Did NYC Tenure Changes Chase Away Weaker Teachers?

At EdWeek, Stephen Sawchuk reports on research which suggests that NYC tenure changes chased away weaker teachers. I suspect that the research is further proof that, when it comes to teacher quality, we have no idea what the hell we're talking about.

The working paper, written by Susanna Loeb of Stanford with Luke C. Miller and James Wyckoff of the University Virginia, looks at what happened in New York City after NYC instituted an internal policy shift regarding the granting of tenure. The district pushed principals to weigh observations, lesson plans, and , in some cases, VAM scores, and provided principals with more information to consider. And the district office called principals in to second-guess their decisions ask for justification if the principal's decision didn't fit the district office's reading of the data.

In what was perhaps the most interesting twist, the district office gave the principals the option of an extension-- a year's postponement of making the final decision about a teacher.

That option was important because it was the popular one. The number of tenure denials did not significantly change, but principals really liked the "Put off till next year" option (creating a corresponding drop in tenures granted.)

Loeb et al came up with the following findings. I'm not sure they found what they think they found.

"Extended teachers" were way likely to move to another school or out of NYC.

Well, duh. Your boss calls you in and says, "I'm not so sure you've got a future here." Do you stick it out and cross your fingers, or do you go find a second opinion from someone who has not announced that he doesn't have all that much faith in your ability?

"Extended teachers" were way more likely to have been rated "less effective" by their principal and/or VAM score.

Again, duh. This is not a surprise. A principal who found a teacher to be effective, but decided not to give that teacher tenure-- that would be news.

Teachers in schools with high concentrations of black or low-performing students were more likely to be "extended," (i.e. found to be "less effective).

I've explained this phenomenon before, and the phenomenon of high-churn tough urban schools is as familiar as the phenomenon of the sun rising in the East.

Sawchuk sums up the conclusion of these unremarkable findings thus:

In sum. "nudging" some teachers out the door this way seems to have improved the overall quality of the teaching force.

I read through the full paper to see if Sawchuk just kind of skipped over the part where the researchers established that each of these nudged-out teachers was replaced with a better one. Was there some data-driven proof based on research findings that compared the Total Quality Level of schools prior to the policy change to the schools afterwards? Was there some proof that the quality of the teaching force was improved?  The long answer involves some spirited number crunching. The short answer is "No."

[Okay, there is one fun wrinkle. They couldn't compare the leavers of 2010-2011 and 2011-2012 to their actual replacements, so they compared them to the hires of 2008-2009 and 2009-2010, which, unless I am missing something, means that the leavers could have been compared in effectiveness to themselves!!]

Every piece of this research rests on the assumption that the teacher evaluations involved are absolutely accurate. But if we set that unproven and baseless assumption aside for a moment, I can reach some conclusions of my own about this research.

Teachers can read the writing on the wall about when to get out of Dodge.

So the guy who is going to decide whether to hire you or not says, "I'm not so sure. In fact, I think
you're not very good. You can stick around for a year and see if I get a better opinion of you, or maybe your students' test scores will go up. Or you could leave to find somebody else who might see more career potential in you."

What do you choose?  It depends. If you think you've really got a shot, you may stay. But if your read on that guy is not good, you cut your losses and look for greener pastures.

This process works regardless of how good the teacher actually is!

With this system, a good principal can "counsel out" plenty of bad teachers. And with this system, a bad principal can drive out plenty of good teachers. Interesting fact not included in research-- number of teachers who left one principal and were then awarded tenure by another.

Sawchuk and Loeb's reading of this research depends completely upon the assumption that the "extended" teachers were not good. But if they just had the misfortune to land in a classroom where student data, poverty, background, etc etc etc guaranteed that any teacher in that room would be rated "ineffective," then this research is really bad news, and it's the worst news for foes of tenure.

Because while you may see this as "proof" that withholding tenure leads to more excellent schools, I see the exact opposite. How do we know-- I mean, really know-- that some of those extended teachers would not have been a great addition to the schools they were chased out of?

I actually like the idea of the extension option-- handled properly, it could have some positive effects. But under current conditions, particularly with teacher evaluations such a VAM-driven mess of random crap, it would be disastrous. Because here's my finding:

In sum, when you play games with job security to the point that teachers don't think they have any, they will leave for some other school system that offers it.

