixed later. Such urgency is undoubtedly influenced by the history of slow, incremental progress in education policy. However, we believe this attitude to be imprudent.

The risks to excessive haste are likely higher than whatever opportunity costs would be incurred by proceeding more cautiously. Moving too quickly gives policymakers and educators less time to devise and test the new systems, and to become familiar with how they work and the results they provide.

Moreover, careless rushing may result in avoidable erroneous high stakes decisions about individual teachers. Such decisions are harmful to the profession, they threaten the credibility of the evaluations, and they may well promote widespread backlash (such as the recent Florida lawsuits and the growing “opt-out” movement). Making things worse, the opposition will likely “spill over” into other promising policies, such as the already-fragile effort to enact the Common Core standards and aligned assessments.

Finally, we must not underestimate the costs, financial and otherwise, of making large changes to these systems once they are in place. A perfect example is NCLB – it had many obvious design flaws that were known early on, but few of these have been corrected, even in states’ ESEA “flexibility” applications.

In short, given these risks and the difficulty of fairly and accurately measuring teacher effectiveness, it seems short-sighted to rush into full-blown implementation without ensuring that the new systems are up to the task.

To that end, we would like to highlight four issues to which states and districts must pay attention in the short term.

The first is that the details of the evaluations, some of which may seem esoteric, in fact matter tremendously. Important choices include (but are not limited to): selecting measures, particularly for teachers in non-tested grades and subjects; reporting evaluation results to educators in a manner that is useful to their practice; ensuring accuracy in state data systems; choosing cut scores (if desired) to separate more and less effective educators; and designing scoring systems that preserve each measure’s intended importance, or “weight.” All of these decisions are important, but even a cursory read of states’ new evaluation policies under the waivers or Race to the Top highlights many decisions that contradict what little we know about effective teacher evaluation systems.

And, as is often the case with new policies, the flow of research in this area lags far behind the breakneck pace of policy making. For instance, a large number of states have chosen as their growth models for teacher evaluation a variant on what’s commonly called the “student growth percentile” (SGP) model. However, recent evidence suggests that value-added models can do a better job of leveling the playing field across classes. Similarly, the Measures of Effective Teaching project offered useful guidance for designing evaluation systems, but its results were released after many states and districts had already made these decisions.

A second issue is simple bad timing: The roll-out of the Common Core standards and new Core-aligned assessments creates serious complications for new teacher evaluation systems. Perhaps the most important of these is that curriculum, standards, and assessments are not yet in sync. New York has recently experienced this issue, administering new assessments before teachers have been supported to implement the Common Core through curriculum materials. And, while the stated hope is that the tests, curricula, and standards will be seamlessly aligned in a few years, if history is any guide this is far from guaranteed.

Doing evaluation reform and Common Core implementation at the same time may well be too much for states, districts, and schools to handle. Furthermore, evaluating teachers on the basis of tests that are not aligned with what they are supposed to be teaching is a fundamentally invalid use of those data.

The third issue is the need for states to avoid being overly prescriptive. Most notably, many schools and districts have well established evaluation systems already in place, and it makes little sense to uproot these systems and force a state-mandated model. Similarly, districts should be given room to experiment with system design and with different ways to use the results for personnel decisions. The state’s optimal role may be to enforce a minimum standard for teacher evaluation, rather than mandating a particular evaluation model statewide.

Fourth and finally, new evaluations – as with any major policy – require significant time and resources to plan and pilot, and there must be substantial capacity building for educators to understand and carry out these systems. Policies should not move directly from the drawing board to high-stakes implementation if the goal is maximizing the policies’ effectiveness and minimizing their negative unintended consequences. We recommend that schools and districts should have a year for planning and two years of implementation prior to tying ratings to high stakes decisions.

We conclude where we began – as two individuals who believe that improved teacher evaluation systems could indeed help elevate teaching and learning in U.S. schools. We are concerned that the overly quick, insufficiently careful manner in which many new systems are being installed threatens their likelihood of success.

Put simply, we need to slow down and work to create the best systems possible. Schools and districts in the middle of the design and implementation process should focus on the details of their systems and partner with researchers and other sites to study system effectiveness. In those places where evaluations are already in force, we would strongly advise policymakers to take a step back and consider our suggestions.

