Great victory in N.Y. teacher VAM case. But...

Dumb & Dumber

In a case that could have national repercussions, New York Supreme Court Judge Roger McDonough has ruled New York teacher Sheri Lederman received an evaluation that was “arbitrary” and “capricious” as part of an assessment system that was developed when John King, the new U.S. education secretary, was the N.Y. State education commissioner.

According to the Washington Post:

Lederman’s suit against state education officials — including King — challenges the rationality of the VAM model, and it alleges that the New York State Growth Measures “actually punishes excellence in education through a statistical black box which no rational educator or fact finder could see as fair, accurate or reliable.”

The judge's ruling confirms what educators and evaluation experts have been saying for years about the Value Added Model (VAM) which rates teachers on the basis of students' standardized test scores. In many cases, VAM ratings have determined teacher pay, job security, school funding, and often the very survival of schools under state accountability rules.

The ruling follows two years of mass anti-testing protests across N.Y. state, including a burgeoning opt-out movement of parents. The judge also heard evidence from national ed experts like Linda Darling-Hammond, Carol Burris, Jesse Rothstein, Audrey Amrein-Beardsly, Aaron Pallas and others.

Sanders only candidate to oppose high-stakes testing. 

But because Judge McDonough's ruling was limited to the Lederman case, VAM remains the standard in evaluation, leaving teachers to fend for themselves in expensive court cases against state and federal evaluation policies. And now the culprit in the case has been promoted to replace VAM supporter Arne Duncan as Pres. Obama's education chief.

Hopefully, the Lederman case will open the door to further broader rulings and VAM will end up in history's trash bin, replaced by more authentic and valid models of teacher evaluation.

What a pity that this struggle has to fought against, rather than with the power and might of the U.S. Dept. of Education.

So far, Bernie Sanders is the only presidential candidate to stand openly against this misuse of standardized testing.

Taking the fall for Duncan's testing madness

SEE A PATTERN HERE?...On their eighth day of deliberations, the jurors convicted 11 of the 12 Atlanta black educators and staff of racketeering, a felony that carries up to 20 years in prison. 

One thing you can count on is that when student test scores become education's stock-and-trade, there will be more cheating scandals like the one it Atlanta. In fact, they've already reached pandemic proportions. You can also count on educators being the ones to take the fall and even go to prison when the system itself is set up to reward gaming.

Watch this powerful scene from The Wire to better understand how the whole system is built on official and unofficial cheating.



As I pointed out last week, the real law in operation here is Goodhart's Law of unintended consequences. It goes something like this: "When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure."

Teachers are even being evaluated on high-stakes test scores from kids and in subjects they don't even teach, writes Valerie Strauss at WaPo:

For example, an art teacher in New York City explained in this post how he was evaluated on math standardized test scores, and saw his evaluation rating drop from “effective” to “developing.” High-stakes tests are only given in math and English language arts, so reformers have decided that all teachers (and sometimes principals) in a school should be evaluated by reading and math scores.

Sorry Arne Duncan, but using so-called "value-added models" (VAM) doesn't make things any better. So says the American Statistical Association .

Estimates from VAMs should always be accompanied by measures of precision and a discussion of the assumptions and possible limitations of the model. These limitations are particularly relevant if VAMs are used for high-stakes purposes.  — John Merrow (@John_Merrow) April 2, 2015

Goodhart's Law of unintended consequences

Goodhart's law is named after the banker who originated it, Charles Goodhart. Its most popular formulation is: "When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure."

In other words: “When you put a lot of weight on one measure, people will try to do well on that measure,” says Jonah Rockoff of Columbia. “Some things they do will be good, in line with the objectives. Others will amount to cheating or gaming the system.”

What are the consequences of grading teachers by the test? Economics writer Eduardo Porter's NYT piece refers to Goodhart's Law in the context of using high-stakes, standardized tests to grade teachers.

Luis Garicano at the London School of Economics calls it the Heisenberg Principle of incentive design, after the defining uncertainty of quantum physics: A performance metric is only useful as a performance metric as long as it isn’t used as a performance metric.

Porter quotes Randi Weingarten:

“People who claim to be market-based reformers want to sell the theory that there is a direct correlation between test scores, the effort of teachers and the success of children,” said Randi Weingarten, who heads the American Federation of Teachers. “It just ignores everything else that goes into learning.”

I only wish that Randi would have remembered that when she signed on to Arne Duncan's call for more and earlier national high-stakes testing. AFT’s position is detailed in a joint statement issued with the Center for American Progress, a Democratic Party aligned think tank.

