This week the PA House Education Committee pushed forward the latest assault on the teaching profession in Pennsylvania.
Following the template pushed by StudentsFirst (a piece of naming genius right up there with "Peacekeeper Missile" and "jumbo Shrimp"), House Bill 1722 proposes stripping teachers of most meaningful job protections and seeks to line PA up with North Carolina on the list of States Where Teaching Is Not A Viable Career.
The bill is in line with what we've seen proposed across the country. Allow school districts to furlough teachers for economic reasons based on job evaluation. That seems reasonable, right? Why am I making all this noise about the destruction of teaching as a career?
Economic Reasons
The bill, like its brethren across the country, proposes that the only school districts that may drop seniority considerations when furloughing are school districts with economic problems. In other words, all of them.
Seriously. Pennsylvania is the land of educational budget cuttery, the state where charters are allowed to suck the blood out of public schools without restraint. Where in Pennsylvania is there a school district that is not facing economic stress? Where is the school district whose elected school board has turned to the voters and said, "We're just going to tax you a smidge more than we think we need, just so we don't feel any economic stress."
But let me have a ringside seat for the hearing in which a teacher tries to fight his firing by proving that the district is too economically well off to invoke the "economic problems" clause of the law. I am sure that will go well.
The Commonwealth could use the economic travails of its districts as motivation to buck up and do a better job of financing schools, but that doesn't seem to be where we're headed. The "economic reasons" clause might as well say "all school districts."
Uniform Evaluation
Rep.Timothy
Krieger, the bill's chief salesman (I'm not sure I'd say he wrote it, exactly) says "No one can argue the best teachers get good results." And since that's more of a definition than a correlation, like saying "No one can argue that a convertible is a car with a top that goes down," I'm going to agree with him. But that's not the problem. The problem is in identifying the best teachers.
Observers say this bill (which died the death of a thousand cuts a few years ago) has legs this time because this time we can totally tell who the good teachers are. Unfortunately, that system is kind of crazy crap, based in part on an observation that is not terrible, but not perfect, and certainly not immune to administrative malfeasance. The other part is based on a wacky quilt of bureaucratic horse patooty.
PA has PVAAS, a cousin of TVAAS, a bastard child of VAM, and all largely discredited by most everybody who actually understands how these things work (which is a small club, actually, because PVAAS is made with a special super-secret data sauce that nobody can really explain). Our evaluations also fold in school ratings, which include things like "How many AP classes are there?" Turns out you can now pay the College Board people to improve your school rating, which is an impressive state-level protection racket indeed.
PA's rating system also includes a healthy dose of stack ranking, the system that trains evaluators to not give outstanding rankings often. What's important is that there be a distribution so that there is always a Bottom 10% (or so) that is always poised and ready to be fired in case of a day of financial problems, and that day is-- hey, look!-- today!
There is still some debate among PA teachers about which is worse-- to be the teacher of tested students and thereby have a huger chunk of your evaluation based on test scores, or to be all other teachers and have a still-notable chunk of evaluation based on tests of material that you don't even teach. Pennsylvania administers the Keystone exams, which are essentially a paper PARCC (we had a traumatic encounter with on line testing a few years ago). These tests are, to use a technical term, inexcusably terrible crap. Of course, I can't show you examples because then I would have to kill you and then kill myself, because the tests must be kept under super-secret double-swear security. Otherwise people would notice that they are crap.
One other cool feature. My teacher evaluation won't actually be done till some time in the fall, because this year's test scores won't be released till then. So if I'm going to be fired for my egregiously inadequate teacherly behavior this year, it won't happen until at least another full year has gone by.
StudentsFirst Has One Complaint
StudentsFirst is unhappy with the current bill because the legislators did strike the part about making teachers go five years before they get tenure. StudentsFirst, noble crusaders for educational excellence that they pretend to be, thinks teachers should have a proven track record of excellence before receiving the tenure that will be rendered moot by the rest of this bill. Seriously-- since we're gutting and bypassing all other job protections, the only possible reason to want a longer tenure trial period is to extend the period during which a school can fire a teacher without even pretending to show cause. It seems likely here that StudentsFirst wants everyone to have a TFA-sized career of just two or three years.
Gutting Teaching Careers
So the bottom line of this bill would be that any district can fire teachers at any time, based on an evaluation system that rests on bad data generated by bad tests using a formula repudiated by the statistics experts, combined with observations that are still largely subjective. Under rules like this, it would simply be foolish to go into teaching as a career. At best, it presents the standard choice as best written into law by North Carolina's education-hating legislature-- you can either keep your job indefinitely as long as you don't ever make yourself too expensive, or you can get a raise and make yourself a more attractive target for firing.
It's as if these folks are really committed to discouraging people from going into teaching.
The bill has bipartisan backing (can teachers please stop automatically voting Democrat) and of course the big fat love of Governor Tom Corbett. It's not a done deal yet; if you are a Pennsylvania teacher, a good summer project would be to start contacting your representatives on a regular basis and encouraging them to say no to this dumb bill.
Saturday, June 7, 2014
Friday, June 6, 2014
Data-Driven Discrimination
If you needed any more reason to be wary of the massive upsuck of student data from the education system, The Weekly Wonk offers more reason to fear our Data Overlords.
"reduce caseloads in an increasingly black box manner."
But even if a system is well-designed,
it can be “garbage (data) in, discrimination out.” A transportation agency may pledge to open public transit data to inspire the creation of applications like “Next Bus,” which simplify how we plan trips and save time. But poorer localities often lack the resources to produce or share transit data, meaning some neighborhoods become dead zones—places your smart phone won’t tell you to travel to or through, isolating these areas into islands of poverty.
It's the linkages that can be the real killers. The criminal justice system now routinely collects DNA from arrested individuals. But your DNA doesn't just identify you like a fingerprint-- it links you to all your relatives. And then there's all the computer devices we use.
Homes come outfitted with appliances that sense our everyday activities, “speak” to other appliances, and report information to a provider, like an electric utility company. While it’s presumptuous to say that retailers or utility companies are destined to abuse data, there’s a chance that information could be sold down the data supply chain to third parties with grand plans to market predatory products to low-income populations or, worse yet, use data to shape rental terms or housing opportunities. What it boils down to is a lack of meaningful control over where information travels, which makes it more troublesome to intervene if and when a problem arises in the future.
Gangadharan and Woolley do not address the data mining of education, but the implications aren't hard to imagine, particularly in a system that not only admits the possibility of data linkage, but embraces it. From way back in the infamous Marc Tucker "Dear Hillary" letter through the Bush/Obama cradle-to-career tracking program, our Data Overlords have said that a fully-integrated data trail is a Good Thing.
