Michelle Rhee: Educrush
August 16th, 2008 by Dan Meyer
I am completely smitten by Michelle Rhee's work as head of D.C. schools. She has been on a tear lately, downsizing central office bureaucracy, emphasizing results over title all while taking criticism right in the face at town hall forums.
Now this:
Less than two weeks before classes begin, many of the District's 4,000 public school teachers are locked in a heated debate over Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee's proposal to offer salaries exceeding $100,000 for those willing to give up job security and tie their fates to student achievement. [emph. mine]
The Washington Post has a lot more at that link, including a footnote to the perceived generation gap between teachers embracing Rhee's "green tier" plan and those reserving a traditional "red tier" plan:
The split in the teaching corps largely, but not exclusively, is occurring along generational lines, with younger teachers more willing to accept the risks and older ones often questioning the proposal.
Which makes sense, since they have more time tied up in this tenure game, but some of the union rhetoric seems, er, a bit overblown:
"For Michelle Rhee or anyone to ask that is like Judas and 30 pieces of silver," Brocks, 59, said.
I'm in. I can't help it. I realize no one has a value-added model for teaching that functions at 95% confidence and I don't care. I'll take 51% confidence at this point. 51% is as much confidence as I have each summer that I'll return for another year in this profession that keeps compensation and its own system goals at arm's length.
[via The Quick and the Ed]
Rhee is the ultimate litmus test in ed as far as I’m concerned. She is the line of demarcation. I won’t go so far as to label the two different areas she demarcates, but damn, son, she’s really doing it.
Hey-I would take the challenge! I am already good at what do for much less…I can be good working for much more too!
Go for it, kids. Let me know how it is working out for you in DC ten years from now.
I blogged about Rhee’s interview with Charlie Rose last month and I’m posting it here in hopes that more people will watch. Definitely food for thought.
http://www.charlierose.com/shows/2008/07/14/2/a-conversation-with-michelle-rhee-chancellor-of-the-district-of-columbia-public-schools
Hello, Dan,
All I’ll say — I was incredibly surprised to read this entire post and find out your opening line wasn’t sarcasm.
This is local for me and I’ve been watching it with fascination. I think I’d take her deal, but I do have some issues with it. It seems like test scores are the main way to determine student achievement, and as usual, that bothers me.
That said, I give her credit for stretching and trying something completely new. DC needs all the help it can get.
Knock yourself out. I’ll watch that circus from the sidelines, thanks.
[...] Dan Meyer salivates at the ringing of Michelle Rhee’s [...]
I too think it is an interesting proposal, mostly in its willingness to question the status quo in teacher compensation. I don’t think it does anything to address actual student learning, though. I’m curious how the budget will play out if existing staff costs are far below what this proposal offers. What else would be cut to keep the budget viable? If anything relating to needed resources for teachers is cut, then what’s the value of the salary that would need to offset those lacking resources?
See? See?
Michelle Rhee like Moses through the Red Sea: Which side of the cleave are you on?
@Jason: A lot of the additional funding is coming from philanthropic organizations (Gates/ Broad).
I’m not totally convinced this will work so simply as some people seem to intimate, but I’m certainly glad someone finally has worked up the courage to give it a try (and in my own cowardly fashion, I’m also glad that it happened somewhere away from me).
Me, I think there are too many variables for this to effectively happen as currently proposed (or rather as I limitedly understand how it has been proposed), but we all know what they say about omelets and the price of tea in China.
A couple of issues —
1) How long has Gates / Broad agreed to fund this? If teachers are giving away rights for higher salaries, is it sustainable? If this is a few year bump that will go away when the money runs out, then that is a huge issue. (Check out what happened to some of the small NYC schools when Gates money ran out.)
2) What are the performance standards by which teachers will be judged? Is it solely test scores? Is it growth model? Straight percentages? A combination?
3) Assuming that a teacher comes off of probation, what happens *after* that? Are we back in the same tenure system or a new system? Nothing I’ve read so far addresses that.
I think that older teachers who have lived through multiple superintendents in an urban system (three in the past three years in Philly) are wary of something like this. The devil is very much in the details.
It could be a great way to get and retain new teachers, but an older teacher who has stuck through some of the insanity of a district like DC, this can smack of feeling like “See… if only teachers worked harder, they’d get better results…” that seems to dominate a lot of the rhetoric these days. It’s also hard, if you’ve been through twenty years of your teaching career, to believe this stuff. A lot of urban teachers have been taking it on the chin despite their best efforts. I can’t fully articulate why, but I do understand why an initiative like this doesn’t quite pass the sniff test.
I’m going to straddle the divide and say that until I saw the details, I’d hold off judgment, because this could be a fascinating innovation or a total debacle. It’s a bold move, sure… but it’s going to take a deft hand to pull it off in a way that is both fair and moves the district forward.
Chris makes some excellent points, particularly with regards to the performance standards by which teachers will be judged. As was seen in Houston when administrators received merit-based bonuses, the numbers by which performance is measured can be gamed, and in Houston, these manipulations were to the detriment of at-risk students.
Also, as Kilian points out, Rhee is a polarizing figure (a Moses figure? I’m not so sure, as extending the metaphor makes the promised land a desert of privately run Charter schools, and we can certainly all aspire to sweeter milk and honey than that. But that’s a different conversation). Polarizing figures are often very useful for framing the extremes of a conversation, but at a certain point all shareholders need to have a reason to come to the table.
The merit pay is only one part of Rhee’s actions in DC — understanding the various reactions to this most recent proposal, and the context within which this proposal falls, would allow for a more informed discussion of this proposal. As Chris points out, the devil is in the details. If the details of this proposal are available anywhere, could someone please post a link? I haven’t been able to find them anywhere.
Also, wrt the way some responders are attempting to frame agreement/disagreement with the merit pay proposal along age lines, with younger teachers supporting it, and older teachers disagreeing with it, this could also be framed as follows:
Experienced educators see issues with the details of the plan, and how it will be implemented. Educators with less experience seem to be more excited about the possibilities.
However, I wouldn’t frame the discussion that way — it’s overly simplistic, like most conversations that attempt to hang the terms on the discussion on an either/or. Until the details of this proposal are available, it’s hard to say where this falls on the spectrum between a good idea, or an idealogically motivated smoke screen.
It would be an interesting thought exercise for some of the condescending veterans to determine how to incorporate the appeal of merit pay (which appeal, in my case, has less to do with pay and more to do with merit) into traditional incentive structures. Or there’s the condescending route, which won’t leave D.C. schools any worse off than they already are.
The experienced/inexperienced line only works if there are no new older teachers…
If indeed I am one of the “condescending veterans” to which you refer, then I feel pretty comfortable saying you are confusing disagreement with condescension.
As I said in my most recent comment, without details we are all discussing something that is so vague as to remain firmly rooted in the hypothetical realm.
Chris’s questions provide a good starting point for a more detailed conversation, though.
And, this conversation would also be improved by some context of how the merit pay proposal fits within the context of Rhee’s tenure in DC.
Here’s a very rough start: http://www.google.com/search?q=michelle+rhee+site:washingtonpost.com
There’s gotta be something in there…
Chris,
I don’t think serious people really make the if-teachers-worked-harder-things-would-be-better argument. Dumbass people do, but really, screw them. Serious people make arguments that say:
1) teachers, especially teachers in high-need urban environments, have job expectations that don’t match their job training and we can do better.
2) many teachers suck, especially teachers in high-need urban environments, and we can do better identifying, supporting, and terminating the ones who continually suck
3) teachers are human beings, possessed of that age old desire to be rewarded in proportion to their talents and efforts, and we can do better in bringing that element into teacher compensation systems
4) when you control for SES and ethnicity, variations in average teacher salary at a given school site (data which can only be guessed at in ass-backwards Cali), tends not to correlate with achievement, calling into question the validity of the current salary schedule, and implying strongly that we can do better.
Rhee’s plan, Denver’s procomp system, and what I can only hope is the groundswell of things to come, may begin to address these issues. As always, let’s not murder the Good in the name of the Perfect. If this causes things to suck in D.C. schools, God, can that amount of suckage really exceed existing levels of suckage?
In terms of age, there’s a selection bias at play here. Experienced educators are not more likely to bring a more balanced and strong analysis, but they ARE more likely to be okay with the current state of things. After all, they’ve stuck around under existing conditions long enough to be called experienced educators. Folks most affected by issues like 1-4 above, tend to not stick around as long, and so their voices are excluded from the discussion, creating the old vs. new dichotomy.
Why should merit pay be incorporated into education? To do so implies measurement and comparison – which is fine in many fields but sets up a conflict of interest in education.
I can see it working in training centers, but not schools that seek to educate the whole child.
TMAO,
I wish I believed that only dumbass people were making that argument, but I hear it and read it too often… and it is also — I believe — embedded in your #2. My question always is how many teachers would be better if the system in which they worked was better?
This is what I believe — backed up by a fair amount of experience. In our urban schools, there are *some* teachers who suck no matter what, there are some teachers who are amazing no matter what, and there are a lot of teacher whose ability to teach is directly influenced by their situation. What I worry about is that many in that tier of teachers will be the losers in the DC scenario.
Let’s fix class size. Let’s fix infrastructure. Let’s make it easier for administrators to get rid of bad teachers. And let’s pay teachers more… not based on test-scores, but based on a better set of data than that.
So many things to say about the broader policy…
…but before anyone suggests that Michelle Rhee should be a litmus test let me offer an alternative view.
I’m one of those older, but still newer teachers (I’ve been in about as long as Kilian was before he left the classroom this year…but I’m also 20 years older–I presume– and have decades of experience in the unicorn forest sometimes called the private sector where folks are rewarded in proportion to their talents). The frustrating thing for me about recent press on Rhee and her plans for DC is that is utterly divorced of her actual track record. Michelle Rhee was the operations director for Sacramento Charter High School during 2006-2007, assisting her close friend Kevin Johnson (yes, former NBA All Star Kevin Johnson) in managing the high school, the former Sacramento High School, he took control over in 2002. (My son graduated from Sac High in 2001…I teach at McClatchy High School, its rival just two miles down the road.)
The story of the take over of Sac High (established as Sacramento’s first public high school in 1856) by Johnson and turning it into a charter is a doozy. Suffice it to say that the events have polarized the city and transformed a comprehensive public high school that was among the most diverse (racially, ethnically and socio-economically) in California into one that is increasingly racially homogeneous, while the student population has plunged from nearly 2000 five years ago when Johnson took the helm to 600-800 today.
Along the way, Johnson (aided and abetted by, among others, a school board member who was later denied re-election and the district’s former financial officer who cooked up an illegal scheme to spike top admin pensions) busted the teachers’ union and has staffed his school with mostly inexperienced teachers who barely make it through the first year. Rhee directed hiring, supervision and retention of teachers and admin. The teacher turnover rate for the school over each of the past three years — including Rhee’s time there — has been 80-90%.
