Group items tagged

Recent data shows anti-union school "reformers" hoisted on their own petard. After insisting that test scores should be the chief measure of schools, a flurry of recent test results has refuted claims that non-union charter schools exceed unionized public ones.

A New York state appellate court has ruled New York City must release reports that measure public school teachers' effect on their student test scores - complete with the teachers' names.

The judge also wrote that Regents and the state Education Department cannot prescribe that a certain portion-two-thirds-of the remaining 60 points have to be based on classroom observations and no more than 5 points on evidence that teachers set and pursue professional growth goals.  He said those aspects of the regulations are invalid. Also invalid is the part of the regulations that would result in a teacher's being evaluated as "ineffective" solely based on the results of one student test. Teachers who receive composite scores under 65 would be deemed "ineffective."

"Tennessee education officials say they're taking steps to address teachers' concerns about a new evaluation system that for the first time will use students' standardized test scores as part of the process."

We have read about all of the "cheating scandals" across our nation and how the tests need to be made more "secure." I want to take a moment of your time and tell you about a lesson that a handful of students taught me two years ago and it is a lesson that I believe can absolutely destroy the push toward using student standardized test scores to evaluate schools and individual educators because it shows that the test can never be truly "secure."

At the meetings of the National Conference of State Legislatures in San Antonio this week, lawmakers from around the country heard a learned presentation from  education-finance professor James Guthrie of the Bush Institute at Southern Methodist University, purporting to show how the state is not getting its money's worth from  Texas public schools. Defining productivity in terms of the ratio of dollars invested to points scored by Texas students on the National Assessment of Educational Progress, Guthrie painted a dismal picture of public financial folly-a pattern of  growing investments for little gain that no private business would tolerate. Guthrie dismissed as inefficient state policies and attendant expenditures to reduce class size, provide certified teachers, and retain experienced teachers.

Fifty years ago there was no relationship between body counts and our national goals in Vietnam. Today there is no relationship between test scores and meaningful education. We count constantly, but not what counts.

Estimates using admissions lotteries suggest that urban charter schools boost student achievement, while charter schools in other settings do not. We explore student-level and school-level explanations for these differences using a large sample of Massachusetts charter schools. Our results show that urban charter schools boost achievement well beyond ambient non-charter levels (that is, the average achievement level for urban non-charter students), and beyond non-urban achievement in math. Student demographics explain some of these gains since urban charters are most effective for non-whites and low-baseline achievers. At the same time, non-urban charter schools are uniformly ineffective. Our estimates also reveal important school-level heterogeneity in the urban charter sample. A non-lottery analysis suggests that urban schools with binding, well-documented admissions lotteries generate larger score gains than under-subscribed urban charter schools with poor lottery records. We link the magnitude of charter impacts to distinctive pedagogical features of urban charters such as the length of the school day and school philosophy. The relative effectiveness of urban lottery-sample charters is accounted for by over-subscribed urban schools' embrace of the No Excuses approach to education.

Estimates using admissions lotteries suggest that urban charter schools boost student achievement, while charter schools in other settings do not. We explore student-level and school-level explanations for these differences using a large sample of Massachusetts charter schools. Our results show that urban charter schools boost achievement well beyond ambient non-charter levels (that is, the average achievement level for urban non-charter students), and beyond non-urban achievement in math. Student demographics explain some of these gains since urban charters are most effective for non-whites and low-baseline achievers. At the same time, non-urban charter schools are uniformly ineffective. Our estimates also reveal important school-level heterogeneity in the urban charter sample. A non-lottery analysis suggests that urban schools with binding, well-documented admissions lotteries generate larger score gains than under-subscribed urban charter schools with poor lottery records. We link the magnitude of charter impacts to distinctive pedagogical features of urban charters such as the length of the school day and school philosophy. The relative effectiveness of urban lottery-sample charters is accounted for by over-subscribed urban schools' embrace of the No Excuses approach to education.

Back in March, USA Today broke the story about test score cheating in the Washington, DC school system under Michelle Rhee's watch. Since then, Rhee has been cozy with the DeVos family, Rick Scott, worked to undermine Tennessee schools, and continues her crusade with the assistance of former DNC official Hari Sevugan to bust unions in her quest "for the children." Yet, she is curiously circumspect when it comes to answering allegations on the cheating scandals, particularly the Washington, DC cheating scandal.

