The Power of Agreement

By Josh Middleton, Ed.D.

 

As I write this blog two events are occurring.  One is the subtle power of agreement between political parties and educational groups on the disservice and negative impact Common Core is having and will continue to have if allowed to be fully implemented. Second is the not so quiet rebellion by stakeholders at the local level fed up with being told by state and federal Departments of Education that Common Core is a locally and state driven initiative.  Just this morning students in Camden, NJ have walked out of classes in protest of the teacher layoffs that have been issued.  Over 200 teachers have contracts that will not be renewed for the 2014-15 school year.

I watched Glenn Beck last night on Fox’s O’Reilly Factor as he spoke out against Common Core.  Honestly, when I saw he was going to be a guest I started to cringe.  I have read a little bit about Beck and have seen him occasionally on TV, and frankly I have found him “cringe worthy” because I am never quite sure what is going to come out of his mouth, and there was a time when I thought he presented himself in a superior and sarcastic manner….. sort of the Conservative’s version of Bill Mahrer.  Throughout the interview with conservative host, Bill O’Reilly, I found myself in agreement with Beck.  I thought he accurately addressed the concerns of Common Core in the short segment.  What surprised me was O’Reilly’s apparent lack of knowledge that Big Business is in bed with Common Core Advocates. 

The best remark made by Beck is something I have tried to express over the last half-year.  Common Core proponents state these standards are “rigorous” and will help our country be competitive with the rest of the world preparing students to be college and career ready by embedding critical thinking skills.  The implication is that “we” (stakeholders who oppose Common Core) have been derelict in challenging students, and if Common Core did not come along, we would simply be asking rote type questions and not talking about opportunities that lie ahead for students.  Beck clearly states how ridiculous (and I might add, insulting) this is.  Who doesn’t want our country to be successful?  Who doesn’t want our students to be lifelong learners?   The difference as he points out is the CCSS educational model deviates from what has historically made the US unique from other countries.  We should be proud of our local control, we should continue to allow students to dream, be participants in meaningful discussions and lose and find themselves in great fiction.  We are not serving ALL students when we have a one size fits all, high-stakes, factory fashioned system.  And frankly, I have seen enough CCSS sample homework and test questions that are nothing short of asinine!

Unfortunately, accountability has become a dirty word.  I don’t think there is an educator, student, parent or board member who believes there should not be expectations of excellence in our schools, and certainly we need to be wise stewards of taxpayer money.  I am simply tired of the “let’s get rid of tenure” argument, the advocacy of Charter Schools, and the denial that schools have to do and teach more with less.  Accountability has been the unfortunate buzzword to mean expensive implementation of Common Core standards, the technology used to check how students are doing, and the naïve belief that a new and exhaustive teacher evaluation are going to turn public education around.  It won’t.  I’ve stated many times before what the wise researcher Philip Schlechty believes; you cannot change the system until you change the culture.  When non-educators begin making structural change without involving stakeholders and their culture, it will fail.  Colleagues, Common Core and high stakes testing will fail because of the rebellion by those who are in the classrooms, school offices, board rooms, and concerned parent groups.  We are not going to stand by this time and have something done TO US instead of WITH US.

Ironically a large faction of the left is in agreement with a large faction of the right:  Common Core has to go.  The Power of Agreement can go beyond that if we take a step back and agree to some basic tenets.  1) All students can learn, but learning is a function of time so we must be able to differentiate our instruction.  2)  The local community knows what is best for their schools and communities, but decision making is being usurped by state and federal departments.  That needs to stop.  3)  We need to provide opportunities for all students.  Charters draw funds and programs that should remain in the local public schools.  4)  We do need to measure academic progress of our students, but with weeks on end of testing at the expense of instruction.  I am biased toward NWEA MAP testing because my district chose it for our own school improvement plans, not for the state.  Teachers received data that same afternoon and could adjust their teaching plans accordingly.  For my district, this was not a heavy-handed administrative tool, but one used to support our students’ learning and teachers’ instruction. 