The school is struggling financially since much of its foundation funding is now drying up and its operations — along with Johnson’s larger umbrella organization, St. Hope, is currently under an investigation by the feds over its use of federal dollars and Johnson’s alleged misconduct toward teens working in his programs. I’m only scratching the surface here, the story of Johnson’s “good works” here in Sacramento also involve squandering tens of millions in redevelopment funds while properties he purchased with the public dollars sit in disrepair and decay.
I’m somewhat embarrassed on behalf of my beloved city that KJ is– surprise, suprise! — running for mayor (big developers around here love him…he might just win). He was just awarded the reins of charter school in Harlem and Rhee apparently still has him on the short list to take over at least one school in DC….federal investigation be damned! It is especially galling that all-too-often-lazy media types, pandering public officials who love to bask in the cult of celebrity Johnson has built, and know-it-all foundation funders don’t much care to account for the kids who were “counseled out” of Sac Charter High due to poor grades, test scores or behavior. Seven found their way into my classroom this year alone.
Many also don’t bother to track down the teachers (teachers who were hired with the promise of higher pay and rewards for ongoing merit) who dare to question Johnson at faculty mtgs or suggest that maybe a union would be a good idea and then are released with no explanation. When former teachers do speak out to the press they are hit with a full court press (basketball analogy deliberate) of PR professionals and KJ supporters questioning their motivations. Most just want to put the whole experience behind them without any future trouble.
Rhee is fully aware of all this…hell, she fed the beast… and when she was up for approval before the DC city council, Johnson repaid the favor and flew to Washington to testify on her behalf.
Look, I have many frustrations with the current system, after all, I teach in a Title One school (one that is rather unique but high poverty nevertheless) and my son graduated from a comprehensive public high school located in the inner city, but I also recognize that it is both my performance in the classroom AND the security of tenure that have allowed me — and many others in the profession — to publicly speak out before the school board, in the press and through the local political process.
To be fair Dan, you are very often as categorical as those you decry.
I think some of these “old” people are making some good points, even if they ultimately prove to be wrong. Us young teachers owe it to them, and to the students, to honestly consider every angle when we’re talking about systemic changes. In this particular case, there are so many angles that while it’s encouraging that someone is willing to push the envelope in a large school district, it is more than reasonable for many to be skeptical. I know I am, and I’m fully in favor of merit pay–as an ideal.
At the most simplistic level, the idea has a lot going for it. Tenure has a lot of demonstrable issues. But in this particular case, I’m seeing a lot of parallels to the illusory partisanship of most political issues in the country today. We all want the same things in the end (at least those of us who care to honestly debate the issues). And just because the idea of merit pay is a good one doesn’t mean that we can make it so in a single stroke.
I agree with Chris for the most part. My issue #1 is making it easier to weed out the chaff. #2–perhaps–is finding ways to more effectively reward the wheat. Maybe I just like to play things safe, or maybe I am more internally motivated than the average bear, but I’d rather see a slow and steady progression towards reform than bold strokes that are at best a blind coin flip.
If only there was some competition for cash between my teaching partners and myself, then I might get up off my behind and start doing my job ;->
TMAO,
Whoa Dude! Did you think nobody would catch #2 of your comment. The one where you say, “2) many teachers suck, especially teachers in high-need urban environments, and we can do better identifying, supporting, and terminating the ones who continually suck”. Why the smack down on inner-city teachers? Are you saying we aren’t good enough for the suburban schools? Get real.
What evidence do you have to back this up? Let me tell you something. I have either been a student, intern, or an employee of many different schools and school districts across the country. Some have been considered excellent, maybe the best in the nation. Others have been considered “average”, while others (where I work now) have been considered sucky. Let’s review a few of them:
Hanover, NH: Home of an Ivy League college. Being a teacher there is like being a running back with the New England Patroits offensive line. Lots of teacher support. Resources beyond belief. I had some great teachers, many average, a few sucky.
Dekalb County, GA: While I considered it “sucky” it was considered not-too-shabby. Being a teacher there is like being a running back with Georgia Tech’s offensive line. Not bad, not great. Again, I had a few teachers great, most OK, a few, “sucky”.
Ann Arbor, MI: Like Hanover, it has home to an excellent university. EVERYONE wanted to work there, send kids there, etc. Being a teacher there is , again, like being a running back with the New England Patroits offensive line. Again, I had a few excellent teachers, many average, a few sucky.
fast forward 15 years (with stops in various cities across the nation. Same results. Some great, some bad, some ugly teachers.) Again, much of it depended on what resources teachers had…teacher quality never varied. What did vary was resources the teachers had.
I now work at a large inner-city “comprehensive” high school on the East coast. Yup, one of “those” schools. Working here is like having a Pee-Wee team with a 1-12 record being the offensive line (no support, few resources, etc). YET again, (you guessed it!) we have a few excellent teachers, many “average” and a few, sucky.
So there is no difference, TMAO in teacher quality between my current lousy inner-city school and the wealthy Ivy League New England town school I lived in while a kid. What is the difference? The support. The offensive line to use a football analogy….
getting ready for football season
GO BLUE!
E-A-G-L-E-S, EAGLES!!!!
Chris,
The frequency of the argument does not necessarily preclude it emerging entirely from dumbasses. In some ways, I’d say this is circumstantial evidence that it does. At the same time, you’re wrong in assuming I’m making that same argument. I’m talking about folks being BETTER, not folks working HARDER — there’s a massive difference there, in both inputs and outputs, which I’m sure you understand.
And here’s the deal. I want to know who the best teachers are. I want to know what they do so we can replicate it. I want to know what they brought with them into the classroom so I can find others with those same characteristics. I want to know what training/ PD/ credentialing they had so I can send everyone there. I want to define “best” in a way that gets beyond feelings, impressions, and getting-along power, which may play a part, but cannot be the ballgame. I want “best” to mean “best at raising student achievement on a sliding growth based scale that considers student starting points” and I want objective measures of achievement to play some role because they are objective measures.
I want to start with teachers because they are the fundamental, building block units of education. Everything, everything is filtered through them, for good or ill. Everything must start with teachers, therefore.
This is an experiment. Why are we condemning it before we know the results?
TMM,
Naw man, I expected you to catch it. I wrote it pretty clearly and even bulleted it out so there’d be no mistake.
Now, the teaching “profession” lacks any meaningful metric of effectiveness as well as anything approaching a consensus on what such a metric should look like, so it’s kinda hard to have this conversation. We also know that the plural of anecdote is not data, so I’ll avoid trotting out my own experiences.
Given that, what we do have is two sets of data to discuss:
1) the collection of proxies that we use to stand in for teacher effectiveness — years taught, post-BA units, Masters, etc.
2) the massive gaps in achievement between Latino, African-American, and low-income students and their more advantaged peers;
When looking at 1) and trying to merely guess at what we would, in a better world, be able to clearly see, we find that every proxy we use for teacher effectiveness is more prevalent outside of high need urban classrooms. We know this because average teacher salary, which is nothing except the accumulation of these proxies, is higher in the suburbs, even WITHIN districts with the same salary structure. This would suggest, within the (il)logical confines of the current system, that better teachers, on average, reside outside of high need urban environments.
Not so? How do we provie that, given our complete lack of evaluatory metrics and the supporting longitudinal data system that would allow us to do more than guess?
When looking at 2), I choose not to blame the students for the persistant gaps in achievement (you may disagree), and so must look to adults. While a myriad of factors affect achievement, research, common sense, and professionalism identify effective teaching as the most powerful achievement altering factor. And, based on the (il)logic of the current system, where are the most powerful teachers?
The real issue, TMM, is that we’re talking about two very, very different jobs that unfortunately share the same title. The expectations are vastly different in the suburbs and the high need urban classroom and what it means to be successful, not to mention the nature of that path toward success, is different as well. By continuously conflating the two, even in comparison (which I did not do, by the way), we make a pretty grave error.
Just watched the whole Rose interview with behaviorist Michelle Rhee. She “absolutely” believes that test scores should be given the “greatest weight” in driving her plan.
So if I know student X is having a rough time emotionally, but I’m confident X will still “achieve” on that upcoming test, why should I bother with X when Y and Z need the kind of attention that will get me closer to that 6-figure salary or help me keep my job? Why risk penalizing myself?
“Value-added”? This is caring-subtracted. Why support an approach that risks driving teachers to choose themselves over students?
Peter, doves cry when you make arguments like this. Tinkerbell doesn’t get her wings. Kittens and puppies die.
Q: As an educator, you’ll let Y and Z fail so that you can go give X a hug? For reals?
A: Yes, because 20 years from now, X won’t remember my lesson on graphing linear equations w/ two variables, because no one uses math anyway, but X will remember how much I cared. Of course, Y and Z will also remember how much I DIDN’T care about their learning, because I allowed them fail while I was hugging X to my bosom, the primary function of the urban educator.
Caring means caring that kids have the skills to be successful.
Caring means caring that Black, Brown, and poor kids are not relegated to the margins of the American mainstream.
Give a shit and get on with it.
“As an educator, you’ll let Y and Z fail so that you can go give X a hug? For reals?”
Are you asking if I value the emotional well-being of my students above academic performance? If so, my answer is yes.
For reals.
How about a third salary lane that would let dc teachers bring their newly registered handguns to school with them? Check out the story at npr day to day.
Can we spitball a few ideas where we can identify better teachers?
After 3 years of teaching middle school, I feel like good teaching is tough to describe but “I know it when I see it.”
Can you look solely at numbers? Pay for passing rate? Or pay for mastery rate?
Looking at statistics isn’t necessarily a fair measure because sometimes you get better groups of kids.
Sometimes the state exam is easier/harder at the end of the year.
Is there a way to get a baseline score for student performance?
What if the teacher the year before you was terrible, and it weakens your own scores?
What is the right way to go with this? I’m all for incentive pay, but feel like the execution of it is nearly impossible.
Could someone suggest a current pop song for which I could write a satirical parody on caring vs. achievement for students entitled, “False Dichotomy”?
I’m quite serious about this.
Someone please hurry up and suggest a tune for Dina. It has to be.
How about “Minority” by Greenday?
How far back are we allowed to go?
“Champagne Supernova” by Oasis?
“Amsterdam” by Coldplay?
“Then the Morning Comes” by Smash Mouth?
You’ll have to be a bit creative on the syllable counts pretty much any way, but they might work. And Ian‘s suggestion of “Minority” could work well too.
Uf. @Peter, he isn’t.
And before the snark train fully leaves the station, it’s worth clarifying: not only aren’t caring and student achievement mutually exclusive but caring is prerequisite to student achievement.
I think TMAO would suggest that caring is far from the ultimate teacher duty. I’ll suggest that Peter overextends himself by claiming any policy promoting student achievement would succeed only at the expense of caring.
“Peter overextends himself by claiming any policy promoting student achievement would succeed only at the expense of caring.”