But as Gangadharan and Woolley's article suggests, what happens
-- if the data cloud determines that an infant has a genetic marker present in earlier generations who are linked to criminal behavior or recurrent disease or susceptibility to alcoholism?
-- if a corporation decides to use predatory marketing carefully aimed at "low information" customers who are identified by their elementary and high school academic records?
-- if an algorithm selects out groups who can be identified by genetic, family and school records and targets them for discriminatory practices?
-- if you apply for a job and the program sees that you used to do lots of googling for bong suppliers and that your grades and test scores dipped precipitously about the same time, thereby deciding you were a teenage pothead?
-- if a program puts together your genetic record, your googling for "HIV treatments" and your repeated trips to the guidance counselor in high school, and decides you are too high risk to be hired?
It's been just a couple years since Target famously announced to a father that his daughter was pregnant, and we are still only scratching the surface for all the many ways that data trails can be used to jump to conclusions about people and then discriminate against them on that basis. And that's just looking at the accidental discrimination.
Remember when we decided that it is illegal to ask someone they're race on all sorts of job and financial application paperwork? Well, now it will never be necessary again. Remember how juvenile court records are supposed to remain sealed so that a youthful mistake doesn't ruin the rest of someone's life? Well, that's pretty much a joke now.
We don't even know yet all the ways that this data monster can screw with peoples' lives, destroy any semblance of privacy, and make them victims of discrimination carried out by programs that can't even be questioned. Imagine what could happen if we fed that monster everything we know about a person's youth and childhood?
"reduce caseloads in an increasingly black box manner."
But even if a system is well-designed,
it can be “garbage (data) in, discrimination out.” A transportation agency may pledge to open public transit data to inspire the creation of applications like “Next Bus,” which simplify how we plan trips and save time. But poorer localities often lack the resources to produce or share transit data, meaning some neighborhoods become dead zones—places your smart phone won’t tell you to travel to or through, isolating these areas into islands of poverty.
It's the linkages that can be the real killers. The criminal justice system now routinely collects DNA from arrested individuals. But your DNA doesn't just identify you like a fingerprint-- it links you to all your relatives. And then there's all the computer devices we use.
Homes come outfitted with appliances that sense our everyday activities, “speak” to other appliances, and report information to a provider, like an electric utility company. While it’s presumptuous to say that retailers or utility companies are destined to abuse data, there’s a chance that information could be sold down the data supply chain to third parties with grand plans to market predatory products to low-income populations or, worse yet, use data to shape rental terms or housing opportunities. What it boils down to is a lack of meaningful control over where information travels, which makes it more troublesome to intervene if and when a problem arises in the future.
Gangadharan and Woolley do not address the data mining of education, but the implications aren't hard to imagine, particularly in a system that not only admits the possibility of data linkage, but embraces it. From way back in the infamous Marc Tucker "Dear Hillary" letter through the Bush/Obama cradle-to-career tracking program, our Data Overlords have said that a fully-integrated data trail is a Good Thing.
But as Gangadharan and Woolley's article suggests, what happens
-- if the data cloud determines that an infant has a genetic marker present in earlier generations who are linked to criminal behavior or recurrent disease or susceptibility to alcoholism?
-- if a corporation decides to use predatory marketing carefully aimed at "low information" customers who are identified by their elementary and high school academic records?
-- if an algorithm selects out groups who can be identified by genetic, family and school records and targets them for discriminatory practices?
-- if you apply for a job and the program sees that you used to do lots of googling for bong suppliers and that your grades and test scores dipped precipitously about the same time, thereby deciding you were a teenage pothead?
-- if a program puts together your genetic record, your googling for "HIV treatments" and your repeated trips to the guidance counselor in high school, and decides you are too high risk to be hired?
It's been just a couple years since Target famously announced to a father that his daughter was pregnant, and we are still only scratching the surface for all the many ways that data trails can be used to jump to conclusions about people and then discriminate against them on that basis. And that's just looking at the accidental discrimination.
Remember when we decided that it is illegal to ask someone they're race on all sorts of job and financial application paperwork? Well, now it will never be necessary again. Remember how juvenile court records are supposed to remain sealed so that a youthful mistake doesn't ruin the rest of someone's life? Well, that's pretty much a joke now.
We don't even know yet all the ways that this data monster can screw with peoples' lives, destroy any semblance of privacy, and make them victims of discrimination carried out by programs that can't even be questioned. Imagine what could happen if we fed that monster everything we know about a person's youth and childhood?
Louisiana Showcases Utter Failure of School "Reform"
The New Orleans Recovery School District has proven (again) that Reformsters cannot deliver on a single one of their promises.
What I'm reporting today has been reported elsewhere-- in particular I recommend Michael Deshotels' report on his blog Louisiana Educator-- but there are some pieces of news that need to be repeated over and over and over again, and this is one of those. The grand experiment that is the New Orleans Recovery School District is complete failure an consequently represents a failure of virtually every piece of Reformster policy wisdom.
Remember-- in New Orleans, the reformsters got every single thing they wanted. With a little help from a natural disaster (aka Hurricane Katrina, aka "the best thing that happened"), reformsters were able to sweep the board clear of all public schools and open the field to free market forces of charter schools.
They were able to get rid of all those terribly awful no good (and also expensive) public school teachers and replace them with pliable TFA temps who would A) implement whatever harebrained school program they were told and would also B) go away before they could become a problem. (Granted, the mass firings turned out to be illegal, but the RSD still got to do it).
They have had years, a full generation of students, to make their reforms pay off. They had, until recently, enthusiastic state government support for all these reforms on top of a spirited implementation of Common Core and its attendant high stakes testing.
NOLA was reformster Christmas, a reformster land of do-as-you-please, a happy place where they could fully test every single thing they ever claimed would fix American public education. And they even got to set the terms by which success would be measured.
And they failed. Unambiguously, completely failed.
Using the state's own figures, we fine the RSD at the 17th percentile for the state. Individual portions of the RSD have the distinction of being the worst schools in the state.
Not only did they not prove their programs academically, but they provided yet another case study of how school "choice" really works (spoiler alert: it doesn't). Parents in the RSD have no more choice about where their children go to school than if they were subjected to the terribly tyranny of having the schools chosen by student address. And their graduation rates are a sham (read about it here).
The RSD has proven one point that I once made. Market forces do not foster superior quality; market forces foster superior marketing. The one manner in which the RSD has excelled is in the application of beautiful lip gloss to its pig of a schooling failure. And news outlets are accordingly providing gentle and accommodating coverage. Deshotel included a link to this coverage which provides a fine rundown of the whole sad story, but it's about the only such reporting you'll find in the region. For an atomic level of detail in charter coverage, I can also recommend the work of Kelsey Foster in The Lens (who is, because the world is a small and strange place, a former student of mine).