“We propose to keep annual tests so parents have valid information about their children’s progress but want to ensure that any school accountability a system has a broader array of indicators that fully captures how our children are learning,” said CAP President Neera Tanden.

Randi and CAP's assumption here is that tests like the PARCC can really provide "valid information" even with Goodhart's Law in play.

Porter says:

Teachers argue there is no way they could isolate the impact of teaching itself from other factors affecting children’s learning, particularly such things as the family background of the students, the impact of poverty, racial segregation, even class size.   

As usual, the teachers are right.

Porter wimps out at the end of his piece, quoting rabid testing proponent and former NYC Chancellor Joel Klein who calls for reliance on so-called "value-added scores" in order "to penalize or reward teachers". Porter, like Weingarten, calls for grading teachers on student test scores along with "other measures." That is the current approach in most districts these days.

But even with the mixed-measures approach, the high-stakes tests when used to determine teachers' and administrators' salaries have more power than any of the softer measures of student/teacher performance and therefore are really all that counts. The unintended consequences include gaming the system and teaching to the tests. It also ignores the role that poverty and other out-of-school factors play on measurable student/teacher performance.

High-stakes, standardized testing is part of the problem. Not part of the solution. It shouldn't be used, even in combination with other more valid measures, to grade teachers.

More unqualified teachers assigned to schools serving poor and minority students

Harvard students are calling for and end to the university's ties with TFA.

MORE STUFF WE ALREADY KNEW…The feds are telling us once again that there's a huge disparity in children’s access to fully qualified and experienced teachers. The U.S. Department of Education Office for Civil Rights has begun collecting data on student enrollment by race and ethnicity and teacher characteristics. Their data indicates that 1) black students are more likely to be taught by a first-year teacher than white students, 2) their teachers are more likely to be paid less and 3) they are more likely to have an uncertified or unlicensed teacher.

In states like Pennsylvania, with wild charter school expansion, more than 20% of teachers are unlicensed in the schools with the largest concentration of minority students. In largely white schools, just 0.2% of teachers lack a license.

In southern, so-called right-to-work states like Louisiana, with weakened teacher unions, 20% of classes in the most impoverished schools are taught by teachers who don’t meet the federal definition of “highly qualified” — which generally means they lack a bachelor’s degree, are unlicensed or don’t have a strong academic background in the subject they’re teaching. In the wealthier schools, fewer than 8% of classes are led by a teacher who’s not highly qualified.

As I pointed out in yesterday's post, in response to the Southern Poverty Center's lawsuit, Louisiana has admitted that the state under-served special-needs students and those with disabilities.

OK, interesting, but why and what to do about it? Conservatives and corporate-style reformers are calling for more Vergara-type suits aimed at getting rid of teacher tenure  and collective-bargaining agreements which they claim, serve only to protect incompetent teachers who too often end up assigned to teach the neediest students in the most impoverished schools.

But their argument has been debunked simply by looking at the widening gap between no-union states like Mississippi, Alabama and Louisiana, on the one hand,  and union-strong states like Massachusetts where tenure rights are protected, on the other. Isn't it obvious that you don't get rid of inequality by eliminating the teaching standards that lead to tenure and other means of attracting keeping experienced, qualified teachers in the profession?

A better approach would target the regulation of the conduct and the expansion of privately-run charters schools which are often allowed and encouraged to hire uncertified teachers and teachers teaching outside of their field.

Another would be to take a long, hard look at corporate-reform groups like Teach for America (TFA) which receive an obscene about of funding from school districts, charter operators and power philanthropists  for placing hundreds of unqualified or under-qualified teachers into schools that serve poor and minority students.

ANOTHER SUGGESTION
USE supplemental Title I funding to disadvantaged schools to boost salaries to attract and retain top teachers. According to a report in POLITICO, in nearly every state, teachers of minority students and students from low-income families earn significantly less than teachers in wealthier schools, even after adjusting for the local cost of living.

More importantly, stop debasing teachers and rating them on the basis of student scores on standardized tests and other test-and-punish "accountability" systems which only discourages teachers from working in the very communities that need them the most.

Finally, we need to look at the inequities in the distribution of qualified teachers as but one component of an apartheid-like, highly-segregated education system that systematically denies poor students and students of color, access to a range of resources including equitable funding, newer and better equipped facilities and learning environments,  a rich curriculum, small class sizes and up-to-date technology.