5) Lifelong learning for students is the goal.  Career and college will fall into place when learning is owned and celebrated.  6) Every financial decision should be based on students and student learning.  That means ensuring there is a safe and enriching work environment for students and teachers, and one that welcomes parents to partner where desired and needed. 

7) The best school improvement plans are developed at the local level.  Instead of state mandated templates, find schools of excellence and if one school is struggling, invest in the professional development to learn from peer schools.  8)  If technology purchases are being made primarily for test administration – STOP.  That is not technology integration.  Our labs and devices can be and should be used to support and enhance a classroom lessons.  9) The Department of Education should be eliminated.  Okay, I probably won’t get consensus on this, but they need to stop this nationalized education movement and provide federal funding with broad guidelines for its use.  Special Ed funding (besides needing to be fully funded) would continue to serve that population, but I fondly recall when Chapter 2/Title 2 Funds could be used in ways that aligned with local needs.  Bottom line is, US DoE needs to immediately stop micromanaging.  This includes President Obama and Common Core proponents running for President in 2016.

            Public education as we know it should be is attainable.  It was not that long ago when there was less state and federal intervention.  But for now we may need to develop some strange and unexpected alliances to get us there.

 

 

Middleton is a former teacher, administrator, and superintendent.  He now retired in Arizona working part-time as an adjunct professor.  He is very proud to be associated with the growing group of BATs!

Teacher Evaluations – The good, the bad and the ridiculous

BY:  James Hamric

 

On May 5, 2014, the Texas Education Agency posted some details on the new Teacher Evaluation and Support System (TESS) that has been submitted to the US Department of Education. This submission was required under the terms of Texas receiving a waiver from many of the more extreme requirements of No Child Left Behind.

This new evaluation system is slated to replace the Professional Development and Appraisal System (PDAS) that has been in use by over 80% of the districts since 1997. Commissioner Michael Williams justified this change calling PDAS ‘outdated’ and of little value of providing real feedback to educators.¹ While I have no opinion on the ‘outdated’ nature of PDAS, my concerns with either PDAS or TESS will be outlined below.

According to the details posted on the TEA website, 80% of TESS will be rubric based evaluations consisting of formal observations, self assessment and professional development across six domains. These six domains have innocuous titles and each contain anywhere from three to six sub-categories that, in turn, have multiple bullet points.² I do not have an issue with having some kind of rubric or instrument…indeed I do not believe most dedicated teachers would have any concern over having an evaluation instrument. As professionals, we tend to crave constructive feedback and are anxious to continually become better at our craft. The concern, in my opinion, lays not in the what, but in the who.

The administrators who are tasked with conducting the evaluations must have adequate training – and not just in how to do the evaluation itself. Ideally, the evaluators should be knowledgeable in the subject they are observing in addition to having a strong background in pedagogy, preferably in the form of extensive experience in the classroom. In my early years as a teacher, I was observed and evaluated by my principal who had an advanced degree in science and had spent many years as a classroom teacher. Some of those evaluations were tough to discuss, but they provided valuable feedback and helped me become the teacher I am today. In the last couple years, I have received ‘exceeds expectations’ on formal observations from two different administrators. That must mean I have markedly improved my teaching from those first couple years, right? Well, yes, I have…but I don’t think it tells the whole story.

I have had administrators tell me that they had no idea specifically what I was teaching that day but that it ‘sounded good’. I have had an administrator give me ‘exceeds expectations’ after observing a math lesson when the same administrator had previously asked a colleague how to find a percentage given two numbers. My apologies if that ‘exceeds expectations’ didn’t mean a whole lot to me personally. Don’t get me wrong, I’ll certainly put those evaluations on every job application I ever fill out. But I would sure like to know how an administrator that was highly qualified in math would evaluate those same lessons.