We have been in the bait of making the criticism that reformsters are pushing untried policies and untested educational ideas, but in fact, that is no longer true. There is nothing that reformsters love that has not been tested, and nothing that has not failed every test. I know this piece has been repeating the work of other writers, and now I am going to repeat myself, because this message needs needs needs to be repeated,
In New Orleans, the reformsters got everything they wanted. They got to build a school district from the ground up according to their own specs. And. They. Still. Failed. Spread the word.
What I'm reporting today has been reported elsewhere-- in particular I recommend Michael Deshotels' report on his blog Louisiana Educator-- but there are some pieces of news that need to be repeated over and over and over again, and this is one of those. The grand experiment that is the New Orleans Recovery School District is complete failure an consequently represents a failure of virtually every piece of Reformster policy wisdom.
Remember-- in New Orleans, the reformsters got every single thing they wanted. With a little help from a natural disaster (aka Hurricane Katrina, aka "the best thing that happened"), reformsters were able to sweep the board clear of all public schools and open the field to free market forces of charter schools.
They were able to get rid of all those terribly awful no good (and also expensive) public school teachers and replace them with pliable TFA temps who would A) implement whatever harebrained school program they were told and would also B) go away before they could become a problem. (Granted, the mass firings turned out to be illegal, but the RSD still got to do it).
They have had years, a full generation of students, to make their reforms pay off. They had, until recently, enthusiastic state government support for all these reforms on top of a spirited implementation of Common Core and its attendant high stakes testing.
NOLA was reformster Christmas, a reformster land of do-as-you-please, a happy place where they could fully test every single thing they ever claimed would fix American public education. And they even got to set the terms by which success would be measured.
And they failed. Unambiguously, completely failed.
Using the state's own figures, we fine the RSD at the 17th percentile for the state. Individual portions of the RSD have the distinction of being the worst schools in the state.
Not only did they not prove their programs academically, but they provided yet another case study of how school "choice" really works (spoiler alert: it doesn't). Parents in the RSD have no more choice about where their children go to school than if they were subjected to the terribly tyranny of having the schools chosen by student address. And their graduation rates are a sham (read about it here).
The RSD has proven one point that I once made. Market forces do not foster superior quality; market forces foster superior marketing. The one manner in which the RSD has excelled is in the application of beautiful lip gloss to its pig of a schooling failure. And news outlets are accordingly providing gentle and accommodating coverage. Deshotel included a link to this coverage which provides a fine rundown of the whole sad story, but it's about the only such reporting you'll find in the region. For an atomic level of detail in charter coverage, I can also recommend the work of Kelsey Foster in The Lens (who is, because the world is a small and strange place, a former student of mine).
We have been in the bait of making the criticism that reformsters are pushing untried policies and untested educational ideas, but in fact, that is no longer true. There is nothing that reformsters love that has not been tested, and nothing that has not failed every test. I know this piece has been repeating the work of other writers, and now I am going to repeat myself, because this message needs needs needs to be repeated,
In New Orleans, the reformsters got everything they wanted. They got to build a school district from the ground up according to their own specs. And. They. Still. Failed. Spread the word.
Thursday, June 5, 2014
The NEA Wants To Organize You
Over at EdWeek Seven Sawchuk writes about NEA's new push to reverse a steady decline in membership. It's about time.
Membership is down a reported 230,000 teachers over the last three years. And that's before you even start counting the "reluctant" members. As far as I know, NEA doesn't keep track of this (and is probably happier not knowing), but not every NEA member actually wants to be an NEA member An unscientific poll of People I Know reveals that two reasons for reluctant membership are 1) in the current crazy-ass education world, I want to have some liability insurance and 2) if I've got to pay that damn Fair Share, I might as well kick in a few more bucks and have a vote. These are not the motivations that promote active passionate membership.
Sawchuk reports that the NEA is trying to shift some of its focuses. It has become mostly a service organization--IOW, an organization that provides certain services to its members. Leadership is looking to create a more activist organization. The article also suggests that the NEA has made some tactical errors, failing, for instance, to be out in front of the teacher evaluation issues.
There are practical problems. In many locals, the EA is "that group that is always spending our dues money defending those two idiots who want to grieve every damn stupid thing in the world." That is not a group anybody wants to join.
The most hopeful aspect of the article is a veiled acknowledgment that the NEA has a culture problem. Which would be a good thing to acknowledge, because the NEA has a huge culture problem.
I've written about this before when I compared today's NEA to yesterday's GOP. Specifically, I wrote "Today's NEA is not your father's NEA. It's more like your grandfather's NEA." Technologically backward, the NEA has become a huge corporate entity that is no more connected to actual classroom teachers than are the faceless bureaucrats who make teachers live miserable. The headquarters of NEA are no closer to my classroom that the headquarters of Pearson.
Trust in national leadership is low. When reformsters and the USDOE stepped up to say, "Teachers in American public ed are failing, our schools are failing, and the whole system needs an overhaul like CCSS," our leaders did not stand up for us. They bellied up to the government-corporate bar and said, "You are correct, sir. Our teachers are a sorry lot and desperately need your guidance."
I will never, ever forgive Dennis van Roekel for responding to complaints about Common Core with, "Well, then what do you want to do instead," as if the failure of American teachers, NEA teachers, was a known fact, a true thing not even open to discussion. Shame on him, and shame on NEA leadership, for completely deserting its members at the beginning of one of the most difficult and demoralizing assaults on public education in America's history.
But NEA has culture problems that go beyond our current issues or the present administration. It is a culture of micro-management, a culture of back-room stage managed decision making, where nothing ever comes up to a vote that hasn't been sorted out and planned through ahead of time, and the outcome of officer elections is never in doubt even before the first vote is cast.
When NEA says that we must all work together, that unity must be our watchword, that invariably means, "We'll tell you what to do and we expect you to fall in line."
This translates to a serious recruiting problem. "We want to hear your voice. We want you to come and share your input," the sales pitch begins. But once the new recruits come to meetings, the other shoe drops: "Well, not really. Just take a seat over there and listen."
If a new recruit makes it past that stage, we send him off to conferences and rallies, to wine and dine and party and most of all make best buddies with the leadership so that he's inclined to trust and follow his new BFFs.
If the NEA really wants to reach out to new recruits, it has to accept that the organization with those new recruits in it may take on a shape or tenor that the old leadership can neither anticipate nor control. Until then the NEA will still be your aged aunt saying that she would really like you to come over and visit, but please don't sit on the furniture or touch any woodwork.
Sawchuk describes a move to transform NEA into a force for positive change in education. That would be a great change, but that means changing the whole face of NEA and making a conscious effort to NOT do stupid things like acting as fronts for destructive "reforms" like the mess that comes stapled to CCSS.
