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All over the country, policymakers are calling for systems that tie teacher evaluation to student performance. And from Florida to Colorado, Maryland to Louisiana, they are defining student performance as standardized test scores.
Few would argue that current teacher evaluation systems are adequate. And using standardized tests seems a cost-effective way to define performance, an important consideration in times of fiscal crisis. But are evaluation systems based on those tests valid? Can student performance on standardized assessments accurately identify effective teachers?
A new brief from the Economic Policy Institute reviews the evidence. The conclusion? Taken alone, student test scores are not a valid or reliable indicator of teacher effectiveness.
The brief discusses the lack of evidence that test-based accountability improves student learning, statistical concerns with using standardized tests to evaluate individual teachers and practical concerns with systems that do so, including the difficulty of attributing learning gains to one individual. It also raises concerns about the unintended consequences of these systems, including a narrowing of ...
Imagine you open your newspaper in the morning to find a story about dietary supplements. The story includes a throw-away line or two noting that supplements aren't subject to FDA approval and that the research on supplements is mixed. It then proceeds to extol their virtues, list the ailments each is said to cure, and offer links to discount suppliers. I'm guessing you wouldn't think very highly of your paper.
In some respects, the recent LA Times story on teacher effectiveness isn't all that different from my hypothetical story. The authors mumble a few words about problems with the methods it used to rate 6,000 L.A. teachers. They then launch into full-throated advocacy for the approach. They even publish names and pictures of the city's "worst" teachers.
"No one suggests using value-added analysis [of test scores] as the sole measure of a teacher," the authors write. They then proceed to use value-added analysis as the sole measure of 6000 real teachers in real schools. They brand one as "least effective," name him, and print his picture in the paper. Then they supply a database of 6,000 teachers rated solely by test scores. A few words about the limits of value-added measures won't blunt the overall effect of the article. Those teachers have been marked.
The authors note that "ineffective teachers often face no consequences and get no extra help." While I'm pleased that the Times has considered the need to help struggling teachers, I'm sorry to see that thought get swept away so quickly by stronger, darker currents. Regardless of what the authors ...
A couple of days ago NCES released a new report on teacher attrition and mobility. Among many interesting findings, the report shows a 20-year trend—the percent of public school teachers leaving the teaching profession is steadily rising. The report, which is based on the 2008-09 Teacher Follow-Up Survey, doesn’t go into the reasons behind this trend. But thanks to some of the recent debates here on Public School Insights, I wondered how it related to the average age of our public school teachers. It could be due to the aging of the workforce—the number of teachers retiring. Or maybe the young, TFA-type teachers—in the profession for two years and then out—are playing a role.
So I went back to an earlier version of the survey, the May 1994 report based on the 1991-92 Teacher Follow-Up Survey. Of the six such surveys over the last 20 or so years, this one showed the lowest percent of teachers leaving the profession—5.1% that year (compared to ...
Eagle-eyed Larry Ferlazzo found this modest proposal in Slate Magazine: Fire 80 percent of new teachers every two years. The authors of the study Slate describes admit that their idea might not be practical. (Larry's response: "Ya think?") They see it as a "thought experiment." But here's my question: Could such thought experiments, like Frankenstein, overwhelm their creators and wreak havoc in the wider world?
Such experiments don't tend to stay in the laboratory. They get picked up by the papers and start to change the way people across the country think about teaching and teachers. Papers like Slate admire the bravado of the wonks and economists who float extreme ideas--the bolder, the better--and they love the crazy headlines. But they don't always put things into context.
Slate offers a case in point. It praises Teach for America but fails to note that TFA produces only 4,500 new teachers a year--a drop in the bucket. The article claims that great teachers are "born, not made" and then says nothing at all about staff development.
The Slate article doesn't ask a very important question. Who would want to go into teaching if you have an 80 percent chance of getting the axe in two years? I can see the logic of raising the bar almost impossibly high if we manage to make teaching one of the most alluring jobs in America. Give teachers movie star status, support them in their jobs, and make the job as rewarding as ...
Young teachers aren't buying it, either. That's one of the main findings from a recent Public Agenda poll of teachers from three generations. "Generation Y" teachers are very skeptical of ideas that dominate current debates on school reform. This finding does not bode well for the reform agenda. It suggests that policy makers and pundits may be alienating the very people who must carry out the reforms.
The poll results tell us that resistance to some of the big reform ideas is by no means confined to old union stalwarts. The younger folk don't believe test scores should be the main determinant of teacher pay. They believe it should be easier to remove bad teachers, but they don't think tenure should go the way of the dodo.
It's at least as interesting to note what the young 'uns do want. They want staff development, help with discipline, constructive feedback on their teaching, and the chance to collaborate with their peers. In other words, they want the support and the conditions they need to do their jobs well. Those issues seem largely absent from national discussions of school reform.
Another finding of the Public Agenda poll struck me: Young teachers plan to stick around. Almost seven in ten planned to stay in classroom for more than a decade. The notion that those kids ...
Should teachers be free agents who take their skills to the highest bidder? Or should we encourage them to stay put in stable teams where they work in concert to improve their students' performance?