And, no matter the situation, high stakes decisions about teachers should not be made on the basis of assessment data collected during Common Core roll-out. Doing so is unfair and inappropriate and may cause serious harm.

We acknowledge that our arguments here do not fit neatly into the polarized, tribal framework that defines education policy discourse today. In fact, they may not resonate with either “side” of the reform debates, as we support evaluation reform but not unconditionally. To be clear, we do not expect that the new systems will ever be “perfect,” and we fully acknowledge that there will be mistakes and adjustments going forward. Nevertheless, we believe that research and history show that time and attention to detail are usually the difference between policies that succeed and those that fail to improve outcomes. If this is worth doing, it is worth doing correctly.

Limes or Leeches: A Thought Experiment about High-Stakes Accountability

elaine — Tue, 21 May 2013 16:01:09 +0000

P.L. Thomas

Source:

Radical Scholarship

HIstory is a powerful teacher—if we are willing to learn.

Many educators and scholars have triggered the truism “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over while expecting different results,” but that argument seems always to fall on deaf ears among our self-chosen education reformers, the media, and the public.

So let’s venture into history and explore a thought experiment: Would you prefer limes or leeches?

Study the history of identifying and treating scurvy, including how British sailors became known as “limeys.”

Now study the history of blood letting, and the use of leeches.

Solutions, history shows, must be built on a clear identification of the problems and then a careful analysis of what those solutions must be.

Limes and citrus fruits proved credible solutions for preventing scurvy—while “[i]n the overwhelming majority of cases, the historical use of bloodletting was harmful to patients.”

High-stakes accountability built on standards and high-stakes testing is the type of insanity found in bloodletting because the overwhelming majority of educational problems have nothing to do with accountability, standards, or testing—not the lack of accountability, standards, or testing, not the quality of accountability, standards, or testing.

Nothing.

In the education of your child, would you prefer limes or leeches? [And now let's apply that answer to "other people's children" because "they're all our children."]

Let’s stop the bloodletting.

Rebellion, Revolution, or Just Pushback?

elaine — Mon, 20 May 2013 17:00:38 +0000

Larry Cuban

Source:

Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice

Two recent articles suggesting an end to the current phase of test-driven accountability and market-based reforms got me thinking about how hard it is to sort out differences between what I hope will occur and what actually is happening.

In one piece–”The Coming Revolution in Public Education”–John Tierney sees current incidents of resistance to current showpieces of school reform from educators, parents, and legislators as a revolution in the making. The evidence he submits to readers comes from instances of teachers refusing to give tests, parents boycotting exams, prosecutors indicting administrators for cheating, and legislators reducing numbers of tests.

In the other piece, “Failing the Test,” David Kirp lists setbacks to current school reforms citing similar evidence that Tierney does but adds instances of districts (e.g., Montgomery County, Maryland, Aldine, Texas, Union City, New Jersey) where long-term efforts have produced solid gains in student achievement without resort to market-based reforms.

I know that evidence well that Tierney and Kirp provide; I have tied together the same bits and pieces into a story of growing parent and educator resistance to the harmful effects of too much testing, too much standardization, too much concentration on schools helping the economy to grow. But do all of these efforts in stringing together these instances of grassroots rebellions constitute a political movement or that a revolution is around the corner? Or are these cascading events akin to seeing a false dawn, another example of wish trumping reality?

These cartoons, of course, don’t help me make up my mind on whether there is, indeed, finally, a gathering counter-movement to market-oriented school reforms that have settled into schools as the “new” normal over the past three decades.

Gauging whether discontented teachers refusal to give their students tests or scattered parent boycotts of tests and similar incidents constitute an emerging “revolution” in K-12 public schools is as dicey as basing a vacation on a weather forecast six months from today. So what kinds of evidence would I look for that would be closer to a 24-hour forecast?

1. Common Core standards being rejected by over a dozen state. Currently, five states, including Virginia and Texas, have refused to hop on the bandwagon. Republicans have come out against the Common Core recently because of the federal weight being put behind implementing the standards. Legislators in South Dakota have expressed deep reservations about the standards. Indiana has “paused” implementation of the Common Core.