As the last few years have unfolded, I think we've all had some version of the conversation where teachers wax wistful. If only there were a way for teachers to band together, to push for positive change, to stand up against corporate privateer profiteer baloney like Common Core. If only we could create a nationwide group of teachers who stood up for the profession, who were a mighty force for making public education better, to fight back this assault. It should tell NEA leaders something that this conversation never makes people think of the NEA as anything other than an organization that should be doing these things-- and isn't.
Actually, the NEA shouldn't be trying to figure out how to get people to join the ranks. It should be trying to figure out how it can get itself to join the battle (already in progress) on the right side.
Membership is down a reported 230,000 teachers over the last three years. And that's before you even start counting the "reluctant" members. As far as I know, NEA doesn't keep track of this (and is probably happier not knowing), but not every NEA member actually wants to be an NEA member An unscientific poll of People I Know reveals that two reasons for reluctant membership are 1) in the current crazy-ass education world, I want to have some liability insurance and 2) if I've got to pay that damn Fair Share, I might as well kick in a few more bucks and have a vote. These are not the motivations that promote active passionate membership.
Sawchuk reports that the NEA is trying to shift some of its focuses. It has become mostly a service organization--IOW, an organization that provides certain services to its members. Leadership is looking to create a more activist organization. The article also suggests that the NEA has made some tactical errors, failing, for instance, to be out in front of the teacher evaluation issues.
There are practical problems. In many locals, the EA is "that group that is always spending our dues money defending those two idiots who want to grieve every damn stupid thing in the world." That is not a group anybody wants to join.
The most hopeful aspect of the article is a veiled acknowledgment that the NEA has a culture problem. Which would be a good thing to acknowledge, because the NEA has a huge culture problem.
I've written about this before when I compared today's NEA to yesterday's GOP. Specifically, I wrote "Today's NEA is not your father's NEA. It's more like your grandfather's NEA." Technologically backward, the NEA has become a huge corporate entity that is no more connected to actual classroom teachers than are the faceless bureaucrats who make teachers live miserable. The headquarters of NEA are no closer to my classroom that the headquarters of Pearson.
Trust in national leadership is low. When reformsters and the USDOE stepped up to say, "Teachers in American public ed are failing, our schools are failing, and the whole system needs an overhaul like CCSS," our leaders did not stand up for us. They bellied up to the government-corporate bar and said, "You are correct, sir. Our teachers are a sorry lot and desperately need your guidance."
I will never, ever forgive Dennis van Roekel for responding to complaints about Common Core with, "Well, then what do you want to do instead," as if the failure of American teachers, NEA teachers, was a known fact, a true thing not even open to discussion. Shame on him, and shame on NEA leadership, for completely deserting its members at the beginning of one of the most difficult and demoralizing assaults on public education in America's history.
But NEA has culture problems that go beyond our current issues or the present administration. It is a culture of micro-management, a culture of back-room stage managed decision making, where nothing ever comes up to a vote that hasn't been sorted out and planned through ahead of time, and the outcome of officer elections is never in doubt even before the first vote is cast.
When NEA says that we must all work together, that unity must be our watchword, that invariably means, "We'll tell you what to do and we expect you to fall in line."
This translates to a serious recruiting problem. "We want to hear your voice. We want you to come and share your input," the sales pitch begins. But once the new recruits come to meetings, the other shoe drops: "Well, not really. Just take a seat over there and listen."
If a new recruit makes it past that stage, we send him off to conferences and rallies, to wine and dine and party and most of all make best buddies with the leadership so that he's inclined to trust and follow his new BFFs.
If the NEA really wants to reach out to new recruits, it has to accept that the organization with those new recruits in it may take on a shape or tenor that the old leadership can neither anticipate nor control. Until then the NEA will still be your aged aunt saying that she would really like you to come over and visit, but please don't sit on the furniture or touch any woodwork.
Sawchuk describes a move to transform NEA into a force for positive change in education. That would be a great change, but that means changing the whole face of NEA and making a conscious effort to NOT do stupid things like acting as fronts for destructive "reforms" like the mess that comes stapled to CCSS.
As the last few years have unfolded, I think we've all had some version of the conversation where teachers wax wistful. If only there were a way for teachers to band together, to push for positive change, to stand up against corporate privateer profiteer baloney like Common Core. If only we could create a nationwide group of teachers who stood up for the profession, who were a mighty force for making public education better, to fight back this assault. It should tell NEA leaders something that this conversation never makes people think of the NEA as anything other than an organization that should be doing these things-- and isn't.
Actually, the NEA shouldn't be trying to figure out how to get people to join the ranks. It should be trying to figure out how it can get itself to join the battle (already in progress) on the right side.
FEE: A Floridian Trip through the Reformster Swamp
In twenty-one short paragraphs, Patricia Levesque of FEE (Foundation for Excellence in Education) manages to set a new record for sheer Density of Wrong. This seems to be FEE's specialty; in the vast coal mine of Common Core Carbonized Crap, FEE demonstrates the Supermaniacal ability to squeeze the raw materials of wrong into a shining diamond of dopiness. Today's sweepstakes entry, "Student Success Depends on Testing and Accountability," is so thoroughly wrong-headed and saturated with what a charitable person might call "unfortunate misstatements" (and a less-charitable person might call "whopping lies") that it deserves special treatment. Because remember-- FEE's major mission is to make Jeb Bush look wise and Presidential when it comes to education.
Background
I apologize in advance, because this will be neither brief nor pretty. We are going to wade through the length and breadth of Florida swamp, looking for our special lovely Shady Acres and (spoiler alert) we will come up empty. But to appreciate just what a deep and miserable swamp it is, we have to see it all. Before we wade, a little background.
Patricia Levesque is a woman of considerable bureaucratic qualifications. She is the CEO of FEE and has served Governor Bush as "deputy chief of staff of education, enterprise solutions for government, minority procurement and business and professional regulation." I am sure that "minority procurement" is hard to imagine in a context that does not make it an awful thing, but hey-- I'm not a professional bureaucrat.
I also want to note that the blog itself is called the Edfly because-- why?? A clever pun on Fordham Instistute's "Gadfly" moniker? Because edflies are drawn to edshit? Boy, guys-- I feel like we really didn't think this through.
We have met FEE before in this blog-- trying to launch a special education initiative and then trying to rustle up some grass roots support by using that twitter thing all the kids are talking about, plus they've also given us some spectacularly dumb testing advice.
So let's go. Or as I say all too often, let me read through this so that you don't have to.
The Setup
The opening paragraph sets the standard for this piece of writing:
The Common Core State Standards raise the academic bar in our K-12 classrooms with their focus on in-depth learning and critical thinking. That has been a rare point of agreement among most school superintendents, teachers, teachers’ unions, school reformers and others involved in the public education debate.