The remaining 20% of TESS ‘will be reflected in a student growth measure at the individual teacher level that will include a value-add score based on student growth as measured by state assessments.’ These value added measures (VAMs) will only apply to approximately one quarter of the teachers – those that teach testable subjects/grades. For all the other teachers, local districts will have flexibility for the remaining 20% of the evaluation score.¹ While the lack of consistency between districts for the 75% percent of teachers not under the VAM umbrella is a point of concern, the following discussion will focus on core teachers that will have a part of their evaluation come from VAMs.
In assessing the veracity of using VAMs to evaluate teachers, Jane David, with the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development (ASCD) analyzed several studies. Ms. David addresses several concerns with regards to fairness of VAMs such as if “test score gains are biased because students are not randomly assigned to teachers”, if different assessment instruments could lead to dramatically different effectiveness ratings and the overall stability of effectiveness ratings over longer periods. Research seems to conclude that each of these concerns is valid and should be considered when making a final decision on whether to include VAMs in teacher evaluations. Ms. Davis also notes two different studies that suggest VAMs do not do a substantially better job of evaluating effectiveness when compared to standard, subjective evaluations.

On April 8, 2014, the American Statistical Association issued a statement strongly cautioning against the use of VAMs for high-stakes decisions in the education realm:

The American Statistical Association (ASA) makes the following recommendations regarding the use of VAMs:
• The ASA endorses wise use of data, statistical models, and designed experiments for improving the quality of education.
• VAMs are complex statistical models, and high-level statistical expertise is needed to develop the models and interpret their results.
• 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.
o VAMs are generally based on standardized test scores, and do not directly measure potential teacher contributions toward other student outcomes.
o VAMs typically measure correlation, not causation: Effects – positive or negative – attributed to a teacher may actually be caused by other factors that are not captured in the model.
o Under some conditions, VAM scores and rankings can change substantially when a different model or test is used, and a thorough analysis should be undertaken to evaluate the sensitivity of estimates to different models.
• VAMs should be viewed within the context of quality improvement, which distinguishes aspects of quality that can be attributed to the system from those that can be attributed to individual teachers, teacher preparation programs, or schools. Most VAM studies find that teachers account for about 1% to 14% of the variability in test scores, and that the majority of opportunities for quality improvement are found in the system-level conditions. Ranking teachers by their VAM scores can have unintended consequences that reduce quality.⁴

The ASA statement is careful to note that there has been consistent research that growth that is both measurable and related to the classroom teacher actually makes up a small percentage of total variation. It is also established that VAMs have large standard errors, making “rankings unstable, even under the best scenarios for modeling,”⁴ even when multiple years of data are taken into account. Finally, while VAMs may provide families, schools and districts with general areas that are in need of improvement, they do not provide a way to actually make that improvement a reality.
The underlying mathematics of VAMs would be considered esoteric by the vast majority of people. Heck, I have a degree in Mathematics, consider myself to be a pretty intelligent guy, and I don’t fully understand the intricacies of these things. I am, however, aware of the substantial error that is inherent in complex models. This error is only exacerbated by adding multiple levels to the model (student to classroom to school). A friend and colleague of mine who is nearing completion of his PhD in Education Psychology with a concentration in Measurement, put it this way: “The models are sound, but, in my opinion, only in the natural sciences and perhaps some of the social sciences. We are talking about human beings as it relates to standardized testing, and it just isn’t as easy to predict.”⁵ Because of that I would not feel comfortable being put into a position of making high stakes personnel decisions based, even partially, on VAMs. Imagine a Human Resources Director, with little to no upper level math or statistical background, making those same decisions to retain or terminate a teacher.

I remember having a conversation with Karen Lewis, President of the Chicago Teachers Union, at the national conference of the Network for Public Education that was held in Austin, Texas, in March of this year. She agreed that the vast majority of educators want constructive feedback, almost to a fault. As long as the administrator is well trained and qualified, a rubric based evaluation should be sufficient to assess the effectiveness of a teacher. While the mathematical validity of value added models are accepted in more economic and concrete realms, they should not be even a small part of educator evaluations and certainly not any part of high-stakes decisions as to continuing employment. It is my hope that, as Texas rolls out TESS in pilot districts in the 2014-2015 school year, serious consideration will be given to removing the VAM component completely.

