The release of this year's NCTQ teacher prep school ratings is another opportunity for news organizations to practice press release journalism. The good news is that as of noon-time on June 17, most outfits aren't even bothering to do that.
Foxnews.com is headlining a list of twelve terrible teachers who are being protected by tenure. A search on USAToday.com for "nctq" produces only a press release from February of 2013. On cnn.com, a similar search turns up nothing at all. Even MSNBC, whose love for reformy things is deep and abiding, is more excited about the Starbucks college (sort of) plan.
That's understandable. The NCTQ report is proprietary USNews stuff, and rival organizations aren't going to do someone else's PR work for them. That reality, it should be noted, underscores the degree to which the report is not news.
Even a google of the report turns up mostly various folks debunking the whole ridiculous mess. (There's some good debunkery here and here.) So it's possible that this story may get the kind of attention it actually deserves, which is to say none except those deflating the self-inflated bubble of importance.
However, if we want to see the template for how some news outlets will inevitably be elevated to a level of importance and legitimacy that it does not deserve, we can stroll over to see what Joy Resmovits is covering it at HuffPost.
We're going to skip over the inflammatory headline-- in the world of journalism, writers generally do not write their own headlines, so it's no fair holding journalists responsible for the clickbait banners that fly above their work.
We hit our first bit of trouble in graf two: "The National Council on Teacher Quality, a Washington group that advocates tougher teacher evaluations..."
Resmovits gets a point for the verb "advocates," because NCTQ is nothing more than that. But to say that they advocate for tougher teacher evaluations is to echo their own press releases. I might as easily say that NCTQ advocates for their own ideas about what teacher evaluations should look like, or advocates for evaluations that reflect their own narrow interests. By characterizing them as "tough" Resmovits gives them a badge of legitimacy and positive focus that they do not deserve, and which incorporates a judgment about their agenda that is not really reportage.
Resmovits then summarizes their big findings, unchallenged, and lets NCTQ honcho Kate Walsh have the floor for some lengthy quotage-- again, unchallenged.
Then we throw in a graph. With "raw scores," because, you know, data. Resmovits does not address the question of where the raw scores come from. Not entirely surprising, because any positive reporting of NCTQ ratings has to pussy-foot around the question of where the numbers come from. Number of times that Common Core and Phonics are mentioned in the course catelog? Quality of department stationary? Evaluator's mood on the afternoon they were throwing numbers around? We don't know.
Resmovits does report that there is Broad and Arnold money behind the report, but again characterizes the report as aiming "to improve teacher training, modeling itself after broad reforms to medical schools a century ago." And boy, there's a sentence that just begs further explanation. I'm going to guess it doesn't mean "more teachers should train with cadavers" but beyond that, who knows. Whatever it is, we're once again going to characterize it as "improving" education rather than any number of other verbs such as "alter" or "twist" or even "take over."
Resmovits says HuffPo tried getting quotes from the bottom three schools; I could have told her that was unlikely, given that these schools are just today finding out that they (apparently) suck and have had no real chance to figure out why they got the ax. That might have been something worth noting, though one school did indicate that they had declined to cooperate with NCTQ. That's doing better than some, since NCTQ doesn't always bother to even speak to the school. A teacher school up the road from me was taken aback last year when they found themselves rated failing for a program that they don't even have. "Had anyone talked to us," the university president told me, shrugging.
But Resmovits lets Walsh bat clean-up as well, and Walsh assures us that even if it seems like everyone in public is ignoring their bogus bulk of bulbous baloney (I'm paraphrasing), behind closed doors, policymakers are getting ready to use this important information in the upcoming federal takeover of teacher prep programs.
The AACTE, teacher prep school lobby group, offers a politely worded raspberry about the report and its origins. That's in the very last paragraph.
Resmovits frustrates me. She clearly has the skill and brains to do better reportage, but invariably she fails to challenge the reformster narrative, or even offer enough details to let it be seen in all its awesome glory.
For instance, there's my favorite fun fact from the report. The top teacher prep school for secondary teachers is an on-line school. Wouldn't that be a fun lead. Wouldn't America's parents just be delighted a few years down the road to find out that their kid's teacher was certified at a cyber school.
At any rate, that's how things look just a few hours after the release of the report. Arne Duncan has kept quiet so far, as have many major media outlets. Let's see what happens as the week goes on.