So, two sentences, both wrong. The CCSS do no such thing and have no such focus. I am kind of tired of this repeated insistence that the CCSS emphasize in-depth learning or critical thinking. Somebody please direct me to exactly which language in which standard mentions critical thinking. I think there's just as much support in the standards for "The Common Core standards support punching your mother in the face."
It is true that this has been a "rare point of agreement" in the sense that the parties listed have rarely agreed with it. Otherwise, no, there's a whole lot of us who think your first statement is thickly sliced baloney.
Levesque asserts that disagreements begin when we discuss accountability because, "Simply put, there are those who want assessments that measure mastery of the standards to matter in evaluating schools and teachers. And there are those who don’t." It's an interesting way to frame the disagreement, like saying "There are some people who want us to avoid sailing off the edge of the world and plummeting onto the back of the turtle supporting us, and there are those who don't" or "There are those of us who want to make Santa feel welcome in our homes, and those who don't."
Stupid Argument, Part One
Among those who don't support letting Sasquatch take a ride on the back of the Loch Ness Monster, says Levesque, are Randi Weingarten and Linda Darling-Hammond. Levesque casts the evil eye at them, causing me to think that among her many cognitive challenges is an inability to distinguish between friend and foe. Attacking Randi Weingarten for being soft on Common Core is like attacking President Obama for being too mean to Wall Street corporate types.
Levesque bores in on their statement that one end-of-the-year test cannot possibly measure the full range of a student's achievement. Balderdash, she says. Then what about AP tests and SATs and ACTs and bar exams and military entrance exams and she starts gathering so many disparate examples that I fully expect urine test to appear on the list. But sure. The SATs, long known to tell more about socio-economic class than achievement and less predictive of college success than high school grades-- those are a great example of how you are wrong.
But "well-crafted tests can provide an objective measure of what students and professionals know" she says, which allows us to skip right over the question of whether or not tests like the PARCC or SBA are, in fact, well-crafted. (Spoiler alert- all early indications are that they are not).
She's not done.
Like it or not, success in life depends to a large degree on success in passing tests. Testing children early ensures they are prepared for the world awaiting them, that they are mastering the basic skills necessary for success in later grades, college and beyond.
Got that? Taking big stupid tests is a life skill-- an essential life skill, a basic life skill. I mean, sure, we all remember the stories. Lincoln, using an oil lamp to stay up late and study for his standardized test. Bill Gates figuring out how to design Microsoft Windows by completing a standardized test. John D. Rockefeller naming Standard Oil in honor of the standardized tests that made him rich. General Patton led troops to victory in WWII by his superior display of bubbling prowess. And when corporations are searching for their next CEOs, they break out the standardized tests to see who gets the job.
But Why Settle for Being Merely Stupid When You Can Also Be Offensive?
Opponents of accountability do not want to hold adults responsible for teaching children. They want guaranteed paychecks and optional effectiveness. Adoption of the Common Core State Standards has given them an opening to once again pursue this agenda.
It's true. Teachers all went into teaching because they hate children and see them as simply a path to riches. I often reflect on how much I hate actual teaching as I drive around in my Lexus, slurping up Grey Poupon.
Levesque reminisces about the bad old days, when teachers and students would go into classrooms but "whether the former were effective or the latter learned anything was optional and unknown." Because if a student learns calculus in forest and his government overlords don't see his test results, does he know anything? Unknown by whom? Were students staggering around saying, "Well, I might have learned how to read, but I just am not sure. If only I could take a standardized test-- then I would know!"
Levesque remembers when 70% of Florida's low-income and minority Fourth Graders were functionally illiterate. I do not have access to the pertinent facts and figures, but I'm going to call bullshit on this. If I turn out to be wrong, I'll retract it.
But Florida tried to fix this with testing (because taking tests is totally how nine-year-olds become literate) and it didn't work. Nothing worked until the tests were accompanied by serious threats. Then, magically, Florida turned into a wonderland of educational success. Well, they got higher test scores anyway. Maybe. Bush said he was willing to abuse children to get them, and the state proved that with its repeated harassment of critically ill children. They have used testing to solidify racial divisions while claiming the opposite. Add their love of Tony Bennett, noted educational book cooker, and the Florida miracle looks more and more like imaginary vaporware. For a full well-researched rundown of what's not miraculous about Floridian education, check out this post from the invaluable Mercedes Schneider.
And Levesque wants you to know that they did it all cheaply.
That's Your Support?
Levesque embarks on an oddly-constructed side trip in which she points out that Weingarten and Darling-Hammond accuse the execrable state exams for a backlash against CCSS, wrapping up with "How do you support standards one year, and then abandon them the next?" Also, a bicycle, because a vest has no sleeves. I think what we're seeing is that Levesque is all in. Where other reformsters are frantically attempting decoupling (no no no! the test and the standards and the books are all completely different things), Levesque is doubling down on bundling-- it's all one package, and you have to love it all. This may be the closest she comes to saying something I agree with.
In the process of "debunking" the New York state backlash against the Core, Levesque cites-- Success Academy!
Did you know that last year, 82% of SA students tested proficient in math. This is much better than their peers in the rest of the state, which of course includes all the peers that were shoved out of SA schools before they could mess up those numbers.
We End Where We Started
I skipped over the title of this piece when I started; I invite you to go back and look at it again. Student success depends on testing and accountability. Not teaching. Not learning. Not supportive homes. Not a supportive classroom environment. Not good pedagogical technique. Not a positive, nurturing relationship with a teacher. Just tests. Tests with big fat punishments attache to failure.
Perhaps what we need is an all-test district. Every day students file in, receive their punishments for the previous test results, take a new test. I mean, if testing is the whole key to learning, the whole key to a successful life itself, then why are we wasting classroom time on anything else? Let's just test, all day, every day.
This piece would be funny if it weren't such a blazing, insulting attack on teachers and common sense, and if it weren't a picture of what folks working with He Who Would Be President think sound education policy would be. Some folks say that Jeb's support of Common Core will cost him the Presidency. I can only hope that it's true and that we can then send Ms. Levesque back to the Floridian swamp that spawned this insulting mess.
Background
I apologize in advance, because this will be neither brief nor pretty. We are going to wade through the length and breadth of Florida swamp, looking for our special lovely Shady Acres and (spoiler alert) we will come up empty. But to appreciate just what a deep and miserable swamp it is, we have to see it all. Before we wade, a little background.
Patricia Levesque is a woman of considerable bureaucratic qualifications. She is the CEO of FEE and has served Governor Bush as "deputy chief of staff of education, enterprise solutions for government, minority procurement and business and professional regulation." I am sure that "minority procurement" is hard to imagine in a context that does not make it an awful thing, but hey-- I'm not a professional bureaucrat.