This continued search for the secret of ejecting bad teachers is real cart before the horse stuff. Launching the witch hunt before you know how to identify a witch just creates bad results for everybody. And this paper provides some proof.

Tenure- Private vs. Public

Nobody else has tenure. Why should teachers get it?

So what if you could be fired for any reason? That's how employment works for every one else. Most people are "at will employees."

You've heard these arguments (and if you haven't, gird your loins and go strolling through the trolling in the comments section of any article about Vergara and/or tenure). And I believe it's a sincere, honest objection for some folks. So, for those folks, let me try another approach to explaining tenure, and why teaching is different from working in the private sector.

In the private sector, employees serve the interests of the company. "Are you doing a good job," has a clear definition-- "Are you helping the company become better and more profitable?"

This provides everybody with a straightforward measure for job performance. From Vice-Presdent of Widget Development down to Welder on Widget Assembly Line, everyone knows what interests they are supposed to serve. That's not always an easy call-- competition between different segments of the company, different visions of what the company needs to succeed, and setting priorities can all create some real dissension and disconnect between the various silos within the corporate structure.

But even those various issues will be solved by that same metric-- does it serve the company's interests?

That single focus on one set of interests- the company's-- provides its own sort of hedge against bad management choices and capricious firings. If I start firing everyone in my department because I don't like the way they do their hair, and I start firing people who could really serve the company's interests, I am going to have to answer to my own boss.

And because that focus on the company's interests is incorporated into the hiring process, much of the weeding is already done. I'm not going to get fired from a GOP Think Tank for being a raging liberal because I'm not going to get hired in the first place.

But while a private corporation has a relatively simple focus on its own interests, a public school is quite another matter.

A public school teacher exists at a place where hundreds of different interests intersect. It is one of the reasons that we don't have a good answer for what "Are you doing a good job" means for a teacher.

An elementary teacher may have, say twenty five students in the room. Each of them has their own interests to be served, plus the interests of their parents (which may not match, either). Chris may want his child taught to be a killer mathematician with strict focus on academics, while Pat might want her child to be nurtured and made to feel happy and whole. But the elementary teacher also has to serve the interests of the building administration and the district administration and whatever other supervisors she may have. And on top of that she must serve the interests of the state and federal government, who have imposed their own set of expectations. Let's also throw in the school board members, who bring their own many and varied interests to the table.

If our hypothetical teacher takes on other duties, she now serves more sets of interests. Does she coach? Every player and parent bring their own set of interests to the game. Is she a union rep? There are more interests to be served. And on top of all of these, the one interest a teacher is never supposed to serve is her own. "Enlightened self-interest" is a virtue in business, but nobody touts it for teachers.

A private employee serves one master-- the company.

A public school teacher serves several hundred masters. And on any given day, many of those masters will fight for ascendency. A teacher cannot serve all of those interests, and yet that is the teacher's mandate. Tenure is meant to shield the teacher from the political fallout of these battles, to give the teacher the freedom to balance all these interests as she sees best.

Yes, of course, private corporations are rife with internal struggles and employees who have to decide which corporate masters to serve. But at the end of the day, these conflicts are all resolved the same way-- what best serves the interests of the company.

Reformsters have tried to make education that simple. "Okay, here it is," they proclaimed proudly, Gordian knot-cutters in hand. "The purpose of schools is to get good test scores. You are doing a good job when students get good scores on The Big Standardized Test! See? Simple!!" And that would make things simple-- if anyone believed for ten minutes that generating good test scores really was the main interest of a school.

Nobody does, so we're right back where we're started, with a teacher who has a mandate to serve a thousand masters, any one of whom may get angry that some other master was served first and so, let's fire that terrible teacher! Private employees stand and face the same master-- the good of the company-- and while there is certainly jockeying for position and jostling and not a small amount of kicking and gouging, in the end, they all still face the good of the company. But teachers stand in the middle of a circle of masters, always turning their back to one of them. Without tenure, the master they've turned their back on has the power to jump forward and lop off their heads.

Teachers often frame the need for tenure as the need for protection from one bad boss. But in truth as public employees we have thousands of bosses; all it takes is just one out of a thousand to be bad for our career to be in danger. That's why we need tenure.

[Edit- It's becoming obvious that we need to rethink the use of the word tenure, which many people associate with "job for life" when what we mean is "guarantee of due process." I'm not going to rewrite this piece at this point, but you should feel free to make the mental substitution.]

