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September 2, 2010 Partial value A review of technical evidence about value-added assessment of teachers has led researchers at the Economic Policy Institute to conclude that standardized test scores of students can be part of information used to judge teacher effectiveness, but are insufficient for comprehensive evaluation. Apart from wide score fluctuations year to year for a given teacher, tying evaluation and sanctions to scores can discourage teachers from working in schools with the neediest students, while large, unpredictable variation in results and perceived unfairness can undermine morale. Individual teacher rewards based on comparative student test results can also create disincentives for collaboration. "While there are good reasons for concern about the current system of teacher evaluation," the authors write, "there are also good reasons to be concerned about claims that measuring teacher effectiveness largely by student test scores will lead to improved student achievement." Some advocates argue that flawed value-added measures are better than existing measures for identifying, remediating, or dismissing ineffective teachers, but the authors feel this is a false dichotomy that implies only two options for evaluating teachers. They recommend that the Department of Education actively encourage states to experiment with a range of approaches to evaluating teacher practice and examining teacher contributions to student learning. See the report: http://www.epi.org/publications/entry/bp278 Related: http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/teacherbeat/2010/08/acadmics_slam_value-added_for.html Related: http://scholasticadministrator.typepad.com/thisweekineducation/2010/08/thompson-la-data-wars-episode-two.html Getting to "good" A new radio documentary from American Public Media, "Testing Teachers," probes whether good teaching can be taught or is innate. The documentary looks at various measures underway in Washington, D.C., and issues these raise about effects of poverty versus effects of instruction. It also asks what makes a teacher "good"? Who defines it? And how can a teacher transition into the category of "good" if he or she is struggling? Based on years studying teacher impact, economist Eric Hanushek, whose 1970 study brought focus onto the potential effect of individual teachers, says good teachers are born and not made, and a body of research seems to bear this out. However, the documentary then turns to the efforts of the Public Education Foundation of Chattanooga, Tenn., a local education fund that has paired with the Benwood Foundation to help Chattanooga implement a system of professional development for every teacher, built into teachers' work on a daily basis, along with a program of extensive new teacher mentoring. The initiative is founded on the premise that teaching is not a set of things a teacher does, but as a series of responses a teacher elicits from students. An Education Sector report has found that Chattanooga teachers have become far more effective since the initiative began. See a transcript of the documentary: http://americanradioworks.publicradio.org/features/testing_teachers/transcript.html PD flagging nationally A new report from the National Staff Development Council and the Stanford Center for Opportunity Policy in Education -- phase II of a three-phase study -- analyzes the status of professional learning in the United States, and finds some progress in increased support and mentoring for new teachers, but also finds the country has moved backward in providing the vast majority of teachers with the kind of ongoing, intensive professional learning that research shows substantially impacts student learning. In 2008, teachers had fewer opportunities to engage in sustained professional learning opportunities than four years earlier. They were also half as likely to report collaborative efforts in their schools than teachers were in 2000. The intensity of professional development -- which is closely linked to teachers' perceptions of its usefulness and its effectiveness in changing practice and improving student outcomes -- has declined in many instructional areas, including the use of computers for instruction, reading instruction, classroom management, and teaching ELLs and students with disabilities. The next phase of the report will include in-depth case studies of several states and districts that show evidence of exemplary, research-based practices and increases in student achievement. See the report: http://www.learningforward.org/stateproflearning.cfm Tricky data for D.C. New data released by D.C. Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee show that the difference in percentages of white and black students scoring at proficiency on the D.C. Comprehensive Assessment System tests narrowed from 2007 to this year, but year-to-year results show progress has stalled, The Washington Post reports. After shrinking from 2007 to last year, the gap in secondary math proficiency widened by slightly less than 2 percentage points and secondary reading scores had the same flattening trajectory. While experts caution against making judgments about prospects for continued improvement based on a year's worth of data, the development can be read as a setback for Rhee. However, "any one single data point -- or change in a single data point over one year -- is not sufficient to make overall conclusions about progress on this goal," according to Rhee spokeswoman Jennifer Calloway. Moreover, Jonathan Chait of The New Republic points out that the growing racial gap at the secondary level is entirely caused by higher rates of growth among white students. Black students had slightly higher scores as well, just not quite as high. "Blacks and whites are not engaged in some zero sum education contest," Chait writes. "The point is to raise everybody's scores." Read more: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/08/26/AR2010082606642.html Related: http://www.tnr.com/blog/jonathan-chait/77267/the-education-gap-not-race-war Does size matter? In the wake of widespread and impending teacher layoffs, The Hechinger Report examines to what extent class size really matters. Conventional wisdom says smaller classes equal better education, but decades of research show the relationship between class size and student outcomes is murky. In the early 1990s when states were flush with cash, policymakers looked to the Student/Teacher Achievement Ratio (STAR) project in Tennessee that found modest but lasting gains for impoverished African-American students in classes of 13 to 17 in kindergarten and first grade. Nationally, school personnel were then hired at twice the rate of student enrollment from 1999 to 2007. Yet Dan Goldhaber of the Center on Reinventing Public Education says the effects of class-size reduction "are pretty marginal," except in early grades for disadvantaged students. With coming teacher layoffs, Goldhaber says, "it probably makes sense ... to focus not so much on class sizes but on making sure that the teachers you keep are really effective." But others feel districts are going too far. "I don't worry about going from 20 to 25 students that much, or 15 to 20," says Michael Kirst of Stanford University. "But when you go from 20 to 35 in a year or two, I don't think we don't know the effects of that." Read more: http://hechingerreport.org/content/class-sizes-are-increasing-but-does-it-really-matter_4154/ No merit "It's time to admit that the idea of evaluating and paying individual teachers based on their students' test scores is a loser," writes Kim Marshall in Education Week. The strategy fails for multiple reasons. Practically speaking, standardized-test results arrive months after teachers are evaluated each spring. They also aren't valid for one-shot assessments of individual teachers, and it takes at least three years of value-added data for reliable patterns to emerge. When individuals are rewarded, collaboration suffers, and a high-stakes environment encourages teaching to the test. And how would schools divide credit among all the teachers who contribute to students' success? So -- why are policymakers and the public sold on the notion? "Because the idea of holding teachers accountable for their students' test scores sounds so obvious," Marshall writes. He recommends that teacher teams be rewarded over individual teachers, and that evaluations be based on a combination of individual classroom performance (through a principal's observations) and team student achievement gains (through in-school assessments). The reward, rather than monetary, should be a team score as one element in teachers' annual evaluations. Monetary incentives have a role: career-ladder opportunities for the most highly rated teachers to assume extra responsibilities for extra pay; incentives for the most effective teachers to work in high-need schools and subject areas; and denial of step increases to teachers with mediocre ratings. Read more: http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2010/09/01/02marshall.h30.html?tkn=PONCje7mnKuem39zU1RoLB2fGyCdsb2cGu1r&cmp=clp-sb-ascd Reclaiming from the reclaimers In an opinion piece in The Miami Herald, Leonard Pitts, Jr. finds us in an odd moment in history. "Having opposed the freedom movement of the 20th century, some social conservatives seek, now that that movement stands vindicated and venerated, to arrogate unto themselves its language and heroes, to remake it in their image." Even in this context, he finds Fox commentator Glenn Beck's assertion that "we will reclaim the civil rights moment. We will take that movement, because we were the people that did it in the first place!'' to be monumentally offensive. "Here's who ‘we' is," Pitts writes. "‘We' is Emmett Till, tied to a cotton gin fan in the murky waters of the Tallahatchie River. ‘We' is Rosa Parks telling the bus driver no. ‘We' is Diane Nash on a sleepless night waiting for missing Freedom Riders to check in. ‘We' is Charles Sherrod, husband of Shirley, gingerly testing desegregation compliance in an Albany, Ga., bus station. ‘We' is a sharecropper making his X on a form held by a white college student from the North. ‘We' is celebrities like Harry Belafonte, Marlon Brando, and Pernell Roberts of Bonanza, lending their names, their wealth, and their labor to the cause of freedom. ‘We' is Medgar Evers, Michael Schwerner, Jimmie Lee Jackson, James Reeb, Viola Liuzzo, Cynthia Wesley, Andrew