If you mean “any policy” that puts achievement first (euphemistically called “promoting”), then yes. But if the policy puts care first, then that sets the basis for achievement which is then a matter of fine tuning. I have no problem “promoting” achievement as long as it’s not done ass-backwards. You support this by stating:
“not only aren’t caring and student achievement mutually exclusive but caring is prerequisite to student achievement.”
Bingo. A prerequisite. A sound policy will promote care first. Rhee’s policy is clearly an attempt to put achievement first and call it care. Unfortunately, she is failing to draw a dichotomy when it is needed.
I get the warning on false dichotomies but it’s equally foolish to suggest there isn’t a difference between academics and emotional well-being. These must be identified and prioritized properly if we wish to see them emerge as one.
So, no takers on how we could reasonably and objectively evaulate (and tie funding to) higher quality teaching performance….?
Peter, you seem to be confused as to the purpose of an education system… (hint: it’s for educating). If that’s not the foundation for everything we do, including promoting student well-being, then we’ve missed the mark. There are plenty more institutions tasked with well-being, so we don’t need to make that our primary goal.
Some very wise folks here. Some specific shout outs to Chris, Bill, TMM, Doug, and yes, Peter too….
Chris touched on it, but much more attention needs to be paid to the Rhee’s efforts to fund teacher salaries with grants from private foundations (accountable to only a board and the tax code) and giving away operations of DC public schools to questionable private education management corporations. Funds do indeed dry up or are diverted elsewhere to the next big thing, Chris mentions New York, but Sacramento’s small schools were funded the same way and are barely hanging on at this point.
Over two decades in the private sector saw me witnessing (sometimes even supporting in my lobbyist gig) union members and other workers repeatedly trading off pensions, health care, job security/tenure all in the name of harnessing market forces to make things faster, better and more efficient. While I will acknowledge that ithe impacts of all of this are complex, deregulation, downsizing and the ongoing creeping privatization of key public services have done little to alleviate what are the diminishing economic propects of middle class and poor Americans. Some would say these forces are at the very root of the economic malaise.
Now teachers are being told that they should do the same: trade off job security and pension benefits (don’t be surprised when healthcare is placed on the table) “for the good of the children” (too often doing the telling are think tank experts whose jobs are funded by the same private foundations and corporations that seek to gain greater control of our public schools). When the trade off is funded by rich folks who have no obligation to stick around, well count me as one who will always be skeptical…especially since I’ve seen in my own town a preview of what may come.
Sometimes, it really is hell to get old.
By opting to go for it, you are complicit in supporting the premise that its all up to the teacher, that the variables that are out of our control don’t matter. Big fallacy at work there.
Admittedly, the teacher may be the most important part of the puzzle, but he/she is not the whole picture. There must be a better way to reward good teachers.
I’ve been impressed with the Children’s Bureau’s method of evaluating the Child Welfare System. They conduct reviews based on data and on-site case reviews (including thorough reviews of selected cases, interviews with case-related parties, and an examination of the systemic factors that impact child welfare’s effectiveness), then develop a plan to improve in the identified areas. The reviews focus on a child’s safety, permanency, and well-being.
That system won’t carry over wholesale into education, but I think it’s a huge step in the right direction, and much more comprehensive than any purely “test driven” incentive plan (which ends up causing more problems than it solves, in my opinion).
I’ve been wanting to try to write some stuff up about this for a while (an unfinished draft is sitting open beside me), but my blog’s been either silent or silly lately. Time will be more abundant pretty soon, though, so there’s hope.
In the meantime, have at it: ACF/CB
Tom,
It’s not that the variables don’t matter, it’s that the are overcome-able. The reason we know they’re overcome-able is because teachers from high-poverty, high-minority, and high-achieving schools do so, daily.
Doug,
1) Implement rigorous academic standards
2) Fully align assessments with standards
3) Ensure vertical alignment of tests
4) Create growth-based guidelines that determine low, average, high amounts of growth based on student starting points, subject matter, past trajectory, etc., everything TVAS does, just a little smarter
5) Tie supplementing, not supplanting pay to high achieving teachers
6) Make opt-in optional, so folks who feel there are more important things they could be doing, things more important than teaching standards, and uh, preparing kids for success in college and career, those folks don’t need supplemental pay
Lori,
I’m no fan of selling public space to private enterprises, and I reject whole-heartedly the a priori notion that the private world does things better, automatically. At the same time, school funding is ridiculously and detrimentally complex, and the public sphere of D.C. schools has rather spectacularly failed. If there’s ever been a place where certain innovations in this sphere are justifiable, its that place, right now.
Peter,
Achievement does come first. That’s your job as a teacher. If you don’t like the idea of working with young people in such a context, find another job in which to work with young people where achievement isn’t first, such as a counselor, camp or otherwise.
Your type of paternalistic approach to the job is frustrating and damaging, especially in low-income schools serving students of color, where folks have been lowering academic expectations for generations to better support those pobrecitos in ways they would NEVER accept the lowering of standards for White, affluent students.
Caring is a prerequisite to achievement.
Promoting achievement is the ultimate form of caring.
Dan,
I’m a MSEd student at UPenn’s Grad School of Education, and after reading a significant amount of your blog over the past several weeks, I think I have an EduCrush on you!
I too am in love with Michelle Rhee’s work for DC Schools. I plan to teach public school in DC after finishing at UPenn, and I am so excited at the possibility of working for her. I love her accountability-and-results-focus. There is no reason why teachers shouldn’t be evaluated based on how much they taught their students – judging their performance on anything else is a disservice to our nation’s children. And TMAO, I wholeheartedly agree with you, setting and reaching high academic expectations for your students, particularly your under-served students, is “the ultimate form of caring”
“Peter,
Achievement does come first. [...] Caring is a prerequisite to achievement.”
Coherency is a prerequisite to a convincing argument.
[...] to the test Published August 20, 2008 DC Tags: Charlie Rose, DCPS, Michelle Rhee Peter Rock Just watched the whole Rose interview with behaviorist Michelle Rhee. She “absolutely” believes [...]
TMAO,
Yes, it is possible to overcome many of the obstacles. The most successful so called 90/90/90 schools have extensive community support as well as a number of the other conditions you list. A teacher, can’t do it alone…If you can implement that list on your own, you’re a better teacher than I am.
I don’t agree that this should be optional. The result would be a divided staff and student body. The 90/90/90 approach won’t work without complete commitment. I say, all or none, and if its all, only if there is extensive buy-in by the larger community, and plenty of support downtown.
I think its meaningless to argue about what comes first. Teaching is too complex to be reduced to one “essential” element.
Don’t take this the wrong way, you’re certainly entitled to your opinion since you have experience, but why did you leave education?
“I think its meaningless to argue about what comes first.”
I’m thinking the same thing. This is partly my bad. It is important however, to ask ourselves what it _means_ to care for students and what it _means_ to be well educated.
I find TMAO and Miss Gallagher’s claim that “promoting achievement” (which according to Rhee’s plan comes primarily through standardized testing) “is the ultimate form of caring” wanting.
I also find TMAO and Ian H.’s proposal of outsourcing care to counselors and other institutions unrealistic. For many children, their teacher(s) is/are their #1 source of mature, safe and caring relationship. To build reward/punishment structures that tempt teachers away from that role with the idea that the slack be picked up by others is dangerous. Counselors are (and should be) a supplement to teacher care, not a replacement.
Peter,
I used the word “first” above in the sense of foundational, first principle stuff. Teachers are there to promote achievement and academic growth (which may be accurately measured on appropriately designed, aligned, and scaled assessments) first. That doesn’t mean that you don’t do anything else first (before) going about the business of raising achievement. You set up the desks first (before), but that doesn’t make setting up the desks a higher order activity, or something that is more important.
Along similar lines, I don’t know what to make of your distillation of my points into an argument for “outsourcing” caring. You really think I’m suggesting teachers shouldn’t care about kids? Please.
I’m sitting at a desk in a building in West Oakland, where about 1,200 students, all of them low-income or students of color or both, dropped out of school last year. We know these kids are the ones at the bottom of the academic barrel. We know those kids are now far more likely to die or be incarcerated. It’s diplomas or jail here. It’s diplomas or jail in Bayview and Western Addition across the Bay, and in parts of Sac-town, and East San Jose, and most of LA, and countless other places. Folks in one of those fly-over states make ten-year prison bed allocation predictions based on the number of third graders who score Below or Far Below Basic on reading assessments. Diplomas or jail.
What is the role of placing achievement as the first principle in this context?
“You really think I’m suggesting teachers shouldn’t care about kids?
No. I’m simply pointing out that we have very philosophically different ideas on what it means to care.
I would suggest that your “diplomas or jail” scenario is an oversimplification of a much broader set of problems. The problems in education are a reflection of larger societal ills, not a lack of diplomas. Low-income, segregated schools are a product of a hyper-competitive and individualized society…the kind of society that Rhee’s plan reinforces, not counters.
Sure, get more students a diploma. Then you’ll just have more people in jail with diplomas.
Before you pull the “relationship between crime and education” trigger, yes, my last comment was facetious. My point is that to me, education is about making a better society, not “achievement” in the Rhee-envisioned sense of the word.
If we shift the perspective slightly and look at this through the lens of what helps build resilience, it starts to get interesting. Some of the work around resiliency suggests that a combination of a caring adult presence, high standards, and opportunities for meaningful involvement increase the resilience of youth.
See http://pubs.cde.ca.gov/tcsii/ch8/resilience.aspx for an overview.
This link is NOT intended to be an authoritative resource on resilience — also, on a personal note, I wanted a break from the Chicken/Egg discussion of achievement/caring. Everybody, step away from the rabbit hole.
I personally think that Michelle Rhee’s tenure (get it) in D.C. will be disastrous, but I wish her and the kids well.
That said, what does she and her well-financed brethren think would actually happen the day after she breaks the teacher unions? Will the heavens open and angels sing?
Besides being ideological and mean spirited toward organized labor, I just don’t get what they think will miraculously happen if you just treat teachers badly?
Gary you’ve struck a chord, namely the politics behind this. Conservatives have been trying to dismantle public education using the combined canards of charters, vouchers, and choice. Merit pay is simply another ploy that fits their agenda. Divide and conquer…the teacher unions.
They hate the teacher unions as much as they hate lawyers and the American Bar Association, because both groups lobby for progressive causes such as equitable school funding and patients’ rights.
While I support in principle any effort to improve achievement in public schools, particularly in urban or underfunded districts, the competitive, market-driven approach being espoused by Rhee’s crowd is the antithesis of what makes good public (school) policy.
What astounds me is the extent to which the younger generation has bought this.
Lori’s two posts really put the whole DC thing in perspective. Thanks, Lori.