I also want to note that the blog itself is called the Edfly because-- why?? A clever pun on Fordham Instistute's "Gadfly" moniker? Because edflies are drawn to edshit? Boy, guys-- I feel like we really didn't think this through.
We have met FEE before in this blog-- trying to launch a special education initiative and then trying to rustle up some grass roots support by using that twitter thing all the kids are talking about, plus they've also given us some spectacularly dumb testing advice.
So let's go. Or as I say all too often, let me read through this so that you don't have to.
The Setup
The opening paragraph sets the standard for this piece of writing:
The Common Core State Standards raise the academic bar in our K-12 classrooms with their focus on in-depth learning and critical thinking. That has been a rare point of agreement among most school superintendents, teachers, teachers’ unions, school reformers and others involved in the public education debate.
So, two sentences, both wrong. The CCSS do no such thing and have no such focus. I am kind of tired of this repeated insistence that the CCSS emphasize in-depth learning or critical thinking. Somebody please direct me to exactly which language in which standard mentions critical thinking. I think there's just as much support in the standards for "The Common Core standards support punching your mother in the face."
It is true that this has been a "rare point of agreement" in the sense that the parties listed have rarely agreed with it. Otherwise, no, there's a whole lot of us who think your first statement is thickly sliced baloney.
Levesque asserts that disagreements begin when we discuss accountability because, "Simply put, there are those who want assessments that measure mastery of the standards to matter in evaluating schools and teachers. And there are those who don’t." It's an interesting way to frame the disagreement, like saying "There are some people who want us to avoid sailing off the edge of the world and plummeting onto the back of the turtle supporting us, and there are those who don't" or "There are those of us who want to make Santa feel welcome in our homes, and those who don't."
Stupid Argument, Part One
Among those who don't support letting Sasquatch take a ride on the back of the Loch Ness Monster, says Levesque, are Randi Weingarten and Linda Darling-Hammond. Levesque casts the evil eye at them, causing me to think that among her many cognitive challenges is an inability to distinguish between friend and foe. Attacking Randi Weingarten for being soft on Common Core is like attacking President Obama for being too mean to Wall Street corporate types.
Levesque bores in on their statement that one end-of-the-year test cannot possibly measure the full range of a student's achievement. Balderdash, she says. Then what about AP tests and SATs and ACTs and bar exams and military entrance exams and she starts gathering so many disparate examples that I fully expect urine test to appear on the list. But sure. The SATs, long known to tell more about socio-economic class than achievement and less predictive of college success than high school grades-- those are a great example of how you are wrong.
But "well-crafted tests can provide an objective measure of what students and professionals know" she says, which allows us to skip right over the question of whether or not tests like the PARCC or SBA are, in fact, well-crafted. (Spoiler alert- all early indications are that they are not).
She's not done.
Like it or not, success in life depends to a large degree on success in passing tests. Testing children early ensures they are prepared for the world awaiting them, that they are mastering the basic skills necessary for success in later grades, college and beyond.
Got that? Taking big stupid tests is a life skill-- an essential life skill, a basic life skill. I mean, sure, we all remember the stories. Lincoln, using an oil lamp to stay up late and study for his standardized test. Bill Gates figuring out how to design Microsoft Windows by completing a standardized test. John D. Rockefeller naming Standard Oil in honor of the standardized tests that made him rich. General Patton led troops to victory in WWII by his superior display of bubbling prowess. And when corporations are searching for their next CEOs, they break out the standardized tests to see who gets the job.
But Why Settle for Being Merely Stupid When You Can Also Be Offensive?
Opponents of accountability do not want to hold adults responsible for teaching children. They want guaranteed paychecks and optional effectiveness. Adoption of the Common Core State Standards has given them an opening to once again pursue this agenda.
It's true. Teachers all went into teaching because they hate children and see them as simply a path to riches. I often reflect on how much I hate actual teaching as I drive around in my Lexus, slurping up Grey Poupon.
Levesque reminisces about the bad old days, when teachers and students would go into classrooms but "whether the former were effective or the latter learned anything was optional and unknown." Because if a student learns calculus in forest and his government overlords don't see his test results, does he know anything? Unknown by whom? Were students staggering around saying, "Well, I might have learned how to read, but I just am not sure. If only I could take a standardized test-- then I would know!"
Levesque remembers when 70% of Florida's low-income and minority Fourth Graders were functionally illiterate. I do not have access to the pertinent facts and figures, but I'm going to call bullshit on this. If I turn out to be wrong, I'll retract it.
But Florida tried to fix this with testing (because taking tests is totally how nine-year-olds become literate) and it didn't work. Nothing worked until the tests were accompanied by serious threats. Then, magically, Florida turned into a wonderland of educational success. Well, they got higher test scores anyway. Maybe. Bush said he was willing to abuse children to get them, and the state proved that with its repeated harassment of critically ill children. They have used testing to solidify racial divisions while claiming the opposite. Add their love of Tony Bennett, noted educational book cooker, and the Florida miracle looks more and more like imaginary vaporware. For a full well-researched rundown of what's not miraculous about Floridian education, check out this post from the invaluable Mercedes Schneider.
And Levesque wants you to know that they did it all cheaply.
That's Your Support?
Levesque embarks on an oddly-constructed side trip in which she points out that Weingarten and Darling-Hammond accuse the execrable state exams for a backlash against CCSS, wrapping up with "How do you support standards one year, and then abandon them the next?" Also, a bicycle, because a vest has no sleeves. I think what we're seeing is that Levesque is all in. Where other reformsters are frantically attempting decoupling (no no no! the test and the standards and the books are all completely different things), Levesque is doubling down on bundling-- it's all one package, and you have to love it all. This may be the closest she comes to saying something I agree with.
In the process of "debunking" the New York state backlash against the Core, Levesque cites-- Success Academy!
Did you know that last year, 82% of SA students tested proficient in math. This is much better than their peers in the rest of the state, which of course includes all the peers that were shoved out of SA schools before they could mess up those numbers.
We End Where We Started
I skipped over the title of this piece when I started; I invite you to go back and look at it again. Student success depends on testing and accountability. Not teaching. Not learning. Not supportive homes. Not a supportive classroom environment. Not good pedagogical technique. Not a positive, nurturing relationship with a teacher. Just tests. Tests with big fat punishments attache to failure.
Perhaps what we need is an all-test district. Every day students file in, receive their punishments for the previous test results, take a new test. I mean, if testing is the whole key to learning, the whole key to a successful life itself, then why are we wasting classroom time on anything else? Let's just test, all day, every day.
This piece would be funny if it weren't such a blazing, insulting attack on teachers and common sense, and if it weren't a picture of what folks working with He Who Would Be President think sound education policy would be. Some folks say that Jeb's support of Common Core will cost him the Presidency. I can only hope that it's true and that we can then send Ms. Levesque back to the Floridian swamp that spawned this insulting mess.
