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"In a direct challenge to New York's most high-profile education initiative, school superintendents from across the region are beginning an independent review of the accuracy of state-generated teacher ratings that are based on student test scores. The Lower Hudson Council of School Superintendents has hired a research center at the University of Wisconsin to study the state's first round of teacher scores, released last summer, and to evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of New York's approach. At least 80 school districts in the Lower Hudson Valley and Long Island are turning over data on thousands of students and teachers - all anonymously - so that researchers can run the numbers."

"Yesterday, Matt Di Carlo over at Shankerblog put out his April fools post. The genius of the post is in its subtlety.  Matt put together a few graphs of longitudinal NAEP data showing that Maryland had made greater than average national gains on NAEP and then asserted that these gains must therefore be a function of some policy conditions that exist in Maryland. In the Post-RTTT era, Maryland has been the scorn of "reformers" because it just won't get on board with large scale vouchers and charter expansion and has resisted follow through on test-score based teacher evaluation. Taking a poke a reformy logic, Matt asserted that perhaps the low charter share and lack of emphasis on test score based teacher evaluation… along with a dose of decent funding might be the cause of Maryland's miracle! Of course, these assertions are no more a stretch than commonly touted miracles in Texas in the 1990s, Florida or Washington DC, most of which are derived from making loose connections between NAEP trend data and selective discussion of preferred policies that may have concurrently existed.  The difference is that Matt was poking fun at the idea of making bold, decisive, causal inferences from such data. Such data raise interesting questions. What I found so fun and at the same time deeply disturbing about Matt's post is that the assertions he made in satire… were nowhere near as absurd as many of the assertions made in studies/reports, etc. I discussed here on my blog over the years. Here are but a few examples of "stuff" presented as serious/legit policy evidence, that make Matt's satirical assertions seem completely reasonable."

What has happened in the past two years? Let's see: Race to the Top promoted the idea that teachers should be evaluated by the test scores of their students; "Waiting for 'Superman'" portrayed teachers as the singular cause of low student test scores; many states, including Wisconsin, Florida, Louisiana, Michigan, Indiana, and Ohio have passed anti-teacher legislation, reducing or eliminating teachers' rights to due process and their right to bargain collectively; the Obama administration insists that schools can be "turned around" by firing some or all of the staff. These events have combined to produce a rising tide of public hostility to educators, as well as the unfounded beliefs that schools alone can end poverty and can produce 100 percent proficiency and 100 percent graduation rates if only "failing schools" are closed, "bad" educators are dismissed, and "effective" teachers get bonuses. Is it any wonder that teachers and principals are demoralized?

Reviewers Guarino and Stacy question the emphasis placed on validating classroom observations with test score gains. Observation scores may pick up different aspects of teacher quality than do test-based measures. It is possible that neither type of measure used in isolation captures a teacher's contribution to all the useful skills that students learn in schools. From this standpoint, the authors' conclusion that multiple measures of teacher effectiveness are needed is justifiable. The omission of relevant information is a shortcoming of the report. Key details regarding the study design and methodological approach are lacking.

Nearly 5,000 children qualified for gifted and talented kindergarten seats in New York City public schools in the fall, 22 percent more than last year and more than double the number four years ago, setting off a fierce competition for the most sought-after programs in the system. On their face, the results, released on Friday by the Education Department, paint a portrait of a city in which some neighborhoods appear to be entirely above average. In Districts 2 and 3, which encompass most of Manhattan below 110th Street, more students scored at or above the 90th percentile on the entrance exam, the cutoff point, than scored below it. But experts pointed to several possible reasons for the large increase. For one, more middle-class and wealthy parents are staying in the city and choosing to send their children to public schools, rather than moving to the suburbs or pursuing increasingly expensive private schools. And the switch to a test-based admissions system four years ago has given rise to test-preparation services, from booklets costing a few dollars to courses costing hundreds or more, raising concerns that the test's results were being skewed.

If Philadelphia is looking to New York City as the exemplar of "best practices" for improving schools by organizing them into support networks, it is looking in the wrong place, according to historian and education analyst Diane Ravitch. "New York City has not had any great success," said Ravitch, in town Wednesday for the conference of the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics. "New York used to boast of dramatic test score gains, but they disappeared in 2010." In that year, the state's Department of Education acknowledged that the cut scores had been dropping on the standardized tests. "All the gains disappeared," she said.

