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The Lilly Endowment is the venture philanthropy outfit which owns stock in the mega pharmaceutical drug company, Eli Lilly. As a major participant in advancing the corporatization of Indiana education, the Lilly Endowment prominently finances local initiatives and national rightwing anti-public school think tanks like the Sagamore Institute, the Hudson Institute, the Manhattan Institute, and the American Enterprise Institute. Besides Mitch Daniels, past and current drug company and endowment members are embedded in everything from front groups to charter school boards in Indiana.

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation's "Measures of Effective Teaching" (MET) Project seeks to validate the use of a teacher's estimated "value-added"-computed from the year-on-year test score gains of her students-as a measure of teaching effectiveness. Using data from six school districts, the initial report examines correlations between student survey responses and value-added scores computed both from state tests and from higher-order tests of conceptual understanding. The study finds that the measures are related, but only modestly. The report interprets this as support for the use of value-added as the basis for teacher evaluations. This conclusion is unsupported, as the data in fact indicate that a teachers' value-added for the state test is not strongly related to her effectiveness in a broader sense. Most notably, value-added for state assessments is correlated 0.5 or less with that for the alternative assessments, meaning that many teachers whose value-added for one test is low are in fact quite effective when judged by the other. As there is every reason to think that the problems with value-added measures apparent in the MET data would be worse in a high-stakes environment, the MET results are sobering about the value of student achievement data as a significant component of teacher evaluations.

It's to Steven Brill's credit that near the conclusion of his new book Class Warfare: Inside the Fight to Fix America's Schools (Simon & Schuster 2011) he reluctantly acknowledges that without the support of teachers unions systematic reform is impossible. I think what happened is Brill began to realize as he delved deeper into the subject that reform is far harder than he initially thought. As a result, teachers need unions to represent them as demands for results escalate. In fact, if unions were to disappear tomorrow, school outcomes would not significantly change for the better. Nevertheless, we are incessantly confronted with claims made by theoreticians about the causes of the undeniable failures of so many schools and what needs to be done to turn them around.

The biggest new thing in American public education these days is a two-volume, 230-page, written-by-committee document called the Common Core State Standards. Forty-five states have pledged to the federal government that they will adopt the standards-which specify the math and English skills that students must attain in each grade from kindergarten to the end of high school-within the next several years. Some of these states genuinely believe that doing so will make more of their students ready for college and careers. Others are on board primarily because the Obama administration has enticed them with billions of dollars from its Race to the Top competition, part of the administration's economic-stimulus program. Within the school-reform community, the standards have set off a virtual civil war. It pits those who believe that America desperately needs national standards to catch up to its international competitors against those who think that the administration, by imposing the standards on the states, is guilty of an unwise, or even illegal, power grab.

Many of the so-called "reformers" and many of their allies among Republican governors and legislators seem to - after all, that is why they have been pushing this particular approach for a number years. If you have any interest in this topic, I am going to strongly urge you to read a just-released policy brief from the National Education Policy Center.  Titled Understanding and Improving Full-Time Virtual Schools, and has a subtitle which reads "A Study of Student Characteristics, School Finance, and School Performance in Schools Operated by K12 Inc.: The authors are Gary Miron, a professor at Western Michigan University, and Jessica L. Urschel, a doctoral student at the University.  K12 Inc. is the nation's largest operator of online charter schools, and is controversial enough that New Jersey, whose governor Chris Christie has been actively involved in undermining public education in that state, just postponed acting on a request from K12 to open a charter in that state.

"What is the purpose of education? This question agitates scholars, teachers, statesmen, every group, in fact, of thoughtful men and women," Eleanor Roosevelt wrote in the 1930 article, "Good Citizenship: The Purpose of Education," in Pictorial Review. If you were to ask even a relatively small group of teachers, administrators, students, parents, community members, business leaders, and policymakers to address the question of purpose, how difficult do you think it would be to reach a consensus?

"Pity the new district superintendent. Like any responsible educational leader, he'd like to be sure that his district's curricular materials and interventions are grounded in solid scientific research. But no sooner does he start talking with his staff, his teachers, and various and sundry "experts" than he finds that everything is "research-based," including approaches that are clearly very different from those employed by his teachers. Should he let well enough alone, or should he introduce programs that seemed to work fine in the last district he was in? Neither. Instead, he should go read Dan Willingham's ingenious new book, When Can You Trust the Experts? The book won't tell him which programs to use, but it will help him think through -- and, in some cases, see through -- the claims their creators make on their behalf. An accomplished cognitive psychologist at the University of Virginia and the author of the must-read Why Don't Students Like School? (as well as an NCTQ advisory board member), Willingham aims to make district superintendents, principals, teachers and parents into educated consumers of education research."