Tuesday, June 17, 2014
TNTP & The Unreal Lessons of Vergara
TNTP is the less famous faux-reform sibling of StudentsFirst, but like that other batch of corporate reformsters, they can be counted on to articulate their agenda in a more-transparent-than-they-probably-meant-to-be manner. Last week they brought their reformy skills to "The Real Lessons of Vergara," in which Tim Daly and Dan Weisberg reveal some of the huge holes in the reformster agenda.
Their thesis is not all that unreasonable.
Despite all the prophecies of doom during the trial, teachers need not fear this verdict. Everyone agrees that California’s children deserve an education that prepares them for success in college and life, and the state’s constitution guarantees it. Likewise, there is broad consensus that teachers should have reasonable and professional job protections. This case has always been about finding the right balance between the two.
That's what the case has always been about? Because if that's what the case was about, it was remarkably well-hidden by the plaintiffs, who seemed to be pretty intent on just plain wiping out tenure and FILO (as is StudentsFirst). But maybe we can read that piece of revisionist history as a signal that reformsters are willing to back off a bit.
But there are curious versions of alternate reality that run throughout the TNTP piece.
Throughout the trial, the plaintiffs exposed how California’s laws make it nearly impossible for schools to hire and keep outstanding teachers or dismiss teachers who simply aren’t up to the job.
I understand the argument about not being able to fire bad teachers-- but what exactly about California's laws made it hard to hire good teachers in the first place? Or are we suggesting that because young teachers have less job security, they are less likely to apply in California? In which case, the solution is even less job security? I feel as if I'm missing some crucial point here.
Daly and Weisberg suggest there are four key changes needed to properly balance the need for job protection with the need to provide the best teachers. Each one is problematic.
Give Teachers a Longer Tryout
Because the problem with FILO is that we have to fire too many of our best teachers, who are the young ones. So, we need more job protection for young teachers, except that we shouldn't give them any kind of tenure for at least four years. So, we need to not fire young teachers, but we need to make it easier to fire young teachers. Got it?
Keep Due Process, But Eliminate "Uber" Due Process
Oh, the devil is in the details, isn't it, boys. Daly and Weisberg accept that teachers should have protections for, say, outside political activities. The teacher evaluation should be given the benefit of the doubt, but teachers should be able to appeal if they think the process wasn't followed correctly, but teachers should not be able to appeal because they believe the finding of the evaluation is wrong, and the process should be allowed to go on for a while, but not too much of a while.
I actually agree that the process should not be hugely time and money-consuming, but I can only hope that trying to write this one paragraph gave these guys a sense of just how hard it is to write the rulebook that will keep the whole process under control. You can go ahead and say "The hearing process should only take one day" and isn't it pretty to think so, but how exactly do you force that to happen and keep things fair to all parties? Actual justice is messy.
Lower the Stakes of Dismissal
Daly and Weisberg say that a dismissal should not be a career-ender because "a teacher who’s a bad fit for one school might be a great fit for another school" and --gaaahhh-- do you see what you just said there, boys? Because one freaking premise of Vergara was that "bad teacher" and "good teacher" are absolute, solid state conditions and that the school in which a teachers is working is in no way related to the quality of that teacher's work.
The Vergara plaintiffs (and the StudentsFirst anti-tenure agitprop) aren't saying, "The state is failing to match teachers up with the assignments in which they will shine." The message is that there are a bunch of Good Teachers out there and a bunch of Bad Teachers, and the Good Teachers will be great wherever we put them and the Bad Teachers will be bad wherever they work, so we need to fire the Bad Teachers and put the Good Teachers in the classrooms that need them (where they will continue to be Good Teachers). You just blithely threw out the whole thing. Sloppy work, boys.
Let Schools Protect Their Best Teachers During Layoffs
Daly and Weisberg split a new set of hairs here, indicating that a great new teacher might be fired so that the district can keep a teacher who just has just a year or two more seniority. So, not the usual picture of the freshfaced twenty-five year old being thrown into the street by some washed-up fifty-something old fart.
Unfortunately, this new version brings into sharp relief just how corrosive this approach would be to the atmosphere of a school.
Principal: Hey, Chris. This is Pat, the new hire. Pat's almost your age, so I thought you