In recent years, interest has grown in using classroom observation as a means to several ends, including teacher development, teacher evaluation, and impact evaluation of classroom-based interventions. Although education practitioners and researchers have developed numerous observational instruments for these purposes, many developers fail to specify important criteria regarding instrument use. In this article, the authors argue that for classroom observation to succeed in its aims, improved observational systems must be developed. These systems should include not only observational instruments but also scoring designs capable of producing reliable and cost-efficient scores and processes for rater recruitment, training, and certification. To illustrate how such a system might be developed and improved, the authors provide an empirical example that applies generalizability theory to data from a mathematics observational instrument.

There is much handwringing about low educational attainment in the United States these days. We hear constantly about U.S. rankings on assessments like the international PISA tests: The United States was 14th in reading, 21st in science, 25th in math in 2009, for example. We hear about how young children in high-poverty areas are entering kindergarten unprepared and far behind many of their classmates. Middle school students from low-income families are scoring, on average, far below the proficient levels that would enable them to graduate high school, go to college, and get good jobs. Fewer than half of high school students manage to graduate from some urban schools. And too many poor and minority students who do go on to college require substantial remediation and drop out before gaining a degree. There is another story we rarely hear: Our children who attend schools in low-poverty contexts are doing quite well. In fact, U.S. students in schools in which less than 10 percent of children live in poverty score first in the world in reading, out-performing even the famously excellent Finns.

The double-entry-journal incident was part of my induction into New York City public schools. There, the rubric (which usually emphasized appearance and format) ruled supreme; if you did everything just so, you could get a good score, while if you diverged from the instructions but had a compelling idea, you could be penalized. I saw rubrics applied to student work, teachers' lessons, bulletin boards, classroom layout, group activities, and standardized tests. I will comment on the last of these-rubrics on standardized tests-and their bearing on the recent publication of New York City teachers' value-added ratings (their rankings based on student test score growth).

Ever since the debacle of Pineapplegate, it is widely recognized by everyone other than the publishing giant Pearson that its tentacles have grown too long and too aggressive. It is difficult to remember what part of American education has not been invaded by Pearson's corporate grasp. It receives billions of dollars to test millions of students. Its scores will be used to calculate the value of teachers. It has a deal with the Gates Foundation to store all the student-level data collected at the behest of Race to the Top. It recently purchased Connections Academy, thus giving it a foothold in the online charter industry. And it recently added the GED to its portfolio. With the U.S. Department of Education now pressing schools to test children in second grade, first grade, kindergarten - and possibly earlier - and with the same agency demanding that schools of education be evaluated by the test scores of the students of their graduates (whew!), the picture grows clear. Pearson will control every aspect of our education system.

Using a statistical technique called value-added modeling, the Teacher Data Reports compare how students are predicted to perform on the state ELA and math tests, based on their prior year's performance, with their actual performance. Teachers whose students do better than predicted are said to have "added value"; those whose students do worse than predicted are "subtracting value." By definition, about half of all teachers will add value, and the other half will not. Carolyn Abbott was, in one respect, a victim of her own success. After a year in her classroom, her seventh-grade students scored at the 98th percentile of New York City students on the 2009 state test. As eighth-graders, they were predicted to score at the 97th percentile on the 2010 state test. However, their actual performance was at the 89th percentile of students across the city. That shortfall-the difference between the 97th percentile and the 89th percentile-placed Abbott near the very bottom of the 1,300 eighth-grade mathematics teachers in New York City. How could this happen? Anderson is an unusual school, as the students are often several years ahead of their nominal grade level. The material covered on the state eighth-grade math exam is taught in the fifth or sixth grade at Anderson. "I don't teach the curriculum they're being tested on," Abbott explained. "It feels like I'm being graded on somebody else's work."

Section 1002.33(23), Florida Statutes, requires the Florida Department of Education to prepare an annual statewide analysis of student achievement in charter schools versus the achievement of comparable students in traditional public schools. This report of charter school student performance fulfills the statutory requirement for the 2010-11 school year. The analysis examines the average performance of charter school students and traditional public school students using eight years of Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test (FCAT) reading and math scores, as well as the FCAT science test scores that were added to the school grading calculation in 2007-08. Only students who were enrolled in a charter school or a traditional public school for an entire school year are included in the analysis. Limiting the analysis to include only full-year students is consistent with the state's school accountability system for awarding school grades under the A+ Plan. In addition, the report compares charter and traditional public schools in terms of achievement gaps and student learning gains.