"The education debate rests on two faulty premises: that public schools are failures, and choice is the solution" "The "Overton Window" is not a new kind of low-glare, high-insulation windowpane. Nor is it the title of a paperback thriller like "The Eiger Sanction" or "The Bourne Supremacy." Identified by Joseph P. Overton of the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, the Overton Window refers to the boundaries of the limited range of ideas and policies that are acceptable for consideration in politics at any one time. In other words, the Overton Window is the "box" that we are constantly exhorted to think outside of, only to be ignored or punished if we succeed."

"Last month, a NewsWorks New Jersey post from public education blogger Laura Waters raised the ire of the daughter of the late Albert Shanker, the fiery education reformer and teachers union president. Waters thinks Shanker, whom she praised repeatedly in her piece, would support today's charter school movement. Not so, replied Jennie Shanker, a local artist and the union leader's daughter"

School choice has again blipped onto the Vermont political screen. The federal government is bringing pressure on the states to adopt choice schemes, primarily in the form of charter schools. Vested interest think tanks, heavily supported by the deep pockets of the Gates, Broad and Friedman foundations, have been the strong but less visible pushers. Vermont's historical choice system was founded on very different principles than today's ideological agenda.

Most of the controversy surrounding value-added and other test-based models of teacher productivity centers on the high-stakes use of these estimates. This is unfortunate - no matter what you think about these methods in the high-stakes context, they have a great deal of potential to improve instruction. When supporters of value-added and other growth models talk about low-stakes applications, they tend to assert that the data will inspire and motivate teachers who are completely unaware that they're not raising test scores. In other words, confronted with the value-added evidence that their performance is subpar (at least as far as tests are an indication), teachers will rethink their approach. I don't find this very compelling. Value-added data will not help teachers - even those who believe in its utility - unless they know why their students' performance appears to be comparatively low. It's rather like telling a baseball player they're not getting hits, or telling a chef that the food is bad - it's not constructive.

It is hard to put in words how honored I am to have been invited to speak to this group. I can think of no gathering whose work is more important to the future of this nation, or have handled this responsibility more honorably, than public schools principals in the state of New York. You are the last line of defense between public school teachers and a political juggernaut of unprecedented proportions seeking to change the way public education in the United States is organized. This movement, led almost exclusively by people who come from business and the law rather than education, is responsible for the public demonization of members of a human services profession unprecedented in American history, yet it commands virtually unanimous support of the press and broadcast media, leaders of both political parties, the nation's wealthiest foundations and some misguided civil rights leaders.

One of the problems that does exist is that most of us can't agree about the purpose and goals of education. Our current educational system born of the progressive movement, industrial revolution and other social developments of the late 19th and early 20th century has evolved into a patchwork of reforms and new ideas that emerge every few years, then disappear just as quickly, leaving a path of failed and sometimes conflicting practices and theories in its wake. Paradoxically, many of the reforms put in place 100 years ago are still in practice today. Through it all, it seems education has lost sight of why it exists at all. I know many teachers who believe their job is to teach skills, such as math or science, but that's far too limiting. When I was an English teacher, I never believed my job was to teach grammar and literature. My purpose was to teach students to love learning so they would become life-long learners. I've decided that even that's not thinking big enough.

I can think of no other profession in the public or private sector in which this kind of unreliable and potentially damaging data is made public.  The only effect of this will be to further undermine teacher morale -- already at an all-time low in this city -- and to dissuade teachers from working in our public schools and with the highest needs children.  Yet so far, GothamSchools is the only media outlet that has pledged not to publish them.  Meanwhile, the Governor is pushing a deadline of Thursday for the state and city teacher unions to agree on a statewide evaluation system, called APPR,  for the Annual Professional Performance Review, that will rate teachers 20-40% on test scores, and the rest on principal evaluations. Yet nearly one third of all principals in the state have signed onto a letter protesting this system, for reasons that are further explained here and here.  In the city there is even more discord, because the DOE refuses to give teachers the right to appeal a principal's negative rating to an independent arbiter, despite numerous documented cases in which NYC principals have arbitrarily delivered unsatisfactory ratings to teachers for political or personal reasons. Below is a letter from eight esteemed Teachers of the Year, originally posted on the NY State Teachers website, sent to the NY State Board of Regents last spring, pointing out how the proposed APPR is likely to unfairly penalize many excellent professionals, especially those work with at-risk students.  Nevertheless, on Monday, the Regents voted to go full speed ahead with its NCLB waiver application to the US Department of Education, that will further commit them to this damaging evaluation system.