A Small Thing Everyone Can Do

It can seem huge and hopeless, the large scale of the current battle for the soul of public education in this country. But there is a useful, positive, strengthening, helpful action that every single one of us can take.

Write a letter.

Because here's two things I know about teachers.

Thing one. We work mostly in isolation, with our main human contact the small persons we work with every day. Get busy with classroom stuff and you might not talk to another adult at all for days at a time. And with rare exceptions, we certainly don't watch each other work. We have a pretty good idea of what our colleagues are up to, but we rarely actually watch them in action. Teachers work mostly on little separate islands.

Thing two. All good teachers have doubts. Show me a teacher who says, "You know, I've basically got this whole thing locked down, and there's really nothing about my teaching that I need to fix in any way" and I will show you a lousy teacher. Every good-to-great teacher I have ever known can tell you, right now, at least five things they are hoping to do better next year. It's one of the challenges of the work-- you know what you would be getting done if you were perfect, and you know just how far you are from that place. Every year you can get better, closer to that place. But you never get there. I've been at this for about thirty-five years, and while I am not remotely God's gift to teaching, I do okay. But I will still spend my summer trying to find ways to fill some of the gaps in my work. And that's before we even talk about those days (rarer with each year but never wiped out completely) when I go home and think, "Well, damn. Today I was definitely not awesome."

So, the letter. Here's my suggestion.

As you start your summer vacation, write somebody a letter, somebody you know, somebody you work with. Tell them why you appreciate them. Tell them what you think they did well. Tell them why you're glad you work with them. Tell them something good about themselves.

I know it's hokey, but we all know the power of these sorts of letters. Admit it-- you have a drawer somewhere with the notes you've gotten from parents or students thanking you. So why can't you create a letter like that for somebody else?

If you believe in certain qualities, if you believe that certain behaviors and choices make the world better, you have to call them out when you see them. If you want those qualities to win the fight, you have to strengthen them, and you strengthen them by acknowledging them, by supporting them.

Here are the rules.

1) It does not have to be long and involved. Keep it simple. "I'm glad I worked with you this year because..." or "I respect the work you've done this year because..." or just "Thank you for your work this year."

2) You do not have to send it to a perfect human. Sometimes we don't want to praise someone for doing X because they are such a jerk about Y. Get over it. If they did a good thing, they did a good thing. You're writing a note, not a recommendation for the Nobel prize.

3) Write it on paper. They cannot put an email in the Drawer of Letters That Remind Them Why They Do This.

That's it.

Now, I know that writing these letters will not immediately cause the Common Core movement to collapse or Arne Duncan to become a supporter of teachers or high stakes standardized testing to suddenly shrivel up in the sun. But it will give someone just a little more strength to do the work that really matters, the work in a school that actually gets the education done, that actually takes care of the students. It will not change everyone's world entirely, but it will make one person's world just a tiny bit better, and that is certainly not a bad thing.

And for those of us who write it, it's a way to remind ourselves, as we brush off the dust and chaos of another year's end, why we do this, what we value, and why we are already a little bit excited about coming back in a few months to start all over again.

Write a letter. Seriously.

How To Get Great Teachers

One of the relentless reformster refrains these days is that we must put a great teacher in front of every student. We must get the best and brightest into our classrooms, and we must keep them. We talk as if there are millions of awesometastic young teachers fighting to get into classrooms (which are currently occupied by hoary old wildebeasts of teaching), when in fact almost fifty percent of new teachers walk away from teaching within the first five years all on their own.

We are mystified by the puzzle of the hemorrhaging profession as if nobody knows how to recruit and retain the best people for a job.

What Business Knows about Recruit and Retrain

It's particularly amazing that so many business-based reformsters are mystified by this, since the business world knows exactly how this game is played. Let's roll back the clock to the post-crash world of 2009-2010, when discussion was rife about bankers and specifically why they were getting to keep their jobs and their bonuses after they destroyed their own businesses and the US economy with them.

They have experience. They have knowledge. We don't want to lose them. These were the basic arguments over and over again. If you want to hold onto the best people, you have to pay them well. And in the case of the banksters, there was no objective measured "proof" of their excellence-- they wrecked the economy and their businesses had to be bailed out by the taxpayers.