FINAL NOTE… Pres. Obama tried to push the issue by proposing $300 million in competitive grants to push new strategies for getting high-quality teachers in front of needy kids. But Republicans scrapped the program in the Omnibus budget agreement (which many Democrats then supported and Obama signed into law).

Go figure.

Teachers not teaching in subject areas? Why not?

One of the dumbest teacher-bashing headlines ever, appears on the front page of today's Trib. "Teachers may not know the subjects they cover". Are you kidding me?

According to the Tribune:

The assignment of teachers not properly trained and credentialed to teach a specific course — a practice that has come under fire nationwide — is facilitated by loopholes in state laws and rules as well as by district hiring practices. It has occurred even when applicants with the required qualifications were available, the newspaper found.

Teachers teaching out of their subject area? Well duh! Here's a flash for you. This isn't about incompetent teachers not knowing their subject area as the headline suggests. It's really about educational equity (not mentioned in the Trib article). It's about full and equitable school funding and an end to budget slashing. And it's about sub-contracting and privatization, including non-union, privately-run charters, where certification of teachers isn't always required.

Duncan applauds Vergara decision.

Finally, it's about official CPS policy fostered nationally, by Arne Duncan and his Race To The Top initiative which mandates the firing of thousands of experienced, certified teachers and replacing many of them with unqualified 5-week wonders from TFA. Duncan claims he wants all students to have access to "effective educators." Then he turns around and applauds the Vergara court ruling in California which essentially does away with teacher tenure and job protection and allows thousands of experienced, certified teachers to be replaced by principal and district favoritism (including racial and political favoritism).

Similar policies in Chicago have lead to a sharp decline in the number of African-American teachers. As the district's teaching force grows smaller and whiter, it is also becoming less credentialed. When Rahm and BBB fire hundreds of experienced, certified (even Nationally Board Certified) teachers, including dozens of special-ed, art and music teachers along with librarians and school social counselors and social workers, who do you think is going to perform those roles?

The Trib story continues, quoting Univ. of Penn prof. Richard Ingersoll:

The oft-cited reason officials give is that they can't find or afford educators who have the proper credentials for a particular position, in part because of teacher shortages in certain areas, Ingersoll said. Yet the practice is common even in disciplines in which shortages do not exist and in states with a surplus of teachers for available vacancies, he said. "It might be because of favoritism or poor planning or some principal who wants to get around the rules," Ingersoll said.

Ah, now we're getting somewhere. Yes, district leaders and principals are guilty of favoritism and poor planning to get around rules. What rules? Well union contracts, seniority and tenure laws to name a few. As collective-bargaining agreements are increasingly trashed, what you end up with is hiring on the cheap and the debasing and pushing-out of talented veteran teachers.

And don't forget dozens of charter schools which often pride themselves on hiring non-certified teachers or having an inexperienced TFAer filling in wherever needed.

Even if IL and other states begin an overhaul of teacher licensing to close the "loopholes" it will just mean that kids in poor communities and resource-starved schools won't have access to the same courses as those in wealthier communities. For example, a recent Sun-Times article reveals that only about half of the 577 schools run by CPS have an arts teacher for every 350 students, while less than a quarter of district-run schools even provide the recommended 120 minutes a week of arts education for every student.

Rahm's plan is to increase the sub-contracting and privatization of arts education as well as other academic areas to companies and non-profits that aren't required to hire certified instructors.

What about Segrue's credentials?

SUGRUE...What really amazes me is that this headline appears on the front page of the very paper that broke the story about Catherine Sugrue, the sister of Ald. Patrick O'Connor, who was approved by schools CEO Barbara Byrd-Bennett as principal of a north side elementary school even after she had failed the principal eligibility assessment twice in the last 12 months, making her ineligible for the job.

Now is Sugrue supposed to enforce strict adherence to credentialing and have her teachers only teaching in their subject area?

She would have to start by firing herself.

Oh, and speaking of CPS credentialing, I almost forgot "Dr." Terrence P. Carter sent to us by Chicago’s New Leaders for New Schools.

New study on inequity and teacher "effectiveness" misses the mark

Yes, there's lots of evidence to show poor kids and children of color are generally being taught by teachers with less experience (or no experience) which puts them at a severe disadvantage. But the Huffington headline calling schools "racist" is one-sided and misleading. Credit instead should go to Race To The Top. To TFA. To the power philanthropists, corporate reformers, re-segregationists and private charter operators. They all contribute on this.