Goodman, Denise McNair, James Chaney, Addie Mae Collins, and Carole Robertson, shot, beaten, and blown to death for that cause. ‘We' is Lyndon Johnson, building a legislative coalition of moderate Republicans and Democrats to defeat intransigent Southern Democratic conservatives and enshrine that cause into law. And ‘we' is Martin Luther King, giving voice and moral clarity to the cause -- and paying for it with his life." Read more: http://www.miamiherald.com/2010/08/25/1790858/this-is-who-we-really-is-glenn.html#ixzz0yN4iWz00 Slow out of the box A new brief from the Center on Education Policy highlights the limited extent to which school districts are implementing the four federally-mandated school reform models intended to improve the nation's lowest-performing 5 percent of schools: turnaround, restart, closure, and transformation. Approximately $3 billion was provided under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act for grants to districts to carry out these models, but as of last school year, fewer than 12 percent of the nation's school districts had implemented any of the four reforms, and among these districts, there were varying degrees of success. For districts that had implemented and seen results for the four models, there were no significant differences in the percentages experiencing positive results and those experiencing unknown, mixed, or poor results, except for the transformation model, for which more districts reported positive results. Examining the survey data by the type of community, the authors found one important difference among districts serving cities, suburbs, towns, or rural areas. Larger percentages of districts serving suburbs, towns, and rural areas were unfamiliar with the four models than districts serving cities were. The authors speculate that city districts have more low-performing schools and therefore may have more experience implementing the models. See the report: http://www.cep-dc.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=document_ext.showDocumentByID&nodeID=1&DocumentID=313 Ask a teacher Almost every teacher has thoughts on how to improve schools, and CNN solicited the ideas of award-winning teachers at public schools across the country. Almost all warned there is no quick fix. Sarah Wessling of Iowa, the National Teacher of the Year, says there should be more investment in good teachers, the kind who can change kids' lives. Gloria Allen of Washington, D.C says that instead of focusing solely on test performance, which represents one day of a student's achievements, more attention should be placed on how a student performs over the entire year. Bruce Penniman of Massachusetts, who taught for 30 years, says many districts across the country still have inadequate access to computers. Zanetta Robinson of Florida says more workshops and online training programs would allow teachers to collaborate and share effective teaching methods. Bonnie Embry of Kentucky says schools need more initiatives that capitalize on the time, resources, and knowledge of members of the community. Schools must develop stronger relationships with parents, says Sally Hunter of Texas. Michael Koren of Wisconsin says year-round schooling could help students succeed academically. And Byron Ernest of Indiana says schools should become "learning organizations," constantly trying new ideas and being open to inquiry. Read more: http://www.cnn.com/2010/LIVING/08/30/award.teachers.advice.fix.school/?hpt=C2 The costs of absenteeism, social and financial A study by the Children's Initiative has revealed chronic attendance problems in San Diego County schools, The San Diego Union-Tribune reports. About 25 percent of the county's elementary students were absent at least five percent of the time in the 2008-09 school year. Many of those missed even more school, making them "chronically absent" and putting them at risk for dropping out, committing or becoming victims of crime, substance abuse, and engaging in other risky behavior. In the 2008-09 school year, 16,614 students in the San Diego Unified School District in kindergarten through fifth grade missed 10 or more days. If each had attended just five more days, the district would have been eligible for $3.2 million in otherwise lost "average daily attendance" funds. If each had attended ten of those days, the district would have received $6.6 million in attendance revenue, according to the study. Chronic absenteeism can indicate community problems -- from inadequate bus service and unsafe walking routes to teacher-student problems, said Hedy Chang, who heads the national Attendance Counts initiative. Absenteeism hits poor and minority children hardest. "[These kids] are not missing because of European trips, they are the kids with no transportation, no access to health care, or without stable housing," Chang said. Read more: http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/2010/aug/28/school-absenteeism-has-financial-social-costs/ BRIEFLY NOTED In case you missed it The L.A. Times has published its value-added teacher rankings. http://projects.latimes.com/value-added/ Maybe it's news for Amanpour On ABC's This Week, Arne Duncan, Randi Weingarten, and Michelle Rhee somewhat cordially said to each other what they've