I have seen the same thing on a smaller scale. A regional business forced out a CEO who was, by many measures, lousy-- and then hired him as a $1,000/day consultant. Because, experience and knowledge.

Is Education Somehow Different?

We know how to recruit and retain really great people. We even know how to do it with not-very-great people. So why is it a mystery in education?

We've seen a huge assault on pay scales based on longevity-- why pay teachers more just for having been around for years? But the business world routinely awards "longevity bonuses" to "incentivize" employees to stick around (they also help insure that other businesses won't try to woo the employee away by offering more money, because that's how you attract employees).

The Not-Actually-Secrets of Making a Job Attractive and Rewarding

Yeah. You attract people by waving money at them.

But that's not the only way. We know a great deal about what drives people.

Autonomy, Mastery and Purpose.

Give people the power and ability to chart a course for themselves. Let them be more than just button pushers and order-followers. Let them be self-directed.

Give people the chance to get better at stuff, to feel as if they've acquired greater skills, and that those skills are recognized and put to use.

Give people a sense that they are working for some larger, greater purpose. Hint: dealing with whatever crazy disaster management has ginned up today is not a higher purpose.

And, pro tip about the money-- it only works as incentive for mechanical non-cognitive tasks. If you want to get creativity and cognitive nimbleness, the right amount of money is "enough so that they aren't worried about money."

Sooo... Let's Do The Opposite?

The big irony is that teaching is perfectly situated to be a highly attractive line of work. Teachers can enjoy great autonomy in their classroom, along with the freedom to pursue whatever sort of excellence they are interested in as they develop strengths and specialties. And you don't have to look hard in education to find purpose-- helping young human beings find their best selves, to grow and change and become what they aspire to be, to learn and grown in understanding, to come to understanding of how to learn and take their places in the world. How more transcendent can a purpose get.

And yet.

And yet reformsters, with their stated purpose of bringing great teachers to students everywhere, aspire to strip teaching of everything that makes it attractive.

Let's reduce teacher autonomy by turning teachers into content delivery specialists, whose job is to present a program in a box, maybe even follow a script. And let's create school environments that are chaotic and out of control and lacking the resources teachers need to do their jobs. And let's turn the evaluation process into a random mess in which a teacher has no control over how her job performance is rated, or how that random mess might affect her career or pay. And let's strip away all due process so that any teacher can be fired at any time for any reason.

Let's not give teachers any avenue for improvement except in the area of doing what they're told.

Let's turn the purpose of teaching into "make students get better scores on standardized tests."

And in some states, let's actually lower the teacher's pay in real dollars every year. Or make a portion of the pay dependent on uncontrollable factors in competition with fellow teachers.

Reformsters counter these observations by simply insisting that they are doing the opposite of what they are clearly doing. We're destroying tenure in order to retain the best teachers. We are giving teachers stricter tighter direction in the classroom to free them up. We are cutting their pay so we can pay them more. But there's a practical problem with this-- teachers aren't stupid.

Could We Do the Right Thing?

Reformsters and teacher critics insist that the new rules for teacher employment are no worse than what some others suffer. But again, practically speaking, that just doesn't matter. Recruiters at ivy league schools don't make a pitch by saying, "This compensation package would be good enough for a community college guy, so we figure you should accept it."

You do not recruit people for any field by telling them repeatedly how little they deserve.

Recruiting and retain often involves balance. Some fields do offer very little in the way of job security-- so they compensate by throwing more money at recruits. Private schools offer less money and job security (and pay a price for both in teacher retention), but they make up for it in teacher autonomy (do not underestimate the power of giving a teacher an office-- space that is his to control and use as he wishes).

There are of course some reformsters whose dream is a school workforce of McTeachers-- low skill, easily replaced, and low paid. For those folks, nothing about what I've written above is either troubling or newsworthy.

But for reformsters who sincerely want to to attract and retain the best and the brightest, I suggest you ask yourself honestly why somebody would want to work under the conditions that you want to impose.

Yes, there is one more argument-- current teachers do not deserve nice things and should be punished and punished hard. But the conditions for punishing current workers are not the conditions for attracting the top talent (something the banksters understood perfectly).

If you really want to put a great teacher in front of every child, then you need to preserve and enhance a vision of teaching that gives teachers control over their fate, their teaching environment, and the education they provide their students. You need to preserve and enhance a vision of the profession that allows teachers to grow and excel (on their own terms). You need to preserve and enhance a vision of education's greater purposes, which are so much more than "college and career ready" and "do well on that bubble test." And you need to offer career pay that means they're not always wondering how they'll ever be able to raise a family or buy a home.