An Open Letter To Michelle Labuski
It must have been some time yesterday that you and your colleagues discovered this post, taking you to task for your pro-Common Core post on engageNY. You responded on twitter with a simple "Not okay. And hurtful." A few of your colleagues responded in my comments section. You were all gentler, kinder, and more amenable to reason than I was in the original post.
I understand how you might feel beaten up by the post, and given a do-over, I would have paid more attention to the fact that, as a guest poster on a commercial website, you might not be fully prepared for the kind of punch-in-the-face discourse of the bloggosphere. But I don't want to issue one of those non-apology apologies. Your feelings got hurt, and I'm the one who hurt them, and I am sorry that I did not extend at least a bit more professional consideration for them.
But while I can regret my tone, I do not regret my message. I'm going to explain why.
While reasonable people can have arguments about the content of the Common Core, the foundation of the Core, the whole premise on which they were launched and the states were strong-armed into adopting them, is fairly simple:
American public school teachers are failing. They don't know how to do their jobs. They don't know how to teach. They suck.
It's not just a false narrative, but a profoundly insulting one, both personally and professionally. The Core were not presented as "Our teachers are mostly great, but they need a bit of help" or "We have found the secret to taking our excellent teachers to the next level" but "Our schools are failing because our teachers are failing and our only hope is to tell them how to do their jobs." (At worst., we also get "They just want a paycheck. They are the biggest obstacle to education in this country") It's a gross insult, a slap in the face. And it's just not true.
The "How Common Core Made Me a Great Teacher" essay has become its own genre, with enough similarities between the entries that one wonders whether or not they are prompted by some official saying, "Why don't you write a piece about how the Core helped you, and here's an outline you could follow." Many of the teachers who write these essays seem quite sincere, and most of them appear to be teachers who were doing quite well in the classroom already, which is why the type of essay is so galling.
Because intentionally or not, the subtext is clear: "What you've heard is true. I did not know how to do my job until the Core came along to show me the way. I am here to tell you that the narrative is correct, that my colleagues and I don't know how to do our jobs, and that every good thing I've done in a classroom has only happened because the Core came along to straighten me out."
So while it may have been the furthest intention from your mind, I found your original essay (and the essays like it, of which I read about one a month) both not okay and hurtful.
Now, did I have to be an ass about it? No, probably not. But being an ass on this blog is how I vent the steam that builds up as I watch the profession I love torn down and excellent teachers smacked around until they apologize for existing. (And sometimes I'm just kind of an ass.)
I wish that you had written a piece about your excellent career, about your fine achievements, about all the things you were and are able to accomplish because of your own professional dedication. But of course then engageNY would not have put your essay on the web, because it would not have fit the narrative.
You seem like a nice lady and a good teacher. I'm sorry I hurt your feelings, but I'm also sorry that you wrote that promotional piece for Common Core. I hope that your summer is professionally and personally rewarding.
I understand how you might feel beaten up by the post, and given a do-over, I would have paid more attention to the fact that, as a guest poster on a commercial website, you might not be fully prepared for the kind of punch-in-the-face discourse of the bloggosphere. But I don't want to issue one of those non-apology apologies. Your feelings got hurt, and I'm the one who hurt them, and I am sorry that I did not extend at least a bit more professional consideration for them.
But while I can regret my tone, I do not regret my message. I'm going to explain why.
While reasonable people can have arguments about the content of the Common Core, the foundation of the Core, the whole premise on which they were launched and the states were strong-armed into adopting them, is fairly simple:
American public school teachers are failing. They don't know how to do their jobs. They don't know how to teach. They suck.
It's not just a false narrative, but a profoundly insulting one, both personally and professionally. The Core were not presented as "Our teachers are mostly great, but they need a bit of help" or "We have found the secret to taking our excellent teachers to the next level" but "Our schools are failing because our teachers are failing and our only hope is to tell them how to do their jobs." (At worst., we also get "They just want a paycheck. They are the biggest obstacle to education in this country") It's a gross insult, a slap in the face. And it's just not true.
The "How Common Core Made Me a Great Teacher" essay has become its own genre, with enough similarities between the entries that one wonders whether or not they are prompted by some official saying, "Why don't you write a piece about how the Core helped you, and here's an outline you could follow." Many of the teachers who write these essays seem quite sincere, and most of them appear to be teachers who were doing quite well in the classroom already, which is why the type of essay is so galling.
Because intentionally or not, the subtext is clear: "What you've heard is true. I did not know how to do my job until the Core came along to show me the way. I am here to tell you that the narrative is correct, that my colleagues and I don't know how to do our jobs, and that every good thing I've done in a classroom has only happened because the Core came along to straighten me out."
So while it may have been the furthest intention from your mind, I found your original essay (and the essays like it, of which I read about one a month) both not okay and hurtful.
Now, did I have to be an ass about it? No, probably not. But being an ass on this blog is how I vent the steam that builds up as I watch the profession I love torn down and excellent teachers smacked around until they apologize for existing. (And sometimes I'm just kind of an ass.)
I wish that you had written a piece about your excellent career, about your fine achievements, about all the things you were and are able to accomplish because of your own professional dedication. But of course then engageNY would not have put your essay on the web, because it would not have fit the narrative.
You seem like a nice lady and a good teacher. I'm sorry I hurt your feelings, but I'm also sorry that you wrote that promotional piece for Common Core. I hope that your summer is professionally and personally rewarding.
Wednesday, June 4, 2014
Why Your Evaluation Is Dumb
As you contemplate your end of the year evaluation paperwork, you are probably thinking (and not for the first time), "This doesn't make any sense." And you are correct. Current practices in teacher evaluation do not make sense-- if you assume that the purpose of these evals is to actually evaluate teachers accurately and effectively.
A good evaluation system gives the employees clear and useful feedback-- a picture of what they do well, and a plan for what they can improve. A good evaluation system also provides management with a clear picture of their organization's strengths and weaknesses. Current thought in teacher evaluation is not interested in either of these.
Proving What We Already Think We Know
Reformsters are sure that schools are failing, and that they are failing because they are packed floor to ceiling with stinky bad teachers. So evaluations don't need to be created in order to answer the question, "How are we doing?" Reformsters already know how we're doing-- we're failing. What they need is an evaluation system that confirms what we already know.
Hence stack ranking for schools. Stack ranking (ICYMI) is a now-discredited corporate model that involved determining the distribution of rankings before anyone was even evaluated. If there are ten employees in your department, we know before we even start the process that two are excellent, two are poor, and six are fair-to-middlin'.