But a recent study from Center For American Progress takes this worthwhile exposure of discrimination and inequality to a different level. After basing their study on the new evaluation practices and teacher rating systems now in place in Louisiana and Massachusetts and accepting the premise that teacher quality can be assessed entirely or mainly on the basis of student test scores, (La. requires every teacher to be evaluated, with 50% of the evaluation rating based on test scores or  "student growth") they conclude that minority students have "less effective teachers" in general.

My problem with this broader, negative assessment of teachers who teach in schools with high concentrations of poverty, is that it measures the symptom and not the cause of the so-called achievement gap. The results from tests that are being used to measure teacher effectiveness are often correlating more with parent income, rather than what students are actually learning or anything going on in the classroom. And the so-called VAM or value-added model of teacher evaluation has already been proven to be flawed and unreliable. In Florida, for example,  hundreds of teachers were evaluated based on test scores of students they never taught or in subject areas they didn't teach.

_________________________

The Value-Added Metric Used to Evaluate Teachers

y = Xβ + Zv + ε where β is a p-by-1 vector of fixed effects; X is an n-by-p matrix; v is a q-by-1 vector of random effects; Z is an n-by-q matrix; E(v) = 0, Var(v) = G; E(ε) = 0, Var(ε) = R; Cov(v,ε) = 0. V = Var(y) = Var(y - Xβ) = Var(Zv + ε) = ZGZT + R.

_________________________

Studies like this and the recommendations that follow, miss the point. It's not just a matter of more and better professional development or redistributing effective and experienced teachers to resourced-starved or low-performing schools -- although that could help. Instead there needs to be more valid and reliable ways of evaluating and sustaining teachers as well as a focus on equity, desegregation, and improving the conditions, in and out of school, of students and families living in poverty.

Otherwise the focus shift entirely on teachers and we get to the point where the same teachers who are rated "highly-effective" when they are teaching in higher-income schools will suddenly be rated "ineffective" when teaching low-income kids. Not a good way to incentive-ize a more equitable distribution of teaching talent.

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

Courageous Saucedo student speaks out against ISAT.  

Sun-Times editorial

...CPS damaged its credibility with parents, and undermined the trust that is so essential to good schooling, by choosing, foolishly, to interview small children on such a sensitive matter without even informing their parents — the ones who made the final decision on skipping the test. CPS had the law on its side, but wisdom was nowhere to be found. -- Terrible idea to interrogate kids 

Drummond Teacher Juan Gonzalez

 Drummond teachers have said they are afraid of losing their jobs, but felt obligated to take a stand. “I stand strong  in my decision. I feel I’m on the side of right,” Gonzalez says. “This boycott of the ISAT is not about the ISAT alone,” he says. “It's about the incredible amount of testing that we give our kids.” -- WBEZ

Liberal Teacher

Then I blew my stack and asked who is really paying you to say this. How can your daughter’s charter school be closed when it never opened in the first place? Mayor DiBlasio did not close any schools. How can one close a school that was never even opened? By the way, with all the money being paid for your fake grass roots campaign, jingoistic ads and commercials, your pal Eva could build ten more charters. Of course, she hung up in the middle of my rant. -- The Public Educator

CTU Vice-President Jesse Sharkey 

 “What we see are schools that are in the poorest neighborhoods in the city of Chicago. We see schools that are as a group 97 percent African-American. These policies will hurt the students they are meant to help and it will punish the dedicated educators that have made a point in their life to dedicate their lives to working with the student population.” -- Sun-Times, CPS CEO recommends turnarounds for three schools

Veteran teacher, Gerald J. Conti

With regard to my profession, I have truly attempted to live John Dewey’s famous quotation (now likely cliché with me, I’ve used it so very often) that  “Education is not preparation for life, education is life itself.” This type of total immersion is what I have always referred to as teaching “heavy,” working hard, spending time, researching, attending to details and never feeling satisfied that I knew enough on any topic. I now find that this approach to my profession is not only devalued, but denigrated and perhaps, in some quarters despised. -- WaPo, Teacher’s resignation letter: ‘My profession … no longer exists’

The war on teachers: Test 'em all, let God sort 'em out

Arne Duncan demands Value-Added teacher evaluation asking, “What’s there to hide?”

BUSH MENTALITY...Remember when Bush and Cheney decided to invade Iraq even though they knew Iraq had nothing to do with the 9/11 attacks and that there were no WMDs? Now that same mentality is being used by the current administration, only in this case, it's applied to teacher evaluation. A stretch, you say? Take a look. 