Tom, it probably seems like the lesser of two evils, given the absolutely ridiculous amount of power your teachers’ unions appear to have. I live in the socialist paradise to the north, and our teachers’ unions only dream of power like their southern brethren. Given the lengths the old boy’s club in the unions has gone to protect the present seniority system, some would argue that only a revolutionary change will solve many of the problems as they exist today.
Wait. We’re still talking about the Washington Teacher’s Union, right? The same Washington Teacher’s Union that embezzled $4.7 million from its members over five years to finance — well — the details are kind of irrelevant, aren’t they? It isn’t like we’re talking about the fate of an orphanage here.
Also, I’ve gotta say, I’m pretty astounded by the astonishment of y’all old-timers at our — my — reaction to merit pay. Please understand that we were brought up and schooled by some lousy teachers which the teacher’s union became very effective at barricading inside their classrooms. Now we’re teaching under that lame legacy and looking to legitimize this career choice and give some heft — financial heft, if that’s an option — to the idea that there exists good teaching, that it’s (fingers crossed) measurable and (fingers double-crossed) reproducible.
That last paragraph tops my list of career frustrations. I realize my union has one simple, clearly-defined goal (which isn’t “promote student achievement” or “make Dan Meyer happy” and I have made peace with that) but what can my union do for my career frustration?
And if it can’t do anything while, at the same time, it can embezzle five million dollars in union dues, I hope you won’t be astonished when I don’t rush to the defense of the Washington Teacher’s Union.
Dan, no actually we’re not talking about the Washington Teacher’s Union, at least my comments weren’t directed there. And after reading the article you linked, it seems to have been the work of three very corrupt individuals. I’m not about to defend them. As tragic as that was, it can’t be considered an indictment of all teachers’ unions, can it?
I applaud your efforts at legitimizing the profession, and agree that it needs to be easier to get rid of poor teachers. They shouldn’t be protected by unions.
But a little history is important here. In the US, teaching as a profession has always been held in low esteem, undervalued, and in this society that translates to underpaid. This is not a new phenomenon.
My parents and grandparents were teachers. If not for the unions teachers wouldn’t have a retirement system, or health benefits, and whenever there was a change in municipal government, the new mayor could fire someone to make a job for his nephew. Or seek retribution against those with political affiliations that differed from his/hers. (Like Rove and others did in the justice department and elsewhere.)
My comment about begin “astounded” is directed at the socio-political agenda at work here. I don’t blame you for wanting to be paid well. You have every right to want more from your profession. It is important to look at the whole picture and understand that there is more going on than simply the merit pay issue.
I wish you the best.
Echoing Tom,
As for the WTU scandal, the embezzlers deserved prison time and got it — at least 10 years in the fed. pen. No one here would condone this, obviously. I’m certainly not defending corruption in the WTU and part of the reason I became active in my union is to do my part to ensure greater accountability.
But you know, corruption occurs in all sectors–public and private. The California Electricity scandal of 2000 — which cost the state billions of dollars, forced PG&E into bankruptcy, produced rolling blackouts, saw household electric bills double, led to thousands of unionized utility workers down-sized out of work, and fed the political fortunes of a certain Austrian bodybuilder/action star — happened after the government regulated electric industry (regulated, remember, because reliable electric service is considered a public good) was deregulated in the name of efficiency, lower costs and better service. Enron notwithstanding, most of the corporate bad guy, companies that overcharged to the tune of 100 billion, inflated fuel prices and threw millions of customers into darkness, have not been punished. They’ve never spent a night in jail…in fact many were bailed out by the ratepayers and actually ended up earning millions in bonuses.
This–along with the real record of like-minded ed reform here in Sacramento– is the context this old timer brings to the table. (while I do all I can to avoid playing this game, I am amazed how quickly virtually any political discussion today degenerates into old vs. young…I feel like I’m starring in an episode of Logan’s Run.)
Dan, I too want more from the profession. I have at least 15 years left and as I’ve noted before I have every intention of staying on.
But I too see the strong signs of a socio-political agenda at work. The rhetoric is so familiar. That’s why I raise questions– lots of them–when anyone in public education touts a prescription similar to what has decimated other pieces of the public sector…especially this one that would see public school teachers give up job security and due process in order to be paid through what amounts to corporate charitable donations! It just seems absurd to me that this will ever improve the lot of our neediest kids or that it will do much to enhance the professionalism of what we do.
I think I’ve said this before, but let me know next time you’re in Sac. Beverages are on me….a prerogative of age to pick up the check.
I find it impossible to concur that American teacher unions, while imperfect, are the root of all evil or that they are too powerful. Teachers in L.A. went months without pay due to a new payroll system installation, yet reported to work everyday. NCLB would have been impossible in any other industrialized countries with strong teacher unions. I know that my colleagues in Australia would have shut the system down if NCLB had been attempted.
It’s worth realizing that unions created the American middle class and at a time of skyrocketing medical insurance costs and pensions being raided, unions may be more important now than ever before. It is also true that all of the countries we “compete against” in educational comparisons have unionized educators.
There is a giant fallacy in the arguments being presented. There seems to be a belief that merit pay works in any context, not just education. There is a growing body of research and irrefutable evidence that merit pay does not work in the corporate sector policy makers seem to worship, yet we wish to apply it to education, a MUCH more complex enterprise with outcomes we can’t define or agree upon.
Dan, would that extra $357 some teachers in Denver are receiving as part of their merit pay scheme change the way you deal with your students? Have you really been retarding test scores until you get that extra two bucks per week? What strategies do you employ?
Gary
PS: It’s not just conservatives attacking teachers and turning classrooms into Dickensian sweatshops. Eli Broad is a Democrat. Obama and Kerry are in love with the merit pay fantasy.
Check out an article I wrote four years ago – http://www.districtadministration.com/viewarticlepf.aspx?articleid=1001
Also, my recent cover story in Good Magazine – http://goodmagazine.com/section/Features/school_wars
Lori, Gary, & Tom, I certainly didn’t mean that WTU scandal in any but an anecdotal sense, not to use an exception to prove a rule, just to suggest that teacher’s unions are dealing with a relevancy and credibility problem with younger educators. Probably even some who aren’t me.
For whatever it’s worth to Lori, your background work has effectively downgraded my educrush to an eduinfatuation. At this point I have to acknowledge a slightly desperate bent to my eduphilosophy, the entirety of which is in my last comment. I’ll keep an eye on it.
For whatever it’s worth to Gary, the money — even Rhee’s six-figures — has little to do with it. The appeal of merit pay for me is in the hope that we can identify merit and promote it.
If anybody has any idea how to make that happen without disenfranchising unionized labor, well, now would be an appropriate moment.
Interesting discussion. I follow the Rhee performance with amusement.
She represents no reform of education. Hers is a reactionary agenda that has a long history in totalitarian nations and in America lots of people love the iron fist approach to governance.
Rhee gives away her cynical love of accountability when she slanders School Board governance. It’s good to be queen with an open-ended credit card and no one asking fundamental questions.
The problem merit pay raises for many teachers in special ed, art, music, social studies and so on is that if federally mandated tests are the only metric that counts they are all left short-changed.
I have written about these schemes before [remember converting elderly guaranteed health care insurances to the HMO model - then the collapse of HMO coverage?]
Rhee’s game is a front-loaded, get-rich quick scheme. Give up the more costly long-term steady income for a short-term high. Once you no longer have any leverage and are unprotected, you become disposable and unemployable. The paperwork is in the mail.
The “big score payoff” bait is cynical and bets that good teachers are greedy teachers and that altruistic teachers who sacrifice pay to serve are the undesirables.
This is not truly about good or bad teachers. It is a political game of Russian roulette with childrens lives being sacrificed to destroy public education. The checks and balances of teacher unions are a nuisance to neo-cons dismantling schools equivalent to the Geneva Conventions when designing Gitmos.
Strip away the platitudes and you’ll find Ree is just blowing smoke up everyone’s asses. Sadly, no one ever questions the magic thinking of advocating ever higher expectations, why urban/suburban gaps matter, why soviet-styled central absolute control of education is desirable, what qualifies business special interest groups to design curriculum, and so on. The neo-con framing of education discussion is perennially bankrupt and devoid of empirically quantifiable ROI yet success is just a test cycle away – keep testing, spending money, wasting kid’s lives on it – we aren’t ever tough enough on kids, teachers or schools are we?
TMAO, your responses are contemptible. You slander liberals with your ignorance of liberal ideas about education. You seem to think this passes as enlightened commentary when it is little more than boorish bullshit.
You don’t have to hug kids to recognize their unique needs and contributions and civil right to be judged as individuals. Kids are not uniform widgets. Liberals are smart enough to know this. You have yet to learn it or grow the courage to honor it.
- krasicki
“The appeal of merit pay for me is in the hope that we can identify merit and promote it.”
Basically, I agree with this. The problems begin when we try to identify good work through test results and promote it through rewards and punishments.
krasicki,
If the “liberals” I “slander” are the ones who brought D.C. public schools (for example) to their current state, I guess I’ll just slander away. This isn’t really about liberals vs. conservatives, although I count myself in the former, and I don’t see how the debate is furthered with the placement of that frame. The people/ groups doing the best work in education, from TNTP and TFA, to EdSector and Ed Trust, sit at the intersection of a lot of political ideology — a good vantage point, I think.
As for “boorish bullshit,” one need only read your argument-absent — yet curiously name-calling filled — final paragraphs to get a bellyfull of all that.
Gary et al,
Dan’s right.
It’s really not about the money, although I haven’t yet read the even midly compelling argument about why exactly the current salary structure works, or is better than one based on evaluation of value-added (with either a capital or lowercased v-a) teacher effectiveness. Doomsday scenarios where staffs are divided or art teachers disenfranchised tend to not carry much weight on a large stage.
Good teaching, sadly, is not like pornography; you don’t always know it when you see it. Data-based measured originating from an analysis of student performance of criteria-based, standards-aligned, vertically aligned assessments must play a role in determining who’s got it and who doesn’t. It need not be the whole thing, but right now it’s part of nothing, and conditions on the ground ain’t so hot.
Lori,
Thanks for context and background. I am unfamiliar with Rhee’s tenure in Sac, knowing her only through her TNTP work, which has been massively successful by any measure.
TMAO,
You are the person who offered up the framing:
Peter, doves cry when you make arguments like this. Tinkerbell doesn’t get her wings. Kittens and puppies die.
Q: As an educator, you’ll let Y and Z fail so that you can go give X a hug? For reals?
That smacks of pedestrian talk show liberal-bashing spiced with a racist exclamation point.
Washington, D.C. has bigger fish to fry than their school system. Like many urban epicenters, it is a cultural artifact of racism, nod-and-wink corruption, additive drug supermarket, and academy of armed conflict resolution.
But, in the spirit of maintaining segregation so that America never, ever has to measure the social progress of integration, let’s pretend none of this matters because YOU say so.
I choose not to blame the students for the persistent gaps in achievement (you may disagree), and so must look to adults.