The Hidden Benefit

We don't want to give the same kind of money and benefit stuff to teachers who are not great. I get that and I don't disagree (though if you are one of the people who wants education run like a business, I'm not sure what your beef is-- business pays big bucks for not-greatness all the time, on purpose, rather than take a chance on losing greatness). Of course, some of what would help isn't actually a teacher benefit. Imagine if you took those urban schools that nobody wants to teach at and spent some money fixing them up, and provided them with great resources, and sent them the most capable administrators, and just generally made the well-financed, well-built, well-maintained, well-supplied centers of pride and learning. I feel like that might have benefits for people other than teachers.

If you are going to put a great teacher in every classroom, wouldn't it make sense to have a great classroom to put her in?

And there's another benefit to doing everything I've talked about, to making teaching just as attractive a profession as it can be. If you were to make teaching actually attractive, you would have a larger pool to choose from.
Right now, schools of education are tanking. The pool of future teachers is drying up, and as we already know, new teachers become former teachers at a steady rapid rate. Nobody is out there saying, "I just dream of reading a scripted lesson so that my students will do better on a bubble test." For all the reasons mentioned and more, teaching is becoming highly unattractive, and that means that job interview questions are shifting from, "What do you think is the best pedagogy for vocabulary acquisition" to "So, are you breathing?" For people who want actual teachers, TFA is no answer.

You want better choices? Attract more people to the field. Then you can hire just the good teachers and not hire all the bad ones, and your vision of every classroom with a great teacher will be achieved. See how easy? Really easy. So easy that I have to believe that pursuing these other approached might suggest that a great teacher in every classroom is not really some reformsters' goal at all.

Van Roekel Gets Feisty-ish

It has been a noisy week for NEA president Dennis van Roekel. In the face of a great deal of anti-teacher rhetoric (some if it coming from a sitting judge in a major court case), DVR has decided that it's time to finally speak up on behalf of teachers.

First, he opened up in HuffPo, declaring that our accountability system is flunking. He wrote, in part:

The idea that everything will be better if we test students and just "hold teachers accountable" for results is unfair to our students and insulting to those of us who devote our lives to educating kids.

This is right on point, and even though he's at least a year late, at least he finally said it. But like Randi Weingarten and Linda Darling-Hammond, whose lead he appears to be following here, he writes about the high stakes testing as if it is occurring in some sort of vacuum and not as a linked and logically predictable outcome of the Common Core Gates Standards.

He compares the current system to applying for a bank loan and--wait! what? Literally thousands of metaphors have been put out there for this process, but DVR has chosen a terrible one. Our evaluations are like loans given to us by banks? Teaching is like asking someone to give you money that isn't really yours and that you have to prove you deserve?Which you have to pay back with interest?

And he calls for full-system accountability, accountability for politicians and bureaucrats. Accountability that "emphasizes improving professional practice and advancing student learning." Put that together with an earlier quote from the piece: "There are ways that do improve student success, and they involve better preparation for teachers, better support in the classroom, and ensuring that all students have access to qualified teachers and great schools." Oh, look! DVR is testifying for the Vergara plaintiffs!

I get that it's a clever technique to appropriate the language of your opponents. Hell, the reformsters have been kicking our collective ass using that technique. But you have to make clear, at least to your own people, how it means something different when you say it. When DVR says he favors measures of "advancing student learning," I don't know if he means "we need meaningful measures of student growth" or "let's have more VAM!" Ultimately, he doesn't say anything, call for anything specific (like, say, actual teacher involvement) that would cause Arne Duncan or That Woman the slightest disagreement.

Then later in the week, DVR stepped up and actually addressed his members. Specifically, he was addressing the full page USA Today attack ad (everything you need to know about the ad is covered here by Mercedes Schneider, other than saying that this is the sort of thing that leads teachers to conclude that a "mutual cease-fire" is a silly thing to discuss).