Well we already know how crazy it is to rate teachers' performance on the basis of their students' standardized test scores, using this insane Value-Added metric.

y = Xβ + Zv + ε where β is a p-by-1 vector of fixed effects; X is an n-by-p matrix; v is a q-by-1 vector of random effects; Z is an n-by-q matrix; E(v) = 0, Var(v) = G; E(ε) = 0, Var(ε) = R; Cov(v,ε) = 0. V = Var(y) = Var(y - Xβ) = Var(Zv + ε) = ZGZ^T + R.

But here's where that kill-'em-all-let-God-sort-'em out mentality comes in to play. In Florida, where Bush Brother Jeb ruled the roost for years, about 70% of the Florida teachers are being evaluated, and often merit-paid, promoted or fired using scores based on test results from students they never taught and/or in subjects they don’t teach. 

According to Washington Post columnist Valerie Strauss: 

There are numerous problems with using VAM scores for high-stakes decisions, but in this particular release of data, the most obvious and perhaps the most egregious one is this: Some 70 percent of the Florida teachers received VAM scores based on test results from students they didn’t teach and/or in subjects they don’t teach. 

Yes, you read that right: Teachers are being evaluated on students they didn’t teach and/or subjects they don’t teach. How can that be?

Yes, how can that be? For an answer, one might turn to former Defense Sec. Rumsfeld, who after 9/11 gave the order, "Go massive . . . Sweep it all up. Things related and not.”

Different administration, I know. Same mentality, only now there's a war directed at teachers.

Evaluate teachers -- things related and not. 

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

Roger Ailes (NYT)

Fox News Chief Exec. Roger Ailes 

“I’m walking around, and I feel just all this anger. I can’t figure out where it’s coming from.” -- NYT Sunday Book Review 

Eric Holder 

“A routine school disciplinary infraction should land a student in the principal’s office, not in a police precinct.” -- New York Times

Mark Anderson 

 Remind me again: Isn't Pat Quinn supposed to be a man of the people who chose Vallas because he had a “servant’s heart”? -- Ward Room

Historian Eric Foner 

 I'm certainly against this testing mania that's going on now where you can judge whether someone really understands history by their performance on a multiple-choice test. -- The Atlantic

Wendy Katten, director of Raise Your Hand 

What Chicago parents are lacking is the choice to send their child to a well-resourced neighborhood school with funding to provide a well-rounded education that their child can walk to without worrying about traveling unsafe distances. That choice is slipping away as the district aggressively disinvests in neighborhood schools. -- Crain's Chicago Business

James Merriman, N.Y. Charter School chief 

Said that while some charters were “not getting the job done” for special education students, the district schools’ attrition numbers were also “no great shakes.” [80% of children with special needs left charter schools within 3 years-M.K.]  -- New York Times

Gates threatens to pull $40M in Pittsburgh funds unless union caves on VAM

I'm not sure if this has anything to do with AFT Pres. Randi Weingarten's sudden turn against so-called Value-Added Models (VAM) of teacher evaluation or not.

But I see that in Pittsburgh, Bill Gates is threatening to renege on $40 million he promised the district if the teachers union and PPS don't "work in harmony" to develop a VAM plan in which teachers are evaluated and paid on the basis of their student's test scores. Collaboration in this case obviously means that the city's teachers are forced to accept anything the district throws at them for fear of being blamed for losing the Gates money.

Gates pulled the same crap in D.C.

You may remember that Gates, Broad, and Walton pulled the same crap in D.C. when they, along with Arne Duncan,  threatened to pull out millions in district funding if voters booted out Mayor Fenty and Michelle Rhee. They did.

But Fenty's replacement Vincent Gray and his current Supt. Kaya Henderson (Rhee's assistant) have bowed to the power philanthropists and continued Rhee-ism (including VAM), without Rhee.

This is precisely why AFT rank-and-filers were concerned with when Weingarten accepted millions from Gates for the union's Innovation Fund. "Innovation" has become practically synonymous with VAM.

This is what happens when public schools are forced to go begging to the world's richest man in order to keep "public" education alive. The question now is, are Weingarten and the PFT willing and able to stand up to Gates' blackmail.