References:
¹ http://www.tea.state.tx.us/index4.aspx?id=25769811000
² http://txcc.sedl.org/our_work/tx_educator_evaluation/index.php
³ http://www.ascd.org/publications/educational_leadership/may10/vol67/num08/Using_Value-Added_Measures_to_Evaluate_Teachers.aspx
⁴ http://www.amstat.org/policy/pdfs/ASA_VAM_Statement.pdf
⁵ Text message from colleague May 12, 2014

This article can be found on James Hamric's blog here http://edreformblog.wordpress.com/2014/05/13/teacher-evaluations-the-good-the-bad-and-the-ridiculous/

Why I teach

By Kristin Vogel

            The middle school where I teach is a beautiful mixture of several ethnicities. Students claim heritage and culture from Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, Tonga, Samoa, The Philippines, and the majority of the countries in Western Europe. Our staff, however, is not as multicultural. This inevitably leads to some misunderstanding, and these misunderstandings can often damage the level of trust and respect that our students give us in the classroom.

            Our school holds dances several times a year for various reasons: welcoming the new 6^th graders, Halloween, winter holidays, Valentine’s Day, etc. During the Halloween dance this past October I was able to proactively prevent one of these misunderstandings and helped turn it into a learning experience for students and teachers alike.

            The DJ that our school hires tends to play a set of songs in the middle of the dance for our Spanish-speaking students that give them the opportunity to have the spotlight for a few minutes. Students can come on stage and dance, lead the crowd in singing along, and be part of the merriment. I was assigned to dance duty with a colleague of mine who pointed out a group of Tongan and Samoan students who looked agitated. My colleague thought they were going to fight, and when the group of 15 boys and girls walked out of the auditorium to the basketball courts he began to walk towards the office to notify the principal. I asked him to hold off while I went outside to investigate.

            Walking outside into the beautiful California afternoon I noticed that the boys had formed a semi-circle while the girls were sitting off to the side watching. The boys began to perform what is known as a haka, a traditional war dance. I’ve worked with Pacific Island students in the past, and know how important their traditions are. I began to talk to the girls to find out why the group had left the dance.

            The girls told me that the group felt disrespected that the DJ never plays their songs. “There are more Tongans at school than Korean kids and the DJ plays one or two K-pop songs a dance. It’s not fair!” By now some of the boys came over and agreed with the sentiments. “We just want to dance to our music.” I asked the group if I could ask the DJ if he had a song they wanted to play. This is where my lack of knowledge came into play. One of the boys laughed playfully, “We don’t need a song, we bring the song!”

            After explaining to the DJ what needed to happen to make things right the Samoan and Tongan boys gathered onstage, formed a semi-circle, and began to chant. Using their bodies to create the rhythm and beat, they performed the haka for the attendees of the dance, and received cheers and wild applause when they were done. After coming down from the stage they joined the rest of their peers on the dance floor while the DJ put on a Top 40 hit. As I left my assignment that afternoon the leader of the haka stopped me and said “We had never done that before at school. Maybe everyone will understand us now. Thank you.” I felt like I had done my job in diffusing a situation that could have gone horribly wrong, and hopefully shed some light on the fact that we should not assume the worst in our students.

            This is why I teach.

Kristin Vogel is a Special Education Teacher and a proud California BAT

On the "Civil Rights" Defense of Common Core

By:  Dr. Mark Naison

 

 

It is a grave error to portray the Common Core Standards as a Civil Rights measure opposed largely by right wing fanatics seeking to undermine pubic education. Not only does this offend people on the right whose views on education and social policy it caricatures, it offends liberals and people on the left who have view the CCSS as the product of the same undemocratic policies which have been undermining public education in the nation's great cities and deluging all public schools with tests.

CCSS is inextricably linked to school closings, data mining, VAM, scripted learning and a whole range of policies designed to subject public education to top down, standardized control, making it a new area for profitable investment by test companies, software companies, and management consulting firms. Given that toxic brew, to describe CCSS as in any way as "progressive" makes a mockery of that term- even more so with the term "Civil Rights."