2. At least ten states withdraw from adopting new national tests of Common Core standards slated for 2014-2015. Utah and Alabama have already dropped out of the consortia designing new tests. Indiana legislators halting implementation of the standards includes the possibility of the state withdrawing from the consortia charged to create a national test of the standards. Whether recent disruptions in online testing in four states will lead to dropouts is unknown but online delivery of tests has so far run into massive technical difficulties with the new tests less than two years away.

3. More state and local school boards officially reduce number and frequency of tests as Texas is about to do. The Texas Senate has passed a bill to reduce the number of existing end-of-year tests for getting a diploma from 15 to five. A similar bill in the Texas House of Representatives. This comes within a year of hundreds of Texas school boards passing resolutions condemning the amount and frequency of standardized tests. Florida, a stronghold of aggressive standardized testing and grading schools on their performance is having second thoughts. As is occurring in New York state.

4. Student and parent boycotts of standardized tests spread from suburbs to small towns and big cities across the U.S. Parent and student boycotts in taking state standardized tests have been scattered and sporadic (See here, here, and here). Thus far, these protests against tests have been isolated and uncoordinated. Should they coalesce, however, into regional and then a national movement that includes small towns, affluent suburbs, blue-collar suburbs, and big city minority parents and students, state and local officials would have to think again about the number of tests they administer, their frequency, and worth to the enterprise of teaching and learning in schools.

5. Business and civic leaders support publicly the reduction of standardized tests and penalties administered to failing schools. CEOs and mayors coming out against too many standardized tests or local chambers of commerce criticizing the harshness of accountability regulations have yet to occur. I have found no instances of such activities by business and civic leaders.

Were such evidence described above to materialize, I would then say that what appears as isolated instances of pushback against the dominant school reform model of the past three decades is much closer to a rebellion but not yet a revolution.

Moneyball, Baseball, Teaching & Learning: Is There a Relationship?

elaine — Mon, 20 May 2013 14:50:12 +0000

Jack Hassard

Source:

The Art of Teaching Science

Moneyball: A book and a movie based on real events in which a baseball team is assembled using analytical, evidence-based, and sabermetric methods. Sabermetrics is derived from the acronym SABR meaning Society for American Baseball Research.

GA AWARDS: An acronym which stands for Georgia’s Academic and Workforce Analysis and Research Data System. GA AWARDS is data collected through Georgia’s Race to the Top (RT3) Statewide Longitudinal Data System (SLDS).

Baseball

According to David Grabiner, Bill James developed sabermetrics which is “the search for objective knowledge about baseball.” Here is an interesting quote from Grabiner’s book (Grabiner, n.d.):

Sabermetrics attempts to answer objective questions about baseball, such as “which player on the Red Sox contributed the most to the team’s offense?” or “How many home runs will Ken Griffey hit next year?” It cannot deal with the subjective judgments which are also important to the game, such as “Who is your favorite player?” or “That was a great game.”

Using sabermetrics, a baseball team’s management can predict how well a player should do during the next season. What happens to the player if they don’t produce according to “objective data” collected on him over the past years. Predicting how well a player will do in the future is analogous to using a teacher’s VAM score to predict their performance in the future, don’t you think?

Figure 1. Jackie Robinson’s Hitting Statistics, 1947 – 1956.Figure 1. Jackie Robinson’s Hitting Statistics, 1947 – 1956.

Instead of paying attention just to runs scored, hits, runs batted in, and batting average as shown for Jackie Robinson in Figure 1, sabermetrics expands the categories of data collection by adding variables such as these: base runs, batting average on balls in play, defensive runs saved, equivalent average, late inning pressure situations, Pythagorean expectation, runs created, ultimate zone rating, value over replacement player and so on. Thus saber metrics applies mathematical tools to analyze baseball, which are used by officials to make decisions about their teams (Wikipedia, 2013).

For teachers, however, the situation is a bit different. Most states in the U.S. are moving toward pinning teachers’ worth and value on just one variable: student achievement scores on high-stakes tests. It seems to me, that baseball players might have the edge here.

Statistics have always been a part of baseball. Baseball cards showed a picture of our favorite players on one side, but on the flip side was the player’s complete batting or pitching record . But it was nothing like the spreadsheets that are now used in the age of sabermetrics. Just look at the Figures 2 and 3 which are spread sheets of data used by sabermaticians.