Well, maybe instead of looking at adults you might question whether gaps as measured by standardized tests matter. In fact YOUR WHOLE FRAME OF REFERENCE depends on standardized tests despite the fact that these tests are largely ornamental for educators but prized by Realtors for segregating neighborhoods.
Any teacher worth their salt is concerned about the progress of the individuals in their care; how well johnny or Jane are personally progressing with reading, math, or dancing. But because you never ask good questions your arguments are reduced to in-the-federal-box -cough- ideas about education. You are no different from Rhee, Bill Bennett, or Rush Limbaugh who you mistake as Liberals.
And you make the same cherry-picking arguments about education that prevent intelligent discussion to take place. Intelligent kids in urban areas can and do succeed despite the odds. The fact that Rhee and politicos of all stripes rush to the head of this parade and claims that this is because of “high expectations”, high-stress tests, and so on doesn’t make it so but it does sell.
Absent from the rhetoric is any explanation of why these tactics don’t work for the other 80% of the school population if in fact the claims have any veracity. The reason is that the claims are sugar-coated bullshit.
You also fall into the trap of treating teachers as well as students as interchangeable widgets.
And here’s the deal. I want to know who the best teachers are. I want to know what they do so we can replicate it. I want to know what they brought with them into the classroom so I can find others with those same characteristics. I want to know what training/ PD/ credentialing they had so I can send everyone there.
The best teachers are allowed to teach without government interference otherwise they are reduced to parrot trainers. If you’re looking for the most successful parrot trainers try any of the animal behavior centers because that’s where you’ll find them.
But kids are not animals going into school and shouldn’t come out like trained seals on the way out.
But for those interested in the broader subject – empathy, genius, vision, fortitude, a functioning right-brain hemisphere, creativity, critical thinking, charisma, sincerity, love, soul, and imagination are what you’re looking for.
Teachers who pass a standardized federal test for these attributes or receive a ‘B’ or better in Classroom Management 456 are the best way to identify and “replicate” such teachers.
krasicki, your argument is very nice, and makes us feel like we can hug kids out of the poverty cycle, but there’s no research to support it.
I make no claim about eliminating poverty.
I’m not advocating hugging kids.
And I don’t believe that “equality” means homogenizing our kids into a canonical product. I don’t want my kids to go to school to become equal. I want them to follow their bliss to the degree that that is possible. And I don’t want them taking standardized tests because the metric is subversive to the process of education.
As an aside, education research is on one hand wholly politicized to eliminate meaningful dialogue and what does exist is ignored by the profession. It is as if educators do not believe in nor understand science.
However, my blog http://region19.blogspot.com offers lots of data and links to data worth discussing (for example: http://region19.blogspot.com/2008/07/nutritional-transparency.html).
The poverty cycle in education is intellectual as much as anything else. The lockout of differing points of view in public school curriculum is turning us into a nation of retarded learners if learners at all.
What I’ve been puzzled by in this thread the contention that it is impossible to identify techniques of master teachers with the system as is.
While there is a need for more precise experiment (see my post on a merit pay study in India) are we now saying any conclusions drawn by Fred Jones et al. are now entirely invalid?
You won’t find me arguing in favour of standardised testing either, but as TMAO and dan have mentioned, there has to be a better way of rewarding teachers other than “if you stick it out one more year, you’ll get more money”. I honestly don’t know what would be a fair metric to use for teacher evaluation, but I don’t think that blanket denials that the system is broken are any more helpful than pouncing on standardised testing as the answer to everything plaguing education today.
BTW, thanks for the link to the nutritional study – we have subsidised breakfasts and lunches at our community schools here, so it’s nice to see that program confirmed.
Jason,
I talk with teachers who teach in richer districts and live in more middle-class ones.
Richer districts teach to finer angularities of the standardized tests. They analyze the results then identify programs that fine tune the “teaching” to the test with plenty of obfuscations to ensure plausible deniability about teaching to the test.
But that’s not an education or process to be proud of. that’s not creating learners who will ever be self-sufficient. Many of these techniques are clever ways to outsmart the test-taking process.
That’s why analyzing the current dogma is a waste of time unless you believe that the myopic pursuit of test scores is the best way to teach children.
There is zero evidence that testing has improved the system an iota and plenty of indications that it is harmful.
Ian,
Education has become a closed business model that is ignorantly based on an industrial revolution model and an American mytheme that assumes income uniformly only goes up and never stagnates or goes down.
Furthermore, education as practiced in the United States is paradoxical. On one hand the platitude is that we are attempting to educate kids to be self-sufficient and life-long learners. Tightly coupled to that idea is the perverse insistence that learning is only accredited within the institutional structure itself and self-sufficient learning outside the system is unworthy of recognition. So salaries and the ability to work within the system are all tied to a self-insulating paper chase.
In essence teachers and their salaries are tied to a perpetual schooling machine that deforms their ability to think outside the very real [Skinner] box they themselves have constructed around the profession. And the profession has been so conditioned to complain about low-wages it is unaware of how well off it has become.
Today, government salaries and teacher salaries, raises, job security, and benefits far outpace the average working American. Advocating even higher wages will bankrupt most communities very quickly.
The problem is not that the system is broken but that it is unbreakable which is why BushCo are fighting so hard to destroy it.
To me the answer should be coming from an enlightened teacher’s union insisting on best educational practice and self-examination about introducing rules of engagement for better acountability. Government as practiced by the vicious bastards in Washington should be treated like pedophiles recommending child-care services.
Just to add to the fun: Rhee is also starting a pilot program to pay middle school students for good behavior and attendance — see http://www.nbc4.com/education/17259394/detail.html
Cheers,
Bill
Richer districts teach to finer angularities of the standardized tests. They analyze the results then identify programs that fine tune the “teaching” to the test with plenty of obfuscations to ensure plausible deniability about teaching to the test.
That wasn’t answering my question. Let me rephrase.
There’s the general claim without all the data merit pay / myriad standards tests / etc. bring we are in the dark about what best practices are.
I am simply claiming this is untrue.
Jason,
Okay. I misread your question. Let me preface my remarks by saying I’ve worked in software development for almost thirty years after teaching art in NE.
There is a concept about data called GIGO (garbage in, garbage out). What passes for “data” under the current regime is what Jonathan Winters might call Gar – baage,/i>. Highly perfumed nonsense.
For example, let’s compare last year’s 8th grade’s test scores to this year’s 8th grade test scores and compute “progress”. No really let’s do that across the nation and punish schools for the lowest results compared across the multiplicity of demographics found in this country.
What scientific or mathematical basis does such a comparison have? On what planet does such “data” make sense? Why aren’t mathematicians and scientists in all public, private, and parochial schools calling bullshit on this NCLB fraud?
You see it is data. It just doesn’t produce rational conclusions. So let’s say you love the number that comes out of this equation. Will rewarding the teaching staff and insisting “more, louder, harder of the same stuff” will reproduce the [magic] effect next year? No, it won’t except by co-incidence AND you’ve just polluted the conversation about learning, best practice, and ;earning progress. That’s where we are today – arguing about wacko education metrics that politicians made up and labeled ‘accountability’ instead of “politically expedient education scam that the public fell for hook, line. and sinker”.
You’ll also note that these numbers don’t help Johnny or Jane read because they are inconsequential to generating the data or improving teaching. Any body taking a test will produce a number.
Furthermore, school rhetoric now insists on being “data-driven” as though learning is a spreadsheet exercise. So now a teacher must measure the same activity over and over of everyone over and over whether they need it or not, whether it’s useful one cycle to the next and so on.
So now learning activities are replaced by fixed, mandated measuring activities. Spiral learning pedagogy is now impossible because we’re counting factoids not childhood development learning observations. How does one identify best practice here?
In short, this is a road to hell. The idiots who’ve seized the Department of Education are political criminals dong harm to children. They should be jailed for this stuff.
Easily the most heated debate on this site I’ve seen….
@krasicki: The best line i’ve see “How does one identify best practice here?” How do we tie incentives to teachers?
Data driven stuff has to be important, but it is nearly impossible to figure out a way to make it fairly tied to student ability.
In New York, where I teach grade 8 history all students take a 2-day state exam in Math, English, History, Science, and Language. That is 10 days of instructional time lost due to state testing, and in my rural school there are about 100 kids per grade. There are between 7-10 kids who I never meet b/c they are in self contained classes because of severe disabilities, but those kids still take the exams and those failing numbers are reflected on my ability as a teacher. Should I be paid less, b/c severely disabled kids who happened to take the test I teach failed it?
I get outstanding ‘data’ for the state exam i’m responsible for and no one seems to really notice, which is fine, b/c it is satisfying for me. Students I teach score at a mastery and passing rate doubling the state average. Should I get paid more for that? I think so, but I also put in what feels like double the time or more outside of the classroom compared to my colleagues.
It seems like we can all agree that teachers should be paid on some kind of merit system, but the implementation of such a system is highly flawed even leading further corruption and unfair practices.
Merit ($$$) driven system would lead to districts juking the stats.
Things like the “Houston Miracle” (http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/01/06/60II/main591676.shtml) that
encouraged students to dropout for fear of lower numbers.
A system that ties $$$ to data would lead to ridiculous juking of the numbers that Major Rawls and Jay Landsman (from the Wire) would only dream about.
Doug,
I hear you. My wife teaches Special Ed. and she’s ecstatic when she can get an autistic kid to do what for most students are trivial things.
How does she get merit pay? What about an art teacher who civilizes an otherwise failing kid by celebrating his or her artistic ability. Does the teacher get credit or is the student talented and so what?
And what about those courageous inner city teachers presumed guilty of incompetence because of these crazy test comparisons? Great teachers there are slandered and drummed out of the profession for doing their best under extreme circumstances.
I see nothing good in “merit” pay or these so-called accountability scams except blunt instruments for abuse.
Wow, Bill. That’s the icing on the cake Rhee wants to have and eat too.
Not to resurrect a thread that’s verging on deathly dull, but I got my 07-08 Geometry results back yesterday and they were not acceptable. Too many kids listing along at Basic levels, not enough kids rising to Proficiency.
My question to so many commenters here: what would you have me do with that data?
deathly dull
That’s how I felt about geometry before I discovered ->
http://www.geogebra.org/cms/
@Dan-
Under a merit based pay system, I think you would have to take a pay cut…..
Or not receive a bonus, which, off these results, I wouldn’t deserve.
But both of your responses dodge the question. From the perspective of someone opposed to the accountability measures of NCLB and skeptical of standardized tests, what would you have me do with the knowledge that (e.g.) four out of ten students I taught last year couldn’t find the volume of a unique swimming pool?
@Dan-
I think its important to analyze the assessments more than the results. I’ve found many times kids miss questions b/c of language they aren’t familiar with more so than history content. Or questions that do things like ask, “All of the following were part of the progressive era except…” Of course 3 are directly related and 1 isn’t, and kids go way to fast.