No matter what labels defenders of CCSS place on its critics, the origins and consequences of CCSS will be subject to greater and greater scrutiny, and its profoundly undemocratic character will be exposed.

Hysterical attacks on Common Core opponents will do nothing to discourage that kind of inquiry- indeed, it will encourage more people to wonder what CCSS defenders are trying to hide

 

Taken off Dr. Naison's blog With a Brooklyn Accent

http://withabrooklynaccent.blogspot.com/

An Open Letter to the Southern Poverty Law Center on Common Core and Threats to Public Education
By:  Dr. Mark Naison

With public schools being closed all over the nation and charter schools being created in their place; with tens of thousands of veteran union teachers, many of them teachers of color, being pushed out of their jobs; with charter schools in inner city neighborhoods practicing zero-tolerance discipline and discriminating against ELL and Special Needs Students, one wonders why the Southern Poverty Law Center would issue a special report focusing on conservative opponents of Common Core as the major threat to public education in the United States today. Their report not only implicitly gives legitimacy to the most undemocratic education policy initiative in modern American History- CCSS- it implies that the greatest threat to pubic education in the nation comes from the far Right, when in fact it comes from the top leadership of both major parties.

Anyone who thinks that public education is only, or largely under attack from the Right and that liberal Democrats are there to save the day with CCSS needs to spend some time in Chicago, or Philadelphia, or Los Angeles where Wall Street funded Democrats have waged war on public schools and teachers unions. Worse yet, many of these attacks have been mandated by the education policy of the Obama administration, Race to the Top, and cheered on by its Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan

I have long respected the Southern Poverty Law Center for speaking out against racial injustice, in times good and bad, but in this instance, they have me, and many other long time supporters shaking their heads, wondering why they would see Glen Beck and his followers, rather than Barack Obama, George Bush, Chris Christie, Scott Walker, Rahm Emmanuel and the Billionaires who support them, as the greatest threats to public education in the United States

 

Taken from Dr. Naison's blog With a Brooklyn Accent http://withabrooklynaccent.blogspot.com/2014/05/an-open-letter-to-southern-poverty-law.html

BATs Weekly Roundup - Week of May 5th
By:  Marla Kilfoyle, BATs General Manager

TN BAT Lucianna Sanson was one of 20 teachers selected to go
to White House Social for Teacher Appreciation Week w/
Dr.Jill Biden and Arne Duncan!  She wore her BAT shirt!

Wow did BATs have a busy week!  On Monday we swarmed Louisiana Governor Jindal.  He has done a flip flop on Common Core! First he wanted Common Core and now he doesn't want Common Core! What is it Governor Jindal?  On Tuesday BATs flew to Ohio to call out Jungle Jack Hanna for his support of virtual charters.  Shouldn't Jungle Jack be supporting public education who visit his Zoo's and support his television show?  Wednesday BATs had a HUGE day.  First, TN BAT Lucianna Sanson was chosen as one of 20 teachers to attend a White House Social with Dr. Jill Biden and Arne Duncan.  Yes, you heard that right BATs - a BAT met with Arne Duncan.  We are looking forward to a write up of her experience with Duncan in the near future.  On the same day BATs flew to Jefferson County, Colorado where we called out the BOE for not supporting children and teachers.  The BOE of JeffCo refuses to settle a contract that would make the working conditions of teachers fair and equitable, but instead, they want to seek to privatize the district like neighboring Douglas County!! BATs called them to task - when you support and nurture your teachers you provide a great place for kids to go to school!  Thursday and Friday BATs supported the AFT initiatives #BringBackOurGirls and Alliance to Reclaim our Schools.  Please attend one of the events in your area for the Alliance to Reclaim our Schools here http://www.reclaimourschools.org/nationwide-actions  and if you are in D.C. on Tuesday, May 13th please attend the kick-off event here http://www.reclaimourschools.org/may-13.  To end our week, BATs asks all our Newark, N.J. BATs to get out the vote for Ras Baraka.  He is a candidate NOT bought off by Wall Street!  Get out the vote for a man who wants to do great things for the public schools in Newark! 