In teacher eval land, this crops up as statements like "You don't live in excellent/distinguished/super-duper. You just visit." This is not a comment on your actual ability; the system starts with the assumption that there are very few teachers who are really good, and probably only in occasional moments. We are not looking to find excellence, because we already know it is not there.
This is just like deciding, before you even hand out the test, exactly which grades will be given, and the grading the tests by matching each test to one of the pre-determined grades. Whether your students all ace it or all flunk it, the pre-determined grades rule the outcome.
The Illusion of Objectivity
Reformsters think numbers are magical, and that only concrete objects are real (this is one of many reasons that one tends to assume that reformsters have rather sad and shallow inner lives).
If an administrator sees something with his own eyes that he can write down on paper, that must be objective. If an administrator is looking at an artifact that he can touch with his own hands, and he assigns it a number, that must be objective. Because, numbers.
I imagine the people who design these kinds of systems sitting at home evaluating the relationships in their lives. "Well, spousal unit, we performed sexual intercourse a total of two times this month, with an average duration of seventeen minutes. I cross-checked this with the video record of those events and determined that your facial expression shows a 5.7 on the arousal scale, giving us a solid 42 scale intimacy rating for this month. This compares to a 46 rating in April and a 51 in March, by which I must conclude that we are experiencing a significant decrease in marital satisfaction, and -- wait? why are you packing??"
Objectivity in teacher evaluation is an illusion. Because, human beings. If your boss hates you and is out to get you, no system in the world can keep him from finding a way to game your evaluation to hurt you. If she's a decent person who is trying to do the best for her people, no system can keep her from doing so (though we're trying hard to come up with a system that keeps her from succeeding.)
Even if we hand evaluators a specific list of behaviors to check off as signifiers of teacher quality, that list is itself a reflection of the bias of the person who made it, and the observer's own biases will affect what he does or doesn't see. There is no such thing as an objective measure of teacher quality. It does not exist. It has never existed. It will never exist. To present a system and claim that it is objective is in and of itself a demonstration of subjective biases about teaching.
Baloney Out Of Your Control
Depending on your location, you are subject to a bunch of evaluative baloney beyond your control.
This is simply hostage-taking. We want you to take these stupid pointless useless high stakes tests seriously, so we will hold your job rating hostage until you do. We want you to think AP courses are worth spending money on, so we will give you a job rating bump if you give us money.
It's also building in a safety for Reformsters. If we left it up to things that are in your control, it would be harder to get the results that we want. Throwing in some X factors helps guarantee that you won't somehow game the system and keep us from finding the widespread failure that the system exists to "reveal."
Saving for a Rainy Day
In Pennsylvania, we go through a long convoluted process to arrive at a pass-fail grade for teachers. Many other states have also chosen a relatively low-impact approach to evaluating, and so teachers feel relatively unthreatened by the process. Don't be fooled. The data is there, showing a wide range of teacher ability and "proving" that there's a vast pulsating pool of teacherly awfulness. Just because they haven't put the data in your local newspaper yet doesn't mean they won't get around to it.
A good evaluation system gives the employees clear and useful feedback-- a picture of what they do well, and a plan for what they can improve. A good evaluation system also provides management with a clear picture of their organization's strengths and weaknesses. Current thought in teacher evaluation is not interested in either of these.
Proving What We Already Think We Know
Reformsters are sure that schools are failing, and that they are failing because they are packed floor to ceiling with stinky bad teachers. So evaluations don't need to be created in order to answer the question, "How are we doing?" Reformsters already know how we're doing-- we're failing. What they need is an evaluation system that confirms what we already know.
Hence stack ranking for schools. Stack ranking (ICYMI) is a now-discredited corporate model that involved determining the distribution of rankings before anyone was even evaluated. If there are ten employees in your department, we know before we even start the process that two are excellent, two are poor, and six are fair-to-middlin'.
In teacher eval land, this crops up as statements like "You don't live in excellent/distinguished/super-duper. You just visit." This is not a comment on your actual ability; the system starts with the assumption that there are very few teachers who are really good, and probably only in occasional moments. We are not looking to find excellence, because we already know it is not there.
This is just like deciding, before you even hand out the test, exactly which grades will be given, and the grading the tests by matching each test to one of the pre-determined grades. Whether your students all ace it or all flunk it, the pre-determined grades rule the outcome.
The Illusion of Objectivity
Reformsters think numbers are magical, and that only concrete objects are real (this is one of many reasons that one tends to assume that reformsters have rather sad and shallow inner lives).
If an administrator sees something with his own eyes that he can write down on paper, that must be objective. If an administrator is looking at an artifact that he can touch with his own hands, and he assigns it a number, that must be objective. Because, numbers.
I imagine the people who design these kinds of systems sitting at home evaluating the relationships in their lives. "Well, spousal unit, we performed sexual intercourse a total of two times this month, with an average duration of seventeen minutes. I cross-checked this with the video record of those events and determined that your facial expression shows a 5.7 on the arousal scale, giving us a solid 42 scale intimacy rating for this month. This compares to a 46 rating in April and a 51 in March, by which I must conclude that we are experiencing a significant decrease in marital satisfaction, and -- wait? why are you packing??"
Objectivity in teacher evaluation is an illusion. Because, human beings. If your boss hates you and is out to get you, no system in the world can keep him from finding a way to game your evaluation to hurt you. If she's a decent person who is trying to do the best for her people, no system can keep her from doing so (though we're trying hard to come up with a system that keeps her from succeeding.)
Even if we hand evaluators a specific list of behaviors to check off as signifiers of teacher quality, that list is itself a reflection of the bias of the person who made it, and the observer's own biases will affect what he does or doesn't see. There is no such thing as an objective measure of teacher quality. It does not exist. It has never existed. It will never exist. To present a system and claim that it is objective is in and of itself a demonstration of subjective biases about teaching.
Baloney Out Of Your Control
Depending on your location, you are subject to a bunch of evaluative baloney beyond your control.
This is simply hostage-taking. We want you to take these stupid pointless useless high stakes tests seriously, so we will hold your job rating hostage until you do. We want you to think AP courses are worth spending money on, so we will give you a job rating bump if you give us money.
It's also building in a safety for Reformsters. If we left it up to things that are in your control, it would be harder to get the results that we want. Throwing in some X factors helps guarantee that you won't somehow game the system and keep us from finding the widespread failure that the system exists to "reveal."
Saving for a Rainy Day
In Pennsylvania, we go through a long convoluted process to arrive at a pass-fail grade for teachers. Many other states have also chosen a relatively low-impact approach to evaluating, and so teachers feel relatively unthreatened by the process. Don't be fooled. The data is there, showing a wide range of teacher ability and "proving" that there's a vast pulsating pool of teacherly awfulness. Just because they haven't put the data in your local newspaper yet doesn't mean they won't get around to it.
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