This book aims to inform the policy debate by examining four primary research questions in several geographic locations: (1) What are the characteristics of students transferring to charter schools? (2) What effect do charter schools have on test-score gains for students who transfer between TPSs and charter schools? (3) What is the effect of attending a charter high school on the probability of graduating and of entering college? (4) What effect does the introduction of charter schools have on test scores of students in nearby TPSs? We  examine similarities and diferences in the answers to these questions across locations, seeking insights about the policy levers that might be available to improve the outcomes associated with charter schools.

Appearing with union officials in the Capitol, Governor Andrew Cuomo called the agreement "a victory for all New York State." Diane Ravitch, an education expert and professor at New York University, doesn't like the deal at all. Under the deal, 60 percent of a teacher's evaluation will be based on subjective classroom observations by the principal or other school officials, and up to 40 percent will be based on student scores on statewide standardized tests. In an email to me, Ravitch said, "40% is too much, in my view" and "evaluations should be conducted by experienced professionals." She said the plan could result in unfairly low evaluation scores for teachers dealing with students who are not prepared for standardized tests (for example, students with learning disabilities and those who are not proficient in English).

Unlike the Texas miracle, the Harvard-Columbia revelations are not based on fraudulent numbers. But what is deeply problematic is the spin that the authors give to their findings. The study examined the incomes of adults who, as children in the 4th through the 8th grades, had teachers of different "Value Added" scores, with Value Added defined as improvement in the scores of students on standardized tests. The study claims that the individuals who had excellent teachers as children have higher incomes as adults; we will examine the validity of this claim below. But first we must ask what these higher incomes mean. When they were children, these individuals were poor. What the H-C authors fail to mention is that even when they had excellent teachers as children and therefore have higher incomes as adults, these individuals, despite their higher incomes, remain poor.

I was part of a National Academies of Science committee that was asked to carefully review the nature and implications of America's test-based accountability systems, including school improvement programs under the No Child Left Behind Act, high school exit exams, test-based teacher incentive-pay systems, pay-for-scores initiatives and other uses of test scores to evaluate student and school performance and determine policy based on them. We spent nearly a decade reviewing the evidence as it accumulated, focusing on the most rigorous and credible studies of incentives in educational testing and sifting through the results to uncover the key lessons for education policymakers and the public. Our conclusion in our report to Congress and the public was sobering: There are little to no positive effects of these systems overall on student learning and educational progress, and there is widespread teaching to the test and gaming of the systems that reflects a wasteful use of resources and leads to inaccurate or inflated measures of performance.

A new study by two French researchers published in the Journal of Psychology: General shows how telling students that failure is a natural element of learning -- instead of pressuring them to succeed -- may increase their academic performance. "Teachers should not hesitate to tell children that what they're going to do is very difficult," said author Jean-Claude Croizet, a University of Poitiers professor. He conducted the study with Poitiers postdoctoral student Frederique Autin. The study's findings, publicized by the American Psychological Association, come amid mounting cries against high-stakes standardized tests in the U.S. As more and more states seek to tie students' standardized test scores to teacher evaluations, statisticians often question the validity of those exams. According to Croizet and Autin, high-stakes test trigger a psychological mechanism and lack of confidence that makes it harder to assess aptitude.

Students in Northeast Florida have been offered gift cards, parties, even cars for their performance on the FCAT.  Continuing that long history of incentive programs in the state and Northeast Florida, KIPP Impact Middle School is offering $20 to students who reach specific learning gains scores on the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test.  If all of the school's 160 students reach their targets for learning gains, KIPP Impact would pay out about $3,200 in private funds to the students. KIPP Impact, which is a national network of public college preparatory charter schools that targets underprivileged students,  earned the six-county region's lowest FCAT score last year. 

One year into the US Department Of Education's 4 billion dollar School Improvement Grant (SIG) program, giving an average of half a million dollars to 800 'failing' schools, the preliminary results are in.  Anyone who understands school reform should know that looking at 'test scores' after one year doesn't really tell you much.  It is like checking the score of a basketball game two minutes into the game.

First do no harm. In their impatience with a teacher evaluation system that needs improvement, proponents of a system based on student test scores ignore this simple moral imperative. No newspaper has done more to report on how test-driven policies can go wrong than USA TODAY, with its coverage of former Washington, D.C., chancellor Michelle Rhee and the nation's test-erasure scandals. Yet the real scandals are ingrained in these test-based systems; they exist with or without fraud. We sell our children short when we send them to schools where testing supplants teaching, test-taking supplants learning, and test scores are the ultimate goal.