I would also look at how the assessments relate to your state curriculum guide, and also your own classroom curriculum.
Analyzing the exam and questions that appear every year, is a major defect of the state exam system, I end up teaching the exam quite a bit more than I would like, but its necessary for higher results.
I do think NYS does a really nice job of giving the curriculum guide and valid assessments related to that guide.
The question itself appears to dodge the issue.
What exactly does your question have to do with Rhee’s plan? If you are suggesting that those who find Rhee’s plan deplorable are against standardized tests then count me out of that camp. I have absolutely no problem with standardized tests. What matters is why and how they are used.
The answer of what *you* should do with that data seems so obvious to me as to make me think you meant to word the question differently. *You* use that data to help yourself as a teacher and your students. Just as you would with any other form of assessment.
As a principal who is both against standardized assessments and also very much measured by them, here’s what I’d do:
First — let’s work under the assumption that I’ve watched you teach, and I feel that you are a good teacher.
1) I would take the scores and compare them to grades. I believe that the multiple data points that go into making up a grade give us a richer sense a student’s learning. So the first question is this — is there a correlation between student grades and scores?
2) The next thing I’d do is ask you for your assessment — Most importantly — what is your assesment of how the students learned Geometry? How does that line up with what the scores suggest? What surprised you? What was what you expected?
3) If — as I would think — you were surprised by the scores and you honestly feel like there was deeper learning than the scores suggest, then the question is this — Is there a disconnect between the way you’re teaching — the skills or the process or just the language — and the way the state test assesses the learning? This raises several more questions:
1) What are the assessments that you did in your classroom that would lead us to believe that the learning was more successful than the tests suggest?
2) If we believe that your methods are successful, what do we do about the tests? Given that they are the coin of the realm, we cannot ignore them, so are there modifications we need to make? Can we make them without harming the learning you see going on?
There is something going on in your class if your sense — based on the work you see every day — is that the scores really are not reflective of what they’ve learned. Is there something going on with the multiple opportunity style of learning that you’re doing such that on a one-shot test the kids aren’t able to replicate their learning? Do you need to just take two weeks before the test to do some explicit teaching on how the way they’ve learned can translate to a test? Do you need to give them more opportunities during the year to take tests that mimic the structure of the state test?
Much of test taking is about the skill of making sure your knowledge and skills translate well on the test. The hard part, I really believe, is making sure that the learning you see every day in your class is measured on the tests, especially if you don’t teach in a pedagogical fashion that is in line with the state assessment.
Anyway, that’s what I’d do.
(Thanks to Chris Lehmann for pointing out Dan’s question. Somehow I missed it).
Dan – do you feel the test that gave you said results is a reliable test? Is it valid?
If so – Chris has some great points. I’d like to add:
1) Do you have any comparable pre-scores? Is there any way to measure growth (pre-course to post-course)?
2) Are there test conditions that aren’t replicated in your classroom? (are there time constraints to which the students are not accustomed, unfamiliar calculators, style of questions, … )
3) Are these tests important to the student?
4) Do you actually get “good” data? Do you know their responses to each question? Is there some type of distractor analysis you can do to find the most commonly missed questions (along with the common misconceptions)?
5) Is there material that you are teaching that is not assessed on the state test? Do you feel it is valuable enough to justify keeping it in the curriculum?
6) Have you considered re-writing your curriculum to match the standards? (I don’t mean lesson 1 meets standards 3.A.i or whatever), but writing a curriculum that actually teaches the concepts in the standards in a developmentally appropriate manner). And I do not mean teaching to the test. If they are good standards – things worth knowing- what is wrong with redesigning a curriculum to address them?
Crud. I forgot to close a tag up there somewhere. Care to fix that Dan?
Dan,
I took your question seriously and made an attempt at responding on my blog – http://www.stager.org/blog/2008/08/modest-advice-for-conscientious-math.html
Gary
@Dan,
I’m feeling ripped off of my merit my now because I didn’t take the question to be, “Argue till you’re blue in the face but what do I do if I’m stuck in the NCLB accountability game and have failing scores.”
Here, Chris and others offer some excellent suggestions. Let me add supplementary material that may be useful.
About a year ago I had a conversation with an excellent elementary school teacher who was also a union representative and his take on NCLB was this (I’m paraphrasing).
If we’re going to play “what if”, let’s start there. In your example, if you are a teacher surprised by the four failures there’s a disconnect somewhere (and it could be the teaching) and Chris’ analysis is spot on.
But if you did know they were having trouble – here’s the cruelty of NCLB. The right thing to do is find out where they are, why they’re there and how to get them on track (wherever that daylight is). But even if you get that kid on-track to the degree that kid can be they may still not meet the magic expectation and may never do so.
AND the double jeopardy everyone is in is that maybe math isn’t working but music is, you’re still going to beat the kid over the head with math.
AND this may be a significant population within your school. Is the school failing? Are you a bad teacher? How much flogging is enough to call this a national policy failure?
@Peter – Standardized tests are useful and no one is arguing they can’t be. But subverting these tests into phony accountability metrics is the fraud that’s objectionable aside from the demented policy punishments.
krasicki,
Yep, that’s why it’s all about our intention and how we use the results. I was a little surprised to hear you, Chris, say you are “against them”. In fact, I think a well made standardized test can be a valuable assessment tool.
@Jackie
This is actually a very good question.
Over the years I’ve met with some of the authors of the Connecticut Mastery Tests and other associated personnel. Let me say that they are bright, self-righteous, and smugly convinced that they are testing legitimate matters. They are also often absolutely closed minded to the idea that what they are testing and the ferocity of their conclusions once a test is failed is intellectually, ethically, and morally unjustifiable.
Let’s start with the “goodness” of the standards. Let’s even assume the test is perfect and that test determines whether a theoretical eighth grader, aged 14, from a good home, and no known issues should score 100 points on it.
Okay, what we have is a good standard that separates an expectation of the norm from everyone else, some higher or some lower. It should be treated as flat information. It is not an “accounting” that says kids scoring higher got better education and kids scoring lower had lousy teachers. It say kids are not all theoretically in that category of expected proficiency.
And if urban scores are uniformly higher or lower than a suburban population maybe the test score for proficiency is skewed and we recalibrate such aberrations to acknowledge a cultural demographic anomaly.
The test is not a problem taken at face value.
The problem is that the State at the extortionary tactics of the Feds demand that those below they 100 mark are tortured into achieving this mark or be jettisoned from the system or treated like school-degrading pariahs no matter what. Federal dollars are attached to this scheme and administrators careers are put on the line to create programs resembling the Island of Dr. Moreau to change these sub-human learners into hybrid admirers of books and mathematics no matter what.
And after a few generations of this psychic experimentation we have teens dropping out at record levels, large numbers of teens imprisoned, and so on.
Concurrently we have business leaders whose own private Universities have failed and gone out of business lecturing Washington on what they expect their next generation of cubicle rat to look and sound like.
So, why not design a curriculum that deforms children into these bioforms since that’s what schools are being paid to do anyway and punished if they don’t?
I have yet to here a University Education Department object since their federal funding would be cut faster than a shock can be administered to a prisoner at Gitmo.
But here’s an alternative idea. Why don’t we design curriculum strategies that track, guide, and supplement the kids in the school based on the needs of the kids. And let’s test them but not get crazy if they’re up or down as long as they’re healthy and making progress learning things worth knowing though not necessarily things that a guy in Washington thinks are interesting. And we pass them all and keep them all in school to the degree we can. Would America crumble? Would big business really not hire the smartest and ignore the least compelling anyway?
Dong it this way allows children to grow their own souls and determine their own learning bliss and breathe some freedom and responsibility for their own development.
So why not call Washington’s bluff? What will they do? Hire cheap, compliant labor from overseas? C’mon, this is America.
Would that be legitimate?
Once again, a fascinating discussion…
As for strategies, I don’t have anything to add that others who are more knowledgeable about curriculum/assessment/data haven’t already offered.
Its the semantics that rile me…
I have read a number of times that we are not, should not be “teaching to the test,” and the implication seems to be, here and in most educational quarters, that there is something unseemly about doing so.
Let’s call it what it is…Teaching to the test. If standardized tests are the “coin of the realm,” and I certainly agree with Chris on this, then it is what it is. What else would you call it?
Whether its rewriting you curriculum to better match the standards tested, providing practice in test taking, offering sample questions which are structured like the real thing, the case remains: the tail is wagging the dog.
So, teach to the test. Let’s simply admit what we’re doing and get over pretending that we’re really doing something more high minded. It has to be done, as distasteful as it is…
Just don’t allow teaching to the test to drive everything you do, and suck the life out of your teaching.
Tom,
That’s exactly right. Any discussion that schools are not teaching to the test are simply Orwellian exercises. That is what is so disingenuous about Rhee, the department of Education everywhere, and the pundits.
But you end your post with the obligatory sentimental resignation, “But don’t let the totalitarianism of it all get you down.”
And that’s where this discussion comes back to Rhee and the idea of resigning to the coin of the realm.
What is happening in public [and private] education is that we are myopically and ruthlessly teaching to the test. Moreover, we are hiring and firing to purge and whitewash education of any deviation from this mad obsession.
So what we’ll soon have are unions consisting of brain-washed parrot trainers who don’t know anything about teaching or learning but a lot about draconian methods to increase test scores.
The damage to our nation’s youth will make the brown shirts of Nazi Germany look like the sixties.
I already have teachers who say to me that the kids entering high school “don’t know how to think.” They insist on only being taught stuff from a test and are confused by open discussion of ideas that don’t “count”.
We have a problem that is non-trivial here. This nation needs thinkers more than ever before and we’re creating a system that treats thinking like mental retardation.
BTW: Last night I was typing in the dark – excuse the typos and poorly edited responses.
I really hope you’ll take a look at the resources I assembled, based on this conversation at http://www.stager.org/blog/2008/08/modest-advice-for-conscientious-math.html
Lest you think I support standardized testing and the hostile takeover of public schools, I suggest you read my GOOD Magazine cover story, School Wars and the criticism it’s receiving – http://www.stager.org/blog/2008/08/they-hate-me-they-really-really-hate-me.html
krasicki I strongly disagree with your statement that “What is happening in public [and private] education is that we are myopically and ruthlessly teaching to the test.”
I teach a curriculum that is aligned to state, NCTM, and ACT CRS standards. I do embed “standardized” test type questions into my assessments (I cannot expect my students to do their best on these types of tests if they’ve never seen them before). We do talk about these tests. However, this is a very, very small part of my high school classes.
I also structure my classes so that students are working in collaborative groups on discovery based activities. They work on big problems that cannot be quickly solved in one day. We get into the computer lab and they build things with Sketchpad to investigate and form conjectures. We use manipulatives. They build models. In addition to the multiple choice questions, I give extended-response questions in which students are expected to explain their reasoning. We have class discussions and debates. So, please do not tell me that everyone is “teaching to the test”.