As one author stated, “sabermetrics dig deep into raw data to answer questions such as: Do pitching coaches actually make a difference? Or, what’s the best way to measure a hitter’s value the team?” (J. Silverman, How Stuff Works). Figures 2 & 3 show some of the data used by baseball officials to make decisions about its players.

Figure 2. Micro-View of MLB 2011 Season Data

Figure 3. Enlarged view of the data shown in Figure 2.

Many baseball front offices have adopted sabermetrics, based on the work of Bill James, who had been publishing books on baseball including its history and statistics before he was discovered by Major League Baseball. The Oakland A’s were the first team to apply and adopt the principles of sabermetrics. The movie Moneyball was based on the book with the same title chronicling the the A’s general manager, Billy Beane, who applied the method to his team.

Much of the MLB data is online, and you can follow this link to Bill James Online.

Do you see any parallels with what is happening in education? Is there any connection between sabermetrics and the current data collection and analysis strategies that have been adopted by all state education departments, and the U.S. Department of Education? As you will see, education has a long history of collecting data, but nothing compared to what is happening in 2013.

Education

Like the statistics on the back of a baseball card, statistics on education have been collected since 1867 when Congress established a department of education for the purpose of collecting data on the condition and progress of education in the states and its territories (Grant, W. V., 1993). As Grant recalls, the department was very small, and as an entity was moved around from one Federal agency to another, until it was separated from the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare in 1980 to become the U.S. Department of Education (ED). The collection of data at the Federal level really began when in 1870, Congress authorized the department of education to hire its first statistician.

With time, the statistics part of the department, which is now the National Center for Education Statistics, expanded, so that by the the 1960s the center was collecting and publishing high quantities of data.

In 1969, the center began the National Assessment of Education Progress which has since then surveyed nationwide samples of students at age 9, 13 and 17 in mathematics, reading, science, writing, the arts, civics, economics, geography, U.S. history, and beginning in 2014, in Technology and Engineering Literacy (National Center for Educational Statistics, 2013).

In 2001, the U.S. Congress established the No Child Left Behind Act which required all states to develop assessments in basic skills, and to give these assessments to all students in order to receive federal school funding.

Figure 4. Race to the Top Winners. Blue: Winners; Green: Losers: Yellow: Did not Submit

In 2009, the U.S. Department of Education used $4.35 billion to fund The Race to the Top, a contest in which states competed for this money in two rounds of proposal writing. Those states that received funding had to agree to use statistics as a method to evaluate teachers, and to use a major portion of the funding to establish statewide longitudinal data systems to improve instruction, to evaluate schools and teachers.

Whether they received funding or not, many states changed their policies so as to position themselves to become more competititive for Race to the Top funding. Some states, at the last minute, agreed to tie teacher evaluations to student test scores, and to adopt the Common Core State Standards.

GA AWARDS

Georgia was one of the states that was a winner in the Race to the Top competition, and based on its proposal was required to develop a longitudinal data system. Georgia’s system is GA AWARDS or Georgia’s Academic and Workforce Analysis and Research Data System.

According to the GA AWARDS website, the data system:

has been made available to researchers with the high-level analytical skills and research training needed to mine the data and answer critical educational policy and evaluation questions. (emphasis mine)

Researchers will be asked to focus on key topics and advocacy areas including:

effectiveness of educator preparation programs
effectiveness of strategies and interventions implemented within the State’s RT3 proposal
education background of students who experience the least difficulty in transitioning to college

There’s a lot of data available to the researchers. According to the Georgia Department of Education, the Race to the Top data will be combined from data sets in these state agencies:

Bright from the Start: Department of Early Care & Learning – DECAL
Department of Education – DoE
Georgia Student Finance Achievement – GSFC
Governor’s Office of Student Achievement – GOSA
Georgia Professional Standards Commission – PSC
Technical College System of Georgia – TCSG
University System of Georgia – USG

This past week, the Georgia Department of Education released a data driven 110-point grading or report card system that published scores for individual schools, districts, and the state as a whole. Although the grading system doesn’t use as many categories as used in Sabermetrics, the principles are in place to use the data to make crucial decisions about students, teachers, and administrators. The educational front offices of the state and each school system will be able to make decisions that may or may not be advisable.