DVR opens with a compelling juxtaposition-- an ad comparing students and teachers to garbage coming to his attention while he was dedicating a memorial to teachers who died trying to protect their students. He tells us he's angry-- angry about a system that is misfocused and dominated by corporate interests. And then he addresses the reformsters directly. And this part is good. Really good:

I have a message for those people who would seek to reduce children to a test score and teaching to a technological transaction. 
You are mistaken if you think we will see your attacks and get discouraged, that we will read the headlines and give up.
You may put students in the name of your campaigns but that doesn’t mean you really care about the millions of children in our public schools.
If you did truly care, you would look at the more than half of public-school children who live in poverty and wage your crusades against the inequity in our economy.
If you truly cared, you would look at the deteriorating conditions in schools across this country and aim your fire at politicians who have starved our schools of the resources to succeed and then punished them for their failures.

Sadly, DVR does not stick the landing for the whole speech:


I will continue to fight for them, and for the educators across this country who dedicate themselves to fulfilling the promise of another generation of students.

This would be more compelling if-- well, you cannot "continue" doing something that you have not to date actually done. And while I'm being critical, I recommend you read the text and not watch the video. DVR's "I'm very angry" looks a lot like "I should have not eaten the rest of that garlic hummus."

Look, I'm still pissed at him. I'll admit it. I have not forgiven him for last summer's "Well, if you don't like CCSS, then what do you want to do instead." It was a horrible thing for the head of the NEA to say, embracing the assumption that America's teachers suck and need to be guided out of the vast swamp of suck in which they've gotten lost. Or his prolonged silence-- remember when he criticized the rollout of CCSS, then took it back immediately, then shut up about it entirely until now? So while I appreciate his defense of us now, I'm having a hard time getting past "Where the hell have you been, Dennis?"

But beyond that, DVR still doesn't grasp how complicit in the reformster mess he is, how his support of the Core has fueled much of what he now rails against. When they say we stink, they are saying the proof is that our students do poorly on the high stakes tests that are set up to prove we're teaching the Core. It is hard for DVR to convincingly protest the measuring when he's one of the people who promoted the ruler in the first place.

So I appreciate his jumping in now that we've had a week of severe clobbering. But I'm not going to get excited about it until A) he recognizes and apologizes for his role in creating this atmosphere in the first place and B) he repudiates the whole mess, Core and all. What a great gesture if the NEA gave back the $3.00 it collected from all of us to help promote CCSS (like buying bullets for our own executioners).  I will settle for somebody getting a clue to his most-likely already-selected successor.

Dear Teacher Educators at CUNY: Why You Failed To Convince Me

Dear CUNY Teacher Educators:

I just saw your letter in support of edTPA on Diane Ravitch's blog. As will become obvious, I am not an academic. I'm a classroom teacher with thirty-some years of experience; I've also served as co-operating teacher for ten or so student teachers. Let me tell you why your letter did not convince me that edTPA is a great, good, or even okay program.

You characterize edTPA as "a performance assessment of teaching developed by hundreds of teachers and teacher educators across the country, in a process led by Stanford University’s Center for Assessment, Learning, and Equity (SCALE), with support from the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education (AACTE)." This does not even match edTPA's own description of the process, found on their website-- "Stanford University faculty and staff at the Stanford Center for Assessment, Learning, and Equity (SCALE) developed edTPA. They received substantive advice and feedback from teachers and teacher educators..." Giving advice and feedback is not "developing." It does not really address the frequent criticism that Pearson was in on the development, and I remain skeptical-- it is hard to imagine how Pearson could end up managing the complex on-line system of the evaluation without having had a voice in developing it, even to say "We can do X for you, but probably not Y."

But that's beside the point. Many of Alan Singer's most damning criticisms go unanswered in your letter.

I agree with you when you say that a teacher must be able to articulate what she is doing and why. But what edTPA requires goes far beyond that. It's one thing to be able to stand in front of a co-operating teacher (or a class) and explain the why's and wherefor's of a lesson. It's quite another to have to prepare a full-on dog and pony show to fit one's answer into program specifications. Or as Singer says, "Student teaching is about learning to be an effective and creative teacher. edTPA is about following directions." 

I can agree that teachers need to be able to articulate what they're doing. But that's not the question-- the question is Why have them do it in the manner proscribed by edTPA? What about the edTPA project requirements marks these requirements as the very best way to demonstrate these skills? Nowhere in your letter (or, really, in edTPA/Pearson's website) is there a real answer for that. Singer asked directly what the research basis was for the validity of the program, and received a homina-homina-homina non-answer.