So, one could view my inclusion of standardized test questions is the tail wagging the dog Tom, but I don’t think so.
I recognize and appreciate the depth and practicality of Chris, Gary, and Jackie’s responses.
Let me note for clarification that I find the Geometry standards of California to be an overwhelming accurate survey of Geometry and the state’s Geometry exam to be an overwhelming fair assessment of those standards.
Not only do I take my poor results seriously — as a referendum on my teaching — but I take my colleague Kim’s good results as an indication of better practice. Kim and I have something to talk about. How does she teach the volume of solid shapes?
Bringing this back to Rhee, if those preconditions are met (accurate standards & fair assessment) why shouldn’t my results factor into my employment consequences? I feel a little weird that my supervisors (either dept. head or principal) haven’t sat me down and asked, okay, what is your plan here?
If I know what I should be teaching, if I believe that the assessment of my teaching is accurate, and if I have no plan, direction, or desire to remediate my teaching, not only shouldn’t I be rewarded financially for my teaching — I shouldn’t be a teacher.
Jackie, what you describe sounds like a very well-designed program, incorporating the best teaching methods interspersed with the necessary nod to the tests. My sincere compliments. As teacher I know it is difficult to pull that off.
Dan, again getting back to Rhee’s offer and your plan to “remediate” your teaching…
To what extent do you think the composition of your class, re. the individual students you teach in a given year effects test results?
I realize that this is heresy, but not all students are going to achieve at the same level. I’m not saying that you, or any of us, should do less that our best to help every student get there, but let’s not pretend that they’re all going make it.
After penalizing the teachers and the schools for not getting all students to “Proficient” (or the equivalent) the schools in the UK tried a different tack.
The composition of the class is now considered when measuring yearly progress. No longer is the benchmark simply a fixed standard. They measure the progress of each student. Its not a matter of reaching the finish line, though that is the point, but a question of how far a student comes in the time they spent with an individual teacher. (Light-bulb!)
If we don’t so this, and to my knowledge in the US we don’t, then it makes no sense to award merit pay. We aren’t factoring in all the major variables…
So, I guess I’d begin by comparing the composition of your classes, yours and your colleague’s, going back a couple of years for historical context on each student.
Then, ask your colleague how she teaches the volume of shapes…
The tread that just won’t die.
To Tom, I say Bingo!
(let me add the caveat that I have no idea how AYP is really calculated…some of the stuff I raise below might be taken into account)
I just finished crunching the numbers from my two US History classes (the only two classes I taught this year subject to standardized testing):
Sixty one percent of my students (those who actually took the test…one was at juvenile court on a probation violation hearing on test day; one was very pregnant at the time and stayed home for her final weeks until she went into labor) saw their scores go up at least one level from where they scored last year in their social science class. Just under half of these kids went up two levels and are now sitting in “Basic”, which means last year they scored “Far Below Basic”…the absolute worst possible. Slightly more than a half moved up a level from either “Below Basic” to “Basic,” from “Basic” to “Proficient,” or from “Proficient” to “Advanced.”
But…
Thirteen percent saw no movement—two of these kids remain mired in the “Far Below Basic Category.”
And…
Twenty six percent—12 students total– had scores that fell from what they were last year; eight of those twelve had scores that took them down one level; two actually fell into the “Below Basic” category. The other four lost some overall points but remain in the level they scored in last year.
(Note: Left out here are the seven students who arrived at various times mid-year from Sacramento Charter High – the Rhee-affiliated school I cited in earlier comments. Their test scores from their time at Sac Charter never arrived at our school…I have no idea how they performed last year. For the sake of full disclosure, this year three performed “Far Below Basic,” two “Below Basic,” two “Basic.”)
Almost 40% were stagnant or actually performed worse this year. I suck.
Maybe.
There are many factors that make a deeper analysis difficult, not the least of which is the fact that my students were enrolled in World History last year, not U.S. The year before that it was Geography. Judging their progress in social studies from year to year is somewhat like the apples and oranges thingie. In fact, we were once explicitly warned against doing this in an in-service. So looking at their social science progress over time might just be well, wrong. But I’m not sure what else I should do in getting beyond the fact that 45% of the kids couldn’t figure out what was behind the establishment of the GATT. I also peeked at my students’ scores in other subjects over their entire high school career. How have they performed on these tests generally? The results are actually pretty darn interesting and certainly make me feel a little better: Most of the kids who moved up at least a level on their social science test from last year to this year (well over half of my class) have never scored better than “Below Basic” in any subject! In Any Subject! Hmmm….Maybe I don’t suck quite so much.
Getting back to the kids who made no progress or actually did worse, I am utterly mystified by the four students I noted earlier. Grade wise, they are among my best…all A and B students. I have their tests, their short answer responses, their debate rubrics, their essays to demonstrate what they accomplished and achieved throughout the year. I really don’t know what happened on test day and really won’t, unless I get a chance to speak with them about it next year. But, you know, these are high school juniors; besides the enormous outside issues that teens in low-income school settings bring to the classroom, they are also in so many ways just like teens everywhere…they’re up and they’re down, they spin and spin and spin, they’re consumed with their friends and their love lives and on virtually any day, some are struggling in a social environment that is complete hell for those who dress or talk or act differently. Sometimes they’re just complete Doofuses. How on earth do we account for the fact that teens are teens? Sometimes they just blow it or refuse to cooperate or wander into their own space.
Those comprising the rest of this group are second language English learners, mostly Hmong. It jumped out at me almost immediately, that my Latino kids (the largest sub-group) generally made very good progress from this year to last. My Southeast Asian students, not so much. And this gives me something else to think about. Is there something in my scaffolding and vocabulary work that works more effectively with my Latino than with my Southeast Asian kid? Did I take the time to really assess where my EL students were in terms of English language development beyond their CELDT scores and what that means to my teaching? No I didn’t and that must change. What other factors could be in play?
I’ve also talked to several of my colleagues to compare results, strengths/weaknesses, etc. (we made plans to work together all year…) and looked at questions that were most often missed…no surprise there, they overwhelming came from that part of the curriculum we don’t reach until the last quarter of school…the mid-to late 20th Century. Certainly, this is a matter of sequencing and pacing in order to hit more of this stuff before test time (test: late April…the last quarter ends in mid-June). Oh wait! Last minute schedule changes now mean I actually won’t be teaching US History when we go back on Sept. 2. One of those teachers just assigned to US has never taught it before, echoing my story from last year: I was assigned US — for the first time—again just weeks before school started. I was scrambling all year. This is hardly a situation conducive to self reflection, rigorous analysis and adaptation to improve my teaching of US History. Could haphazard scheduling– due this time in part (but not entirely) to district budget constraints — play any role here?
No excuses, just off-the-cuff examples of some more stuff we might want to consider before advocating that we launch our profession off the merit pay cliff.
@JackieB
Jackie you are missing the point. Our high school doesn’t worry too much about teaching to the test easy because our population generally does okay with it.
Secondly certain teachers with seniority can teach the more gifted classes so they’re not “teaching to the test” either.
But that’s not my point. Whether you and our teachers coast, we coast because the tests work for our populations.
And here’s where it gets complicated. I sit on a curriculum committee and found out about a year or two ago that we no longer dissect frogs or pigs in biology ( a rite of high school passage forever). The reason? The State Board of Education doesn’t test it and it distracts from stuff that is tested.
But in private conversations it turns out that the anti-evolution crowd that lobbies the standardized questions offed the learning experience.
So today, an exercise that separated potential doctors and nurses from the more squeamish may never inspire future doctors and lawyers.
Like it or not, personal or not, this country is not only teaching to the test but censoring thought by the test. Book it.
Let me note for clarification that I find the Geometry standards of California to be an overwhelming accurate survey of Geometry and the state’s Geometry exam to be an overwhelming fair assessment of those standards.
Not only do I take my poor results seriously — as a referendum on my teaching — but I take my colleague Kim’s good results as an indication of better practice. Kim and I have something to talk about. How does she teach the volume of solid shapes?
Bringing this back to Rhee, if those preconditions are met (accurate standards & fair assessment) why shouldn’t my results factor into my employment consequences? I feel a little weird that my supervisors (either dept. head or principal) haven’t sat me down and asked, okay, what is your plan here?
If I know what I should be teaching, if I believe that the assessment of my teaching is accurate, and if I have no plan, direction, or desire to remediate my teaching, not only shouldn’t I be rewarded financially for my teaching — I shouldn’t be a teacher.
Dan,
You are constructing a belief system about tests that is religious yet bears not an iota of veracity in real life. One semester many years ago, I taught a computer science course to two different classes, identical content.
The Monday evening class would occasionally love the material, presentation and lab work – they would make me feel like a genius. Tuesday, different class and entirely different reactions to virtually identical stuff – they made me want to jump off a cliff.
Now, you are claiming because Kim’s class had higher grades than your class she’s got it all figured out. But what if you adapt everything Kim does and your class does worse next year? Is Kim a fraud, are you a really bad math teacher, or do different kids all at different stages of development yield approximate results?
And because your class did worse and her class did worse do you throw out everything that you and Kim do because Harry down the hall had better results in year two? I hope not.
Dan, in software we call this argument the Silver Bullet solution. Like many people, you believe there’s a secret formula, a “right” way, and an uninterrupted learning progress that is linear, contiguous, and unbounded by mental capacity, learning disability, biorhythms, or childhood trauma.
It’s just a test. It’s not a reflection of teaching competence per se. Treating these tests seriously is a slippery slope.
But judging from what you write I think your teaching suffers from worrying to much about what you teach instead of who you’re teaching.
And let me beat this drum a little more. Let’s say you’re asked to take a thousand dollar per under-proficient child pay cut and given a thousand dollar per child over pay hike. Fair?
I doubt it because now the faculty all knowing the students who fare poorly on tests will use their influence to dispose of the problems. Is this how a school should run?
Or maybe the principal says Kim gets the toughest kids because she really knows how to teach geometry. Fair?
@Lori,
You are a great writer because you are a thoughtful analyst.
How on earth do we account for the fact that teens are teens?
Well, exactly. but all these discussions also ignore established studies that have shown that one year after taking a physics course, teens will be asked about phenomenon they’ve studied and recite the kinds of answers someone who has never taken physics will provide. Howard Gardner talks about this in his multiple intelligences book.
So what do we do? We ignore this and take seriously college entrance tests of this very kind blaming high schools for not teaching the stuff instead of recognizing that teen brains work strangely and incompletely – no blame to be pointed to – it just happens that way.
No teacher should ever feel like they’re a failure – that’s Rhee-diculous.
@Gary,
I love your work and I’m going to write directly to my blog soon.
“Bringing this back to Rhee, if those preconditions are met (accurate standards & fair assessment) why shouldn’t my results factor into my employment consequences?”
Because then we risk bringing too much focus on “achieving” test results rather than inspiring students to fall in love with learning. Turn a student on to life-long learning and they are an immediate success. Do THAT and it doesn’t matter what score they get on the standardized test in your class.