being saying all along (although Weingarten mentioned Finland). http://abcnews.go.com/ThisWeek/week-transcript-crisis-classroom/story?id=11506701 Equity suit proceeds in Fla. A judge has denied Florida's request to toss out an education adequacy lawsuit, ruling the plaintiffs -- including three Orlando mothers -- can challenge in court the state's commitment to public education. http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/education/os-school-lawsuit-fl-20100826,0,3088324.story How about what they think of their governor? California high school students will get a chance to say what they think of their classes and teachers under a bill signed by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/california-politics/2010/08/students-to-get-a-voice-on-teacher-performance-under-new-state-law.html No one to blame but themselves Recriminations fly in the aftermath of NJ's Race to the Top disappointment. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/26/nyregion/26njrace.html?_r=2 So now they'll use them Superintendent Ramon Cortines said the LAUSD will develop and adopt a "value-added" method that determines teachers' and schools' effectiveness based on student test scores. http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-0826-cortines-20100825,0,5202499.story?track=rss Broad results School districts led by Broad Superintendents Academy graduates who have served as superintendents for three or more years are outpacing other districts in their states in academic gains, according to a new analysis by The Broad Center for the Management of School Systems. http://www.broadacademy.org/news/press/index.html GRANTS AND FUNDING OPPORTUNITIES AGI: We Depend on Energy The American Geological Institute is sponsoring a photography contest to celebrate Earth Science Week 2010. The photography theme for this year is: "We Depend on Energy." Maximum award: $300. Eligibility: interested residents of the United States of any age. Deadline: October 15, 2010. http://www.earthsciweek.org/contests/photography/index.html NEA Foundation: Learning & Leadership Grants NEA Foundation Learning & Leadership Grants support public school teachers, public education support professionals, and/or faculty and staff in public institutions of higher education for one of two purposes. Grants to individuals fund participation in high-quality professional development experiences, such as summer institutes or action research; grants to groups fund collegial study, including study groups, action research, lesson study, or mentoring experiences for faculty or staff new to an assignment. Maximum award: $2,000 for individuals and $5,000 for groups engaged in collegial study. Eligibility: public school teachers grades K-12; public school education support professionals; or faculty and staff at public higher education institutions. Deadline: October 15, 2010. http://www.neafoundation.org/programs/Learning&Leadership_Guidelines.htm NEA Foundation: Student Achievement Grants The NEA Foundation Student Achievement Grants provide funds to improve the academic achievement of students by engaging in critical thinking and problem-solving that deepen knowledge of standards-based subject matter. The work should also improve students' habits of inquiry, self-directed learning, and critical reflection. Maximum award: $5,000. Eligibility: practicing U.S. public school teachers, public school education support professionals, or faculty or staff at public higher education institutions. Deadline: October 15, 2010. http://www.neafoundation.org/programs/StudentAchievement_Guidelines.htm QUOTE OF THE WEEK "Dramatic reform will always involve trade-offs, in this case a trade of stability for dynamism." -- Bryan Hassel, co-director of Public Impact, regarding the New Orleans Recovery School District http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Education/2010/0829/After-Katrina-how-charter-schools-helped-recast-New-Orleans-education The PEN Weekly NewsBlast, published by Public Education Network, is a free electronic newsletter featuring resources and information about public school reform, school finance, and related issues. The NewsBlast is the property of Public Education Network, a national association of 79 local education funds working to improve public school quality in low-income communities throughout the nation. Please forward this e-mail to anyone who enjoys free updates on education news and grant alerts. Some links in the PEN Weekly NewsBlast may change or expire after their initial publication here, and some links may require local website registration. People wishing to add a NewsBlast subscription can go to PEN's website (http://www.publiceducation.org) and follow the instructions in the lower left-hand section of the homepage. Current subscribers can unsubscribe by clicking the appropriate link near the bottom of the NewsBlast mailing. If you use spam filters to protect your inbox, you may wish to take a moment right now to add PEN@publiceducation.org to your e-mail address book, spam-software whitelist, or mail-system whitelist. Adding the address will help ensure that you receive the NewsBlast and that your e-mail software displays HTML and images properly. |
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