I had an interesting give-and-take with Randi yesterday after she Tweeted:

@NEPCtweet @mikeklonsky-I have always been leery abt #VAM-it's in contracts b/c RTTT-compelled state law- not wking in places its been tried
— Randi Weingarten (@rweingarten) 

I responded:

@rweingarten If you were "always leery" why did you praise Cleveland #VAM deal allowing dist to fire teachers after 2 yrs of bad evals?
— Mike Klonsky (@mikeklonsky) 

And:

@rweingarten @NEPCtweet But you called New Haven contract "a model" "a template". Doesn't sound like you were "leery" abt #VAM. Does it?
— Mike Klonsky (@mikeklonsky) 

And it went on from there. More probing her always leery comment on my part. No real responsiveness on her part, especially about the damage already done in New Haven, Cleveland, N.Y. and now in Pittsburgh. So much for the power of the Tweet.

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

Bill de Blasio

N.Y. Mayor-elect Bill de Blasio

"He [Bloomberg] did not address inequality. He looked away from it. He governed during the greatest economic crisis since the Great Depression and he never addressed it. We will decidedly write a new chapter.'' -- USA Today

Donald Gaynes,  Local 597 member

“I used to go down to the union hall and would be there from opening to closing,” said Donald Gayles, 64, who joined the union in 1974 and again in 1999. White workers would come in and get their jobs and leave out, and black workers would still be sitting there.” -- Sun-Times

UFT Pres. Michael Mulgrew

“Publicly, they’re like, ‘Oh, observations are supposed to be about helping teachers,’ ” he said. “But their language and their approach to it and all of their directions to the schools is like, ‘Wink, wink, it’s not about helping them grow, it’s about going after teachers we don’t want.’ ” -- Bumpy Start for Teacher Evaluation Program in New York Schools (NYT)

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

CPS teacher Ed Hershey, arrested trying to save La Casita 

"We couldn't just let them sweep it away without at least doing what we could. The school doesn't have a library and they bulldozed it. There's 160 schools that don't have a library." -- ABC News

Lisa Angonese, community activist

“He’s [Ald. Solis] been giving us so many different stories. We want him to come out of hiding to face us and to listen to the demands of the community.” -- WGN

Glenn Greenwald

At the time the "security official" called me, David had been detained for 3 hours. The security official told me that they had the right to detain him for up to 9 hours in order to question him, at which point they could either arrest and charge him or ask a court to extend the question time. The official - who refused to give his name but would only identify himself by his number: 203654 - said David was not allowed to have a lawyer present, nor would they allow me to talk to him. -- Guardian

Peter Cunningham

During the Obama administration's first term, I served as Assistant Secretary for Communications and Outreach in the U.S. Department of Education, where one of my jobs was to monitor criticism of our policies and develop our responses. One of the people I monitored pretty closely was Diane Ravitch. -- Huffington

Valerie Strauss

It takes some degree of chutzpah to evaluate teacher preparation programs with data said to be “in-depth” and “comprehensively collected” and then bury in small type the fact that some of the data isn’t actually all that trustworthy. -- Washington Post

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

Xian Barrett protests Chicago school closings. He was one of 2,100 teachers and staff fired Friday. CPS called his mother to tell her, son has been fired from his job.  

Fired Chicago teacher Xian Barrett

“The fact that there’s a script and it has in it, 'Thank you for the service to the kids’ but no details — the fact that it’s always done this impersonally. It’s not just about firing. It’s how CPS treats their students. They’re interchangeable, and the relationships in their lives are interchangeable.” -- Sun-Times

UIC Prof, Dick Simpson

“Many people know one of the fired school employees. They were fired — not because they weren’t doing their jobs, but because of how school finances were handled... Rahm Emanuel is losing the African-American vote. And independent voters are gonna be swayed by school closings and bond ratings.” -- Sun-Times 

Princeton Prof, Douglas Massey

"Unlike cities such as Chicago or Philadelphia, where segregation produced disinvestment in certain neighborhoods, the nature of segregation in Detroit meant that the entire city suffered disinvestment." -- Auto troubles, race at root of Detroit collapse 

New York teacher, Katie Lapham

The new Common Core state tests have left me despairing of the future of public education in both NYC and throughout the country.  -- WaPo, Teacher: Why the last school year was ‘crushing’

Retired Detroit worker, Vera Proctor

“Where’s the nearest street corner where I can sell bottles of water? That’s what it’s going to come down to. We’re not going to have anything.” -- NYT, Cries of Betrayal as Detroit Plans to Cut Pensions

NCTQ 'study' of teacher prep programs is good for something...