You say, "Furthermore, we do not agree with the claim that the edTPA demands only one way to demonstrate what is good teaching." But that's not the criticism. I am reminded of a student I watched working on Study Island, a computerized tutoring program. I was covering a math class and watching a student struggle. "I know the answer," he said. "I just have to figure out how the program wants me to say it." That is edTPA's problem. You can come up with any answer you want, but you have to put it all in the right package. edTPA's one useful strength is that it prepares future teachers to deal with pointless inflexible useless bureaucratic baloney; its corresponding weakness is that it fosters the notion that teaching is like a big final project for a college class.


You also attempt to address the question of who scores the project. You and the edTPA talking points paper agree: the projects are scored by trained educators with background in teacher training. I believe that, because a while back I followed a recruiting link for that very work. It took me directly to Pearson. I fared somewhat better than colleagues who have received invitations to be scorers for disciplines which they do not teach.  And while Singer's charge that edTPA will be scored by Pearson-hired temps may be incorrect, let's be honest-- it doesn't matter. What really matters is who will select and train those evaluators. What matters is who writes the rubric and enforces its interpretation. What are the odds that Pearson, holder of the big fat contract to oversee and administer edTPA, is doing that job?

You wrap up with some pretty words that boil down to, "Well, it's better than a damn standardized test like the Praxis," and I agree. edTPA is a better than Praxis in the same way that being punched in the face is better than being punched in the throat. And while edTPA doesn't use student test scores yet, Mercedes Schneider reported almost a year ago that AACTE has embraced the VAM-loving folks at CAEP, who think VAM would go great with  edTPA.

You cite some weak research that 96% of students reported a "positive influence" for edTPA. I read that to mean that a large number of students checked some version of "Well, it didn't make me teach any worse." This is not a ringing endorsement, and it speaks to the biggest unanswered question about edTPA.

Why do we need it?

Seriously. I'm an old fart, so I went to teacher school and my department trained me and then said, "We believe you're ready. Here's a diploma and a teaching certificate. Get to work." And I've been doing okay ever since. I have to ask (and I asked the same thing about the Praxis)-- did college education departments get stupider after I graduated?

Are you seriously telling me that as the CUNY teacher education department, when you are done teaching a student and mentoring him through student teaching, when you have put him through all the paces that your department has designed, you have to turn to the world, shrug and say, "I dunno. maybe he's ready; maybe he isn't. I mean, we gave him a diploma and all, but that was just a formality. We have no idea whether we have actually prepared him to be a teacher or not. We'd better hire somebody else to figure it out."

It's not that I don't think there are college ed departments in serious, serious trouble. Inadequate prep with barely drive-by supervision during student teaching, checking nothing except the student's ability to pay-- there are college departments that need to be revamped or terminated. edTPA, with its serious of narrow-scoped color-by-numbers is not the answer. A highly artificial five-day "project" is a supremely inauthentic and unhelpful command performance. A college teacher training program that thinks it's a great idea is probably one of the departments that needs to be dismantled.

But then, it looks like you need to have this conversation with your own colleagues.

Directory of Anti-Teacher Trolls

It may or may not be a good idea to attempt reading all the pieces responding to the Vergara decision, but it's definitely a mistake to read the comments section for any of them.

If there is any group that has been emboldened by the California court's fact-free finding against teacher job protections, it has been the legion of anti-teacher trolls. From mainstreamish media like Slate to the usual bloggy outposts, teacher bashing trollery is in high gear.

So this seems like the perfect time to provide a directory of the basic varieties of internet teacher-haters you may encounter. (And remember-- don't feed them.)

Childless Troll

I don't have any kids, so why should I be paying any kinds of taxes to pay teachers salary? Cut their salary back to where I don't have to pay any taxes ever. Mind you, I still expect my doctor, neighbors, fellow voters, and every employed person I ever deal with to be an educated adult. I just don't want there to be any schools. I don't know how that's going to work. You're so smart, you figure it out.

Public Service Troll

People should work with children for free because it's such important work (also, musicians and artists should never want to be paid). When teachers complain about salary and benefits, it's unseemly. If they really cared about the children, teachers would happily live in a cardboard box just for the warm glow of satisfaction that comes from teaching. When teachers complain about no raise for eight years or trying to support their family, it just pisses me off-- don't they care about the children??