Dan, math is just a tool to do a much bigger job…just like any other subject area. In fact, all the tools put together are still just there to do a much bigger job.
Turn a student on to life-long learning and they are an immediate success. Do THAT and it doesn’t matter what score they get on the standardized test in your class.
This should be the mantra of every teachers union conversation with Washington.
Beautifully put.
A lá Bill Fitzgerald, just wanted to make sure the long-suffering participants of this thread caught Slate’s dispatch from the DNC.
Hello, Dan,
Thanks for the Slate piece — entertaining reading, and just goes to reinforce the idea that education reform in the hands of politicos leads to idiocy, regardless of party affiliation — and please, don’t take that as a defense of teachers unions in their current form, but rather as complete disgust for what passes as conversation around educational reform at the national level.
I’m really waiting for someone to explain why merit pay, or really, any plan with the potential to pay teachers a better/fairer wage, must be accompanied by reduced benefits. These things aren’t mutually exclusive, yet I haven’t seen a plan that doesn’t pair the potential with increased pay with the certainty of reduced benefits. If such a plan exists, I’d love to see it — although I realize that saying such a thing in this thread incurs the very real risk of additional comments…
Um…..why does this threat make people so cranky?
Pretty valid arguments on both sides, very relevant to the lives of teachers…..could someone make a vodcast episode before people get more fussy??
I’m surprised by the comments against teachers’ unions. If not for collective bargaining agreements, what would prevent a school board from paying a teacher less based not on achievement of his/her students but instead on other capricious values such as student behavior, Rate My Teacher comments or other frivolous means?
Dan, re: teaching volumes, I’m not sure what you do, but –
1. I have the students build robots out of construction paper. I find making sure they have cut out the nets and folded their own 3D shapes is essential to understanding them. Being able to even interpret/visualize a 2D drawing as a 3D object is harder for them than you might think.
2. I try to make sure they understand the reasoning behind the formulas, and for prisms in particular I do not give a formula at all. I want them to understand it’s just like if you were looking at a 20 story building and you wanted to know the volume, you’d figure out one story (the base) and the multiply (the height of the building).
3. If you want more real life connections, I recommend having your students design their own landscape. Get them to imagine their own pool design and figure out how much dirt would need to be dug out and what the weight of that dirt would be. If they want to lay down rocks, have them figure out the shape and size of the ditch (in real life it’ll be a half-cylinder, not a rectangular prism, so they’ll need to account that in).
@krasicki, no, there’s not a “right” way. It’s all particular on context. That doesn’t mean one can’t get ideas from other teachers, and going to a teacher who tests indicate does better at a particular topic than you do isn’t a bad idea. Yes, you may decide from observation that what they’re doing is stupid and terrible and their score is just luck, the phases of the moon, whatever; but if you don’t observe you don’t have the chance to make that judgement at all.
@Jason Dyer
Jason, context is indeed important. I happen to agree with what you’re saying but my argument is not that teacher’s can’t collaborate to improve their teaching but that teachers who collaborate based solely or predominantly on a standardized test score is not a compelling professional motive.
The teachers I talk to are dedicated to doing a great job and improving their techniques as a matter of professional process and growth opportunities.
Let me give you an example of what I’m talking about. In CT, the Canton schools dramatically improved their test scores on the last state tests. How did they do it? By administering the tests differently allowing the children a breakfast and later start thus more rest beforehand or some combination of similar tactics.
Now should the administrators of the tests get merit pay for this kind of capricious stuff? Should the teachers take pay cuts for not contributing to the test score improvement?
The high-stakes testing paradigm is the wrong way to seek accountability for teachers or seek insight into student learning progress. The latter is better established by the teacher and teacher accountability needs to be established from a battery of teacher observation, discussion of problem learners, department involvement, and administrative input.
Merit pay in a learning environment is wrong. A teacher cannot prove better productivity because that’s not the coin of the classroom. And superimposing misleading metrics produces a conclusion that has no veracity.
More DNC disinformation:
http://edjustice.blogspot.com/2008/08/democrats-for-education-reform.html
@Jason, thanks for the volume coaching. Gonna have to copy & paste that somewhere ’cause there’s no way I’m ever gonna find it again in here.
Bill,
That’s great. Michelle Rhee is starting a “pilot project” to pay kids for good behavior and attendance.
What part of this is a pilot? What is her experiment?
These schemes have failed to produce academic gains nearly everywhere they’ve been attempted.
Does “pilot” mean that we’ll do what we know doesn’t work, but will be unaccountable for failure?
Hello, Gary,
RE: “Does “pilot” mean that we’ll do what we know doesn’t work, but will be unaccountable for failure?”
In this case, I think “pilot” means: “We’ll do what hasn’t worked elsewhere, and we’ll spend money on doing it because it gets headlines, and we’ll justify it by saying that the system is so badly broken that we need to try something — really, anything, because the system is broken. Oh, and the kids are counting on us. Yeah, this is about the kids.”
Then, after time passes, and there have been no real results, and there will be less money in the school system, and the system will still have problems — then, people will be able to blame those wasteful, extravagant, unaccountable teachers, and this will be used as yet another reason to give public schools into the hands of for-profit charters, or to fund vouchers with public money.
But by that point, Michell Rhee will be running the Department of Education.
People like Michelle Rhee and Mary Cullinane of Microsoft are in a win/win position. If they “save” urban education, they’re heroes. If their crackpot schemes fail, they get to advance their career by being paid to say, “Even a hardworking genius like myself could not fix the toxic system full of crooks, idiots and slackers. I told you that public education doesn’t work!”
Both women have sadly been selected as NAIS keynote speakers this year presumably so independent school leaders can feel smug and superior to public school educators. NAIS used to book great novelists and Nobel laureates for their national convention. Now they seem to favor unimaginative middle managers with messiah complexes.
Bill and Gary,
You two are spot on.
What sells is perky, young go-getters who haven’t got a clue but are unafraid to repeat the same mistakes over and over and over. You see there is no such thing as scientific or empirical evidence – only belief. That and a public dim-witted enough to think that “louder, harder, more painful” solutions need to be applied to “lazy, spoiled, distracted, and unfocused” youth and teachers.
And let’s not forget to flog the negligence of parents who when confronted with children who have learning disabilities are afraid to beat learning into them.
Tough talk, bad ideas, and tried and true failed remedies for education are all the vogue. Change translates into rearranging the order of the SOS and sugar-coating it with another flavor.
To see the details of the plan visit strongschoolsdc.org
Look under the “News You Can Use” tab. Look in the last two links on that page.
My reading of the proposal is that it renders all teachers by one caveat or another “at will” employees – essentially contractors [as a software engineer I can tell you that that's not a good thing].
The metrics for teacher evaluation will be to ride the good ones till they either drop or reach a point where they will actually cash in and they will be “excessed” (teachers who are inexpensive will be eternally “good”-er than someone showing the wear and tear.
The meme being used – that children are being ripped off somehow by awful adult teachers is pernicious. Inner city children born of addicted mothers and fathers and so on are not typical children looking to learn. And Mother Teresa would have a difficult time with many of the examples teachers inherit.
To me the very conversation taking place is little more than a power struggle to turn DC schools into a very corrupt kingdom for an ever so cute and perky queen.
Oh, well.
If University education departments became far more rigorous in their expectations of potential teachers the system would ensure a higher quality product coming in the door.
And if education departments stopped playing along with fraudulent metrics like NCLB they themselves might have more veracity as a profession.
@Use Reason —
You link to strongschoolsdc.org as a web site for useful information.
Is this the same Strong Schools DC who hired teachers as lobbyists while contract negotiations were underway?
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/08/05/AR2008080503102.html
[...] She Who Must Not Be Named, or her policies, or their motivations, or their financiers (but if you absolutely must) I’m just curious what in the history of organized labor has led teachers’ unions to formally [...]
[...] comments showed a schism between younger and older teachers on this issue. Chris Lehmann’s comment outlines in a really succinct way why veteran teachers in urban districts may not embrace such a [...]
[...] the comments showed a schism between younger and older teachers on this issue. Chris Lehmann’s comment outlines in a really succinct way why veteran teachers in urban districts may not embrace such a [...]
I am veteran teacher from Houston seeking a dialogue with current and past Teach for America teachers regarding a pattern of TFA leaders and alumni in leadership positions promoting conservative ideas and profiting from close relationships with reactionary corporations while presumptuously claiming to be the new civil rights movement. I first became aware of this when a former local TFA Director, now a school board member, recently proposed to fire teachers based on test scores and opposed allowing us to vote to have a single union.
The conservative-TFA nexus began when Union Carbide sponsored Wendy Kopp’s initial efforts to create Teach for America. Union Carbide’s negligence had caused the worst industrial accident in history, in Bhopal, India. The number of casualties was as large as 100,000, and Union Carbide did everything possible to minimize taking responsibility.
Ms. Kopp wrote in her book she nearly went to work for the Edison Project, and was all but saved in financial hard times by their managerial assistance. The Edison Project, founded by a Tennessee entrepreneur, was an effort to replace public schools run by elected school boards with for-profit, corporate-run schools. Her husband, Richard Barth, was an Edison executive before taking over at KIPP Foundation.
In 2000, two brilliant TFA alumni, the founders of KIPP Academy, then joined the Bush’s at the Republican National Convention in 2000. This was pivotal for Bush, since as Governor he did not have any genuine education achievements. These charter schools do great service, but they start with families that are committed to education. They claim they are improving public schools by offering competition in the market-place, but they take the best and leave the rest. What sort of competition is that?
Superintendent Michelle Rhee’s prescription for improving D.C. schools: close them rather than improve them—and fire teachers rather than inspire them.
TFA teachers do great work. But better schools are only part of the solution. Stable families are more able to be ambitious for their children than insecure, overworked and struggling ones. We need national health care, a stronger union movement, long-term unemployment benefits, generous college funding, immigration reform, trade policy, freedom for alternative lifestyles and reductions in military spending. Specifically, we need to enlarge the middle class by any means necessary.
Our society has failed our schools by permitting the middle class to shrink. It’s not the other way around. Economic inequality and insecurity fosters the achievement gap. Its not the other way around. Blaming teachers, public schools and our unions feeds corporate ideology and their power. Corporate domination of politics, and the weakness of counter-balancing forces like unions, are the obstacles to progressive change.
Ms. Kopp claims to be in the tradition of the civil rights movement, but Martin Luther King would take principled positions—against the Vietnam War and for the Poor Peoples March—even when it pissed off powerful people. His final speech was for striking sanitation workers. His last book argued for modifying American capitalism to include some measure of wealth distribution. I would like a dialogue about what I have written here. My e-mail is JesseAlred@yahoo.com. You as an individual TFA teacher has a responsibility here because your work gives TFA leaders credibility. Its not the other way around.