Darling-Hammond

Yesterday, on my Schooling in the Ownership Society blog, I wrote a sharply critical review of the new so-called "study" by NCTQ, of the nation's ed schools. The group, led by a gaggle of corporate-reform types, follows Arne Duncan's lead in lambasting nearly all teacher preparation programs, labeling them as "an industry of mediocrity," that churns out teachers ill-prepared to work in elementary and high-school classrooms.

Today, after reading  Linda Darling-Hammond's response to the NCTQ report in the Washington Post, I feel I'm on solid ground. Linda, the nation's leading voice on teacher preparation, calls the NCTQ teacher prep ratings, "nonsense."

It is clear as reports come in from programs that NCTQ staff made serious mistakes in its reviews of nearly every institution.  Because they refused to check the data – or even share it – with institutions ahead of time, they published badly flawed information without the fundamental concerns for accuracy that any serious research enterprise would insist upon.

What can learn about teacher education quality from the NCTQ report? “Not much”, says LDH. Without reliable data related to what programs and their candidates actually do, the study is not useful for driving improvement.

Well, then what is it good for? There is a toilet paper shortage due to budget cuts in CPS schools.

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

"Safe passage"? Yale kids will walk  past this abandoned and boarded up building at 73rd & Princeton on way to their "receiving" school.  | Jessica Koscielniak ~ Sun-Times

Rev. Marshall Hatch, in front of Tilton 

“That was a cartel, right on the side of the school. . . . This is where the folks know how to find them.” -- Sun-Times

Angelense Jones, a third-grade teacher at Overton Elementary

“You’re not taking them to a better school, to a better environment." -- Marchers, led by teachers union, speak out against school closings

Daniel del Pielago, Empower DC

“We are fighting not only to have equal access to neighborhood public schools but to save the fabric of our communities that is threatened by displacement and gentrification, This is as much about who gets to live in DC ten years from now as it is about our schools.” -- WaPo, "Judge declines to block D.C. school closures"

Fran Spielman, Chicago City Hall reporter

 Down was up and up was down as Emanuel joined business and labor leaders at McCormick Place to begin the formidable job of selling the concept of using more than $100 million in public money to bankroll a 10,000-seat arena near McCormick Place. -- Sun-Times

Award-winning Principal Carol Burris of South Side High School in N.Y.

Creating bell curves of relative educator performance may look like progress and science, but these are measures without meaning, and they do not help schools improve. -- The Answer Sheet

LETTER FROM A CHICAGO TEACHER

Dear Friends,

Today I received a letter from my principal informing me that I will not have a job next  fall. This was after I received a letter from her dated March 12 confirming that she wants me to teach next year.

I've been effectively fired, and it has absolutely nothing to do with my performance. I have tenure and I've received a rating of outstanding" for each of the thirteen years I've been with CPS. I've been observed by principals, teachers and even principals from other schools and always the evaluation has been positive.

But the mayor has decided that our school is going to change into an IB school and apparently that means that principals can hire and fire who they want; and those decisions are all based on who these principals personally like or dislike.

Just an update. Take care.
Name withheld.

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

The Strip/ By Brian McFadden

Linda Darling-Hammond

"If it moves, we test it." -- NYT, "The Test? Find More Straight-A Teachers"

Jackson Potter, CTU

Mayor Emanuel has a responsibility to back this train off the cliff and do the right thing. -- Sun-Times, Op-ed

Michael Winerip

 Ms. Moner told Mr. Hyde that she carried the tests in a tote bag to the principal, Clarietta Davis, who put on gloves before touching them. -- NYT, "Ex-Schools Chief in Atlanta Is Indicted in Testing Scandal"

More Winerip

What made Dr. Hall just about untouchable was her strong ties to local business leaders. Atlanta prides itself in being a progressive Southern city when it comes to education, entrepreneurship and race — and Dr. Hall’s rising test scores were good news on all those fronts. She is an African-American woman who had turned around a mainly poor African-American school district, which would make Atlanta an even more desirable destination for businesses.

Valerie Strauss

Anyone following school reform over the past decade knows exactly what happened. Under No Child Left Behind, president George W. Bush’s chief education initiative, and then Race to the Top, President Obama’s central education program, placed increasingly high stakes on standardized test scores. They had to go up, or else there would be negative consequences not just for students but schools and teachers and principals. -- WaPo, "Atlanta test cheating, Tip of the Iceberg"?

Cruising the blogs

When it csomes to ed bloggers, some of my favorites can be found on NEPC's aptly-named Best of the Ed Blogs, including the likes of Ravitch, Ferlazzo, Thomas, Cuban, etal... In this post, Stanford prof, Larry Cuban wrestles with the progressive/traditional teaching duality when one of his students innocently describes him as a "traditional" teacher. He is and isn't.