In a New York City middle school, the principal asked teachers to spend fifteen minutes a day with students practicing how to answer multiple-choice math questions in preparation for the state-mandated test. One teacher protested, explaining she taught Italian and English, not math. But the principal insisted, and she followed his directive. As you might suspect, the plan failed, and in the end, fewer than one in four New York City middle schoolers passed the exam. While the importance of the test dominated the formal curriculum, the lessons learned through the hidden curriculum were no less powerful. Students learned that test scores mattered more than English or Italian, and that teachers did not make the key instructional decisions. In fact once the test was over, one-third of the students in her class stopped attending school, skipping the last five weeks of the school year.

Recognizing that the teacher evaluation system in place in the Los Angeles Unified School District is hopelessly flawed, school officials are testing a new version consisting of detailed observations, student and parent feedback, and standardized test scores ("Los Angeles teachers test a pilot evaluation program," Los Angeles Times, Aug. 15). If the strategy, which is underway at 104 schools, passes muster, it will be implemented by the 2012-13 school year.

A decade ago, the No Child Left Behind Act ushered in an era of federally driven educational accountability focused on narrowing the chasms between the test scores and graduation rates of students of different incomes and races. The result was a whole new way of speaking and thinking about the issue: "Achievement gaps" became reformers' catch phrase, and closing those gaps became the goal of American education policy.

Unfortunately the mainstream media continue to repeat without dispute Suransky's claim that the progress reports were much more "stable" this year, even though 60% of schools changed grades.     Not one reporter, to my knowledge anyway, has bothered to point out how experts have shown that 32-80% of the annual gains or losses in scores at the school level are essentially random - and yet 60% of the school grade is based upon these annual gains or losses. 

The key to the success of KIPP schools, to my mind, is the network's commitment to finding the best possible leader for each school and leaving that person, and the teachers he or she hires, to decide as a team what methods work best for students. All they have to do is show, with test scores, that their students are showing significant achievement gains that will put them on a path to college.

I've posted a few blogs recently on the topic of Student Growth Percentile Scores, or SGPs and how many state policymakers have moved to adopt these measures and integrate them into new evaluation systems for teachers. In my first post, I argued that SGPs are simply not designed to make inferences about teacher effectiveness.

If you read media reports about education, a lot of the stories you see make extraordinary claims about remarkable, heart-warming turnarounds in student achievement, which are often debunked some time later. This cycle of enthusiasm-debunking-disappointment gets us nowhere in improving outcomes for kids. Genuine miracles--dramatic turnarounds in formerly low-achieving schools--are just as likely in education as they are in any other field. That is, not very likely at all. In fact, most miracles in education turn out on inspection to be due to a change in the students served (as when a new charter or magnet school attracts higher performing students) or changes in demographics (as when school catchment areas are gentrifying). Apparent miracles may be due to changes in tests (as when an entire state gains in one year due to a change to an easier test), or due to other redefinitions of outcomes (as when districts reduce their standards for high school graduation and graduation rates increase). All too often "miracles" never happened at all, as when "turned around" schools deliver poor scores or graduation rates, or when large changes occur for one year but reverse in the following year, or when schools improve on one measure but all other indicators are poor.

I've already beaten the issue of the various flaws, misrepresentations and outright data abuse in the Third Way middle class report into the ground on this blog. And it's really about time for that to end. Time to move on. But here is one simple illustration which draws on the same NAEP data compiled and aggregated in the Middle Class report. For anyone reading this post who has not already read my others on the problems with the definition of "Middle Class," and related data abuse & misuse please start there

In the latest issue of the New York Review of Books, Diane Ravitch, who has been writing critically and incisively for the last five years about the inadequacies of the "School Reform" movement, wrote a review of a book by Steven Brill called Class Warfare: Inside the Fight to Fix America's Schools (New York Review of Books, (9/29/2011) www.nybooks.com. ) The review itself convincingly dissects Brill's book for what it is: an advocacy for charter schools, standardized testing and other measures of the so-called "reformers" who are, essentially, defenders of the economic status quo. Since there has been no measurable improvement in student scores, as determined by reliable tests like the NAEP (National Assessment of Educational Progress) over the last decade, one would hope that some sensible policies might be considered to replace those failed ones. And there seem to be a few glimmers of hope, although they are only glimmers.

After a long summer involving layoff notices and late placements, Detroit Public School teachers are now faced with improper classroom assignments. In addition to the previous assignment of special education students to general classrooms, Emergency Manager Roy Roberts has placed special needs teachers in general education classes, where they are forced to provide instruction in areas where they don't have any experience.