"Those Damn Unions" Troll

It's the damn teachers union. Teachers all want to go sleep at their desks because the union will protect them. The union does nothing but protect bad teachers. In fact, the union actually goes out, recruits bad teachers, and then cleverly forces administrations to give these crappy teachers tenure. The union also elected Obama President, and they have the power to bend all elected officials to their will (except for Rand Paul). Union leaders have a giant pile of money that they like to swim in a la Scrooge McDuck; they use it to buy all the elections and all the power.

Teacher Hater Troll

Teachers are the single biggest obstacle to education today. They are only in it for the power and the glory. Well, no-- they also became teachers because they knew that would put them in the best position to interfere with the education of American students, which is every teacher's goal. Teachers hate children, and they hate learning, so they become teachers so they can devote their entire lives to destroying those things. It's perfectly logical.

Race To The Bottom Troll

The guy who cooks the fries at McDonalds does not have tenure or make any more than minimum wage or get vacations, so neither should teachers. The guy who dropped out of school in tenth grade and now works part-time at Mega-Mart doesn't have job security, and he barely makes enough to pay his cellphone bill, so why should teachers not have to struggle, too? There are employers in this country who force their workers to toil in unconscionable conditions; why should we fight to improve those conditions when we can fight to drag teachers down to that crappy level instead.

Sad Bitter Memories Troll

I hated high school. My teachers were mean to me. I remember a couple who picked on me all the time just because I didn't do my work and slept in class a lot. And boy, they did a crappy job of teaching me anything. I sat in their classroom like a houseplant at least three days a week, and I didn't learn a thing. Boy, did they suck! Crappy teachers like that ought to be fired immediately! And that principal who yelled at me for setting fire to the library? That guy never liked me. Fire 'em all.

Unlikely Anecdote Troll

There was this one teacher in the town just over from where I went to school, and one day he brought in a nine millimeter machine gun and mowed down every kid in his first three classes. The principal was going to fire him, but the union said he couldn't because of tenure, so that guy just kept working there. They even put kids in his class who were related to the ones he shot. Tenure has to be made illegal right away.

Just Plain Wrong Troll

Tenure actually guarantees teachers a job for life, and then for thirty years after they retire and fifty years after they die. It's true. Once you get hired as a teacher you are guaranteed a paycheck with benefits for the next 150 years.

Confused Baloney Troll

If you really care about children and educational excellence, then you want to see teachers slapped down. The only way to foster excellence in education is by beating teachers down so they know their place. Only by beating everyone in the bucket can we get the cream to rise to the top.

Like A Business Troll

You know, in every other job, you get judged on your performance and then rewarded or fired accordingly. Personally, I would have been a useless lazy bastard at my job except that my boss was always looking over my shoulder. People suck unless you threaten them. Nobody threatens teachers enough; that's why they all suck. All the best businesses like, you know, big investment banks like Lehman Brothers or energy companies like Enron-- those totally function on accountability.

Fake Statistic Troll

It's a known fact that 63% of teachers failed high school shop class, and 43% are unable to even dress themselves. If you have a bad teacher in Kindergarten, it's a proven fact that you will make $1 trillion dollars less in life; also, you'll be plagued with adolescent acne until you're 34, and your children will be ugly. 92% of high school graduates last year were unable to read, and 46% of those were unable to even identify the English language. Also, 143% of urban teachers are "highly ineffective" and 52% of those are "grossly ineffective" and 24% of those actually give off waves that cause metal surfaces to rust. I ask you, how can we continue to support public education under these conditions.

Tin Hat Troll

Teachers are part of the Agenda 21 agenda, and will be used as tools to turn students into mindless puppets who will smother their parents in their beds at night. You can read all about it in the Codexes of the Postuleminatti.

Charter School Troll

All of these bad things only apply to public school. In charter schools, all students develop a cure for cancer and build pink unicorns from ordinary materials you can find around the house.

Accountability Troll

There are still poor children in this country who are doing poorly in school. That must be a teacher's fault. Hunt that teacher down and fire him, repeatedly.

Incoherent Rage Troll

Teachers just all suck with the suckiness think they're so smarty pants with their fancy college edumacations and don't even work a whole year or a whole day even they just work an hour and then twelve months off every summer resting up from just babysitting which any moron could do so fire them all because, suck gaaaaahhh.

If I missed any, you can just sign on as a Hey You Made A Serious Omission troll in the comments below.