What Teacher Appreciation Week Means to a BAT
By:  Dr. Yohuru Williams

 

This week some of the worst offenders, in terms of detrimental educational policies, have been full of platitudes for teachers.  Connecticut Governor Dan Malloy for instance, whom education blogger Jonathan Pelto ranks along with New York Governor Andrew Cuomo as one of the most “anti-teacher, anti-public education”  Governors in the country, issued a press release holding a sign reading “Thank a Teacher,” even as his administration worked to effectively silence parent and teacher voices.  Arizona Governor Jan Brewer’s remarks, for better or worse, more accurately reflect the agenda of the corporate education deformers working to hijack education. "It is more important than ever,” Brewer noted in a message ostensibly celebrating  teachers,” that our students graduate high school with the knowledge, critical thinking, motivation and work ethic necessary to contribute to our increasingly demanding workforce and competitive economy.” Brewer, Malloy, Cuomo and other politicians wooed by corporate education reform, limit the scope of education to job readiness with little consideration of its impact on building civic values and the critical thinking skills necessary to contribute in a participatory democracy.

It might be too much to ask that any of these so-called leaders actually inform themselves on the issue, say perhaps by reading Diane Ravitch’s compelling book Reign of Error. However there is abundant evidence even outside the world of education that their model of reform is both dated and broken. In A Whole New Mind, Daniel Pink compellingly makes the case that we need to move beyond the old assembly line model of education and testing with schools as learning factories where children were drilled with information and their intelligence measured by test bubbles filled in by number two pencils. Pink notes that this model no longer meets the dictates of what he calls the Conceptual Age where issues can no longer be boiled down to one approved answer. Adopting his argument, high stakes testing and Common Core belong to a bygone era which is quickly fading despite its proponents best efforts to revive it. Teachers, of course, know this. This is why they have pushed for smaller class sizes and instructional flexibility that will allow students to deal with the nuances and complexities of a rapidly changing world. SAT and other standardized test scores only reveal how well students perform on such tests and not how they will respond to the demands of Pink’s Conceptual Age. We live in an era that will require them to be much more resourceful, imaginative, and creative in the ways they approach problems. Over the past decade however, we have watched as the education deformers stripped away the very programs of inquiry and instruction, including music and the arts that help students develop their creativity, thus enhancing their abilities in other areas. “The future,” Pink explains, “belongs to a very different kind of person with a very different kind of mind—creators and empathizers, pattern recognizers, and meaning makers. These people—artists, inventors, designers, storytellers, caregivers, consolers, big picture thinkers—will now reap society’s richest rewards and share its greatest joys.” The leaders Pink describes will start as learners who require teachers to think outside the box or more appropriately outside the bubble. Teachers who value the range of senses, he posits, are essential to the future. They understand the importance of “empathy” and “play” that can only be realized when student creativity is unleashed rather than bottled.

Longtime CBS News Anchor Dan Rather perhaps best expressed these humanistic values of teaching - values that high stakes testing and a national curriculum could never encapsulate. They find expression in the bond between teachers and students working together in the fertile field of human inquiry where exposure to critical issues and real problems, mathematical, historical, artistic or linguistic, awaken the desire for self-expression and ignite the flames of imagination and the passions of the heart. In this space, critical thinkers are born and directed through the combined study of science and the liberal arts to tackle the great issues of our time. In the broad wasteland of poverty, indifference, disease, and human suffering, it is an intellectual oasis, or better yet, an academic field of dreams where dedicated teachers stand ready as coaches to help students see past what is to what might be. “The dream,” Rather explained, “begins with a teacher who believes in you, who tugs and pushes and leads you to the next plateau, sometimes poking you with a sharp stick called 'truth'.”

Heartfelt notes of appreciation to all of my teacher colleagues who help students pursue such truth daily.

Yohuru Williams is a professor of History and a proud CT/NJ BAT