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After reading Anthony Cody's favorable review of Lois Weiner's new book, "The Future of Our Schools, Teachers Unions and Social Justice", I ordered a copy from Haymarket Books for possible use in my winter quarter course.

“Education is growth" ― John Dewey 

Another EdWeek (Teacher) blogger, Elena Aguilar offers advice to fellow teacher-coaches in her "Art of Coaching Teachers" blog. I'm a little put off (biased?) by the title and the patronizing tone it projects. It's not that I'm anti-coach. I am a high school basketball coach (among other things) and also direct the Small Schools Workshop where lots of "coaching" of willing teachers and principals has taken place over the years. I appreciate the teacher-as-coach metaphor and what it connotes in the way of democratic teaching/learning. And as a coach, and a teacher, I appreciate being coached by others in my field who are willing to share their experience and knowledge with me.

So why do I feel that old chill run up my spine when I read Aguilar's response to a San Diego math coach complaining that she is seeing "no growth" in the teachers he/she is working with. This all too common response on the part of professional-developers says more about them than it does about the teachers they are trying (unsuccessfully) to coach.

 The coach has no business making such an evaluation. No growth is really a death pronouncement. Isn't it? What kind of teacher would ever deem one of their students to be "no growth."  It sounds like this coach means, I can't get these teachers to do what I want them to do. Big difference from no-growth. This coach needs to go.

But even Aguilar's response to her fellow coaching artist, smacks of the same patronizing tone towards teaching professionals. Maybe it's the way she refers to them as "your teachers" as in,

"Dear Stumped, I know how hard it can be to feel like your teachers aren't making growth ..." 

Yes, that's it.

Test-based evals, 'merit" pay at issue in Evergreen Park strike

Passing cars honk in support of Evergreen Park teachers

As Chicago teachers prepare to vote today on their new contract, teachers and support staff in the predominantly white, working-class Chicago suburb of Evergreen Park went on strike this morning. Negotiations have been dragging on since April. Highland Park and Crystal Lake teachers could follow suit later this month if they are still without a decent contract.

Among the things at issue are forced cuts in health care and retirement benefits. The board is also trying to force a new evaluation plan on teachers using "merit pay" based on students' standardized test scores. Seems to be a pattern here. Here's hoping the EP teachers get some real backing from IEA leaders who were conspicuously invisible during the Chicago teachers strike.

Chicago teachers are expected to vote overwhelming to accept their hard-won contract. A yes vote would also represent a strong show of support for the CTU leadership and Pres. Karen Lewis. Here are the details of the new contract.

I had to chuckle at yesterday's Sun-Times editorial telling Chicago teachers which way to vote today. As if anyone gives a crap what the S-T editors want. Likewise for the members of a tiny ultra-"left" sect who've been trying their best to get in front of T.V.cameras, calling the union leadership "sellouts" and telling teachers to vote no.

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

On Sunday afternoon, nearly 1,000 people, practically all of them African American, answered Ed Gardner’s call to rally at 95th and Western to protest the continued lack of black workers on construction sites in Chicago.|

Mary Mitchell

They were young and old, teachers and parents, churchgoers and hell-raisers, politicians and their bashers marching alongside the well-to-do and those not doing so well. Protesters converged from both directions on Western — at times spilling out into the street and stopping traffic between 95th and 91st and Western, chanting: “If we don’t work. No one works.”  -- Sun-Times  

Carl Hiaasen 

Next time you reach for Angel Soft toilet paper, think of the Koch brothers. -- Miami Herald

Michelle Rhee

 Although his stance made perfect sense to me, it surprised many political observers. After all, Emanuel is a favorite within the Democratic Party, and teachers unions have long been allied with the party. --  Charleston Daily Mail, "Democrats need to stand up to teachers"

Kathryn Strom

The “no excuses” rhetoric (i.e, “poverty is not an excuse for failure”) is one that is dearly beloved by the corporate education reformers  because it allows them to perpetuate (what many recognize to be) the American myth of meritocracy and continue the privatization movement under the guise of “improving schools” while avoiding addressing deeply entrenched inequities that exist in our society and are perpetuated by school structures. -- Washington Post, "The bottom line on ‘no excuses’ and poverty in school reform"

Jay Mathews

The best charters don’t use the assessment systems reformers want regular schools to use.  -- Washington Post, Class Struggle