The latest serving of data-driven mania from the city Education Department will likely produce screaming headlines about the city's "worst teachers." This virtual wall of shame (and fame) will live online for years to come. But does it actually help parents to find the best schools and teachers? Not really. Here's why. The ratings are based on a complicated formula that compares how much 4th through 8th-grade students have improved on standardized tests compared with how well they were predicted to do. The system tries to take into consideration factors like race, poverty and disabilities. Teachers are then graded on a curve. It's known as "value-added," because it tries show how much value an individual teacher has added to a student's test scores. Here are our top five reasons they won't help and why you won't be seeing them on Insideschools. Please add your own, or tell us why you think they will be useful.

While there is widespread agreement on the importance of teacher quality, there is considerable disagreement about what should be done to improve it, or even what teacher quality means. A growing number of researchers, policy makers, and writers in the popular press are promoting a seemingly simple and straightforward solution: remove poor quality teachers from the workforce. In the past, policy makers have dismissed this "draconian" solution over concerns about teacher rights and strong opposition from teachers unions, but many are re-thinking their position in view of claims that this approach is justified on the grounds of social justice and the ends it will achieve for students.   Despite the growing popularity and the seemingly common sense appeal of this approach to improved teacher quality, it suffers from three fundamental flaws that prevent it from accomplishing all that its advocates claim it will

I don't think I've ever seen anything like this. 15 straight minutes of bashing on teachers unions, and no one - NO ONE - from the union itself is there to respond. No one from the NEA; no one from the NJEA; no one from the local union in Fort Lee; not even a MEMBER of the NJEA - a teacher! - appeared in this segment, or afterward (the teacher who showed up later is in Newark, and therefore not represented by NJEA, but by AFT).

What is the point of evaluations? Shaming employees or helping them improve? In New York City, as in Los Angeles in 2010, it's hard to imagine that the publication of the ratings-with all their inaccuracies and errors-will result in anything other than embarrassing and humiliating teachers. No one will be a better teacher because of these actions. Some will leave this disrespected profession-which is daily losing the trappings of professionalism, the autonomy requisite to be considered a profession. Some will think twice about becoming a teacher. And children will lose the good teachers, the confident teachers, the energetic and creative teachers, they need.

The current narrative for improving education in the United States is based on two undeniable charges and several simple and compelling solutions. The current charges: Despite decades of effort we have failed to substantially mediate the effects of race and class on educational outcomes. Compared to product innovations in the private sector, innovations in the education sector are infrequently dispersed or institutionalized... they don't stick. We've all been there. Just when we think we nearing our destination.... real sustainable learning gains for students... the innovation just seems to slip away. The current solutions: Fire the worst teachers and hire the best, financially reward teachers who are most successful at improving student test scores, spur innovation and improvement through competition led by charter schools, and enact strict controls over schools that fail to demonstrate progress. This solution narrative is powerful and has gained political momentum because it has resonance with many intuitive beliefs. Unfortunately, none of these market-driven strategies are supported by substantial evidence.

So a teacher can be effective in each of the sub-components and developing overall? How is that possible? You have a problem Sir. And it goes without saying that it will be as difficult for our best teachers to be in the Highly Effective Range, EVER, as it is for our smartest fourth graders to achieve a 4 on the State ELA test. Which we're working on, by the way. We want more 4′s and more 3′s and well, even without the TESTS, we aim to do a better job, aligning to the common core, making data driven decisions, doing all of the things well that you've asked us to do. Believe it or not, we do want every child to succeed and we understand we've got to be more deliberate in making that happen through the common core curriculum and data analysis, NOT through fear and intimidation. Not through the composite scores you're instituting. Two things will happen. One, I'll have to hire three more administrators to help me with all of the teacher improvement plans indicated by your scoring bands. Two, our teachers will be demoralized, defeated, and ready to give up. We get it Commissioner King. We are going to transform this district from the wonderful, productive place that it already is into a more focused PK-12 continuum of curriculum that positively affects student achievement in big ways. And we're also going to be sure that while productive, we don't suck all of the joy out of learning. Your insanely punitive scoring bands are not going to help make that happen. Raise expectations, think the best of us, help us to get there. Reward us when we do. The scoring bands and the publicly reported composite scores will not help us get there.