A thoughtful reader of this blog came out in favor of the former vision. Let great teachers take their talents on the road. Then let the market decide their value.
A different vision appeared in yesterday's New York Times. In Boston, the Times reports, struggling schools are hiring entire teams of experienced teachers to ground their turnaround efforts. The principal of one such school said the strategy "had provided such a strong core of teachers to anchor the school that it helped him recruit other experienced teachers. And it has allowed him to take a chance" on new teachers.
I prefer this vision to the free agent vision. The best schools I've seen--wealthy or poor--have strong teams of great teachers in place, and those teams are more than the sum of their parts. I've also seen excellent departments unravel when they lose their core of experienced teachers. Even platoons of great new teachers couldn't quickly knit those departments ...
Is it any wonder that veteran teachers feel a bit threatened these days? They keep hearing the message that they're so darn expensive. Unless their students' test scores get better and better every year, many pundits are ready to dismiss them as a mere liability on the books. That kind of rhetoric can have a corrosive effect on the teaching profession. The notion that teaching is a young person's game seems jarring in a profession where the demand for new teachers can quickly outstrip supply.
We often hear that a teacher's effectiveness, as measured by test scores, tends to level off after five or so years. Should we be surprised by that finding? Imagine the career of a good teacher. If by her third year on the job her students are showing one year of academic growth for one year in the classroom, what should we expect from her 25 years later? Ten years of growth? Should she be sending her third graders off to Harvard?
Or should her income growth stop when her students' value-added gains level off? If we use value-added measures alone, it's hard to imagine how a good teacher could get better and better for years on end. And if years of experience really don't mean anything, then great young teachers should expect their salaries to stay put after they're 30.
Some people will tell you that income stagnation is just fine. Pay people what they're worth in test scores, and let them leave for some other job when their earnings plateau. One commentator writes that "we can compress the salary schedule so that 5-year veterans and 25-year veterans get paid about ...
A couple of weeks ago, to the delight of us here at the Learning First Alliance, the U.S House of Representatives included a $10 billion Education Jobs Fund as an amendment to the supplemental appropriations bill they sent to the Senate. Such funding—entirely paid for, through offsets to other programs—would help stave off massive educator layoffs that could have devastating effects on our nation’s children.
But on July 22, the Senate decided against the House’s version of the bill (see how your Senator voted). It sent its own bill back to the House with, among other changes, no money for education jobs. It is predicted the House will approve the stripped down bill, so if there are to be any federal funds for education jobs, they’ll have to be included in a different, as of now unidentified, bill.
Some are cheering this end, claiming that for too long teachers have avoided feeling their fair share of the economic pinch. But those arguments don’t always reflect reality—and are not always the wisest economic policy. Take for example Georgia, where (among other cost-saving measures) the state has eliminated a pay supplement for teachers who receive National Board certification and many districts have instituted furlough days resulting in a loss of pay to educators and support staff. The state is still expecting cuts of about 8,000 certified ...
As more and more states agree to adopt the Common Core State Standards, critics of the effort have been quick to point out that high standards don't guarantee anything. They're right. But that doesn't mean we should back away from the Common Core initiative. High standards are a necessary but insufficient step towards better schools.
Those who raise questions about standards are doing us a service. As Linda Perlstein reminds us, the two states that won the Fordham Foundation's highest marks for their English standards--California and DC--hardly boast the best NAEP results. Folks at the Cato institute, who hate the Common Core effort, are quick to make a similar point. These skeptics offer a useful inoculation against media hype. (Perlstein always plays this role with grace and skill.) They also underscore the point that standards alone won't do wonders.
But the presence of high standards in states whose students don't perform all that well doesn't prove much of anything. Take DC, for example. Its standards are still quite new, and some have credited them with DC's recent rise in NAEP scores. And California's low per-pupil funding levels, together with a whole host of other things, might hold it back.
Clear, high standards won't have much of an impact if the tests are no good, the curriculum is weak, and schools have little or no support to make standards mean something in the classroom. In Massachusetts, whose standards earn high marks, students score on par with students in nations that regularly top the international charts. Some observers see the state's strong tests, staff development for teachers and other supports as reasons for the state's success.
I can already hear howls of protest. This is all mighty speculative, I know. The fact is that it's very ...
The Senate should pass a measure to stave off massive layoffs of school staff. LFA just released a statement urging swift action on the Education Jobs Fund, which would provide $10 billion dollars to save critical jobs.
A recent study by the Center on Education Policy underscores the urgency of this effort. Here are some thoughts on a few of the study's major findings:
- Stimulus funds often did not cover the shortfalls most districts faced last year. Seventy percent of districts reported a decrease in funding between 2008/09 and 2009/10. About 50 percent of those reported that stimulus funds made up for less than half of the shortfall. Forty-five percent of districts that received SFSF money had to cut teaching positions. Though $100 billion sounds like a lot, schools were not awash in money.
- Most districts expect further declines in funding next year, and to make matters worse, the stimulus money is running out fast. Almost seventy percent expected funding to drop further in 2010/11. Well over half expected to have spent all their SFSF funds by the end of the 2009/10 school year. Fewer than a quarter of districts expecting declines think SFSF funds will make up half or more of these shortfalls. That's the
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