The selection of variables that the department of education thinks are the most important in measuring student learning are highly questionable. For example, for more than a decade, critics have questioned the use of academic learning based on end-of-the-year high-stakes tests as the major variable to assess student learning. Yet, in Georgia, the state’s teacher evaluation system which uses a teachers “value added” score will be based largely on student test scores. Much of the drive to put into place this far reaching data driven system of education can be traced to the Race to the Top. In a letter to the Georgia Department of Education, scholars in some of Georgia’s universities have recommended that the state not use this method to evaluate teachers because there is no evidence to show its been proven.

However, the Department of Education forges ahead.

CCRPI

Georgia just unveiled a new data system. CCRPI, or College and Career Ready Performance Index is equivalent to Bill James sabermetrics used in baseball. The index is actually a score on a scale from 0 – 110, called the CCRPI Score. The score is a sum of achievement, progress, achievement gap, and challenge points. Kind of like runs batted in, Pythagorean expectation, runs created, and ultimate zone rating used in baseball. From this kind of data, the state classifies schools as Reward Schools, Priority Schools, Focus Schools, and Alert Schools. Guess which variable is associated with these categories of schools?

When I dug deeper into the CCRPI index, I realized that the mathematics be used to sort out differences among schools was along the lines of sabermetrics.

At the high school level, a CCRPI is the amalgam of 19 items including (a) content mastery—% of students meeting or exceeding content test criteria (b) post high school readiness—% of graduates, % of AP courses, % passing certain national industry credential tests, and so forth, and (c) graduate rate in %.

Figure 5. College and Career Ready Performance Index for the State of Georgia.

Figure 5 is an image of the CCRPI Index home page. This page shows an average score for all of Georgia’s schools. As you can the CCRPI score for the state is 83.4 out of 110 points. The total score is a sum of achievement (57.5), progress points (9.8), achievement gap points (10.5) and challenge points—exceeding the bar (5.6).

Using the website, we can find the CCRPI scores for every school in the state, including public and charter schools. For example here are CCRPI scores for a few school districts that I have worked with in the past:

Atlanta Public Schools: 68.4
Clayton County: 70.2
Cobb County Schools: 85.4
Decatur City Schools: 93.7
Dekalb County Schools: 71.2
Douglas County: 80.8
Fulton County: 85.7
Walker County: 88.7

The CCRPI scoring system (follow this link to a slide show on the system) was part of Georgia’s Flexibility Report request to obtain waivers on some aspects of the No Child Left Behind Act. I’ve discussed this request in some detail here. The new scoring system is also readiness for the state’s adoption of the Common Core State Standards in mathematics and English/language arts, and assessments will be in place by 2014 based on the Common Core.

The CCRPI score system reduces the nature of teaching and learning to a single number that people really believe. Unfortunately the system does not tell us anything about the arts program of a school. It says nothing about the participation level of students in school activities. It doesn’t tell us anything about the kind of work that students do, nor does it tell us anything about the values and aspirations that are in place in the school.

Is there any kind of relationship between the method used to evaluate baseball players and the method used to evaluate schools, teachers and students? There seems to be, but baseball and education are based on very different value and compensation systems. To use the sabermetrics type of evaluation to judge schools and teachers is problematic. It sets up league standings of schools based on CCRPI scores. The rankings and scores are used to make comparisons, establish rewards and impose punishments.

When you sit in front of a computer screen and see the data that is at your finger tips, it makes you wonder just what is going on here. Will education use statistics in the same way that some front office managers are using in baseball?

What do you think?

References

Grabiner, D. J.. (n.d.). The Sabermetrics Manefesto. In SeanLayman.com. Retrieved May 15, 2013, from http://www.seanlahman.com/baseball-archive/sabermetrics/sabermetric-mani....

Grant, W. V. (1993). 120 Years of American Education: A Statistical Portrait. In National Center for Education Statistics. Retrieved May 12, 2013, from http://0-nces.ed.gov.opac.acc.msmc.edu/pubs93/93442.pdf

Silverman, J. How Sabermetrics Works. In How Stuff Works, Retrieved May 14, 2013, from http://www.howstuffworks.com/sabermetrics.htm

Wikipedia. (May 7, 2013). Sabermetrics. In Wikipedia. Retrieved May 15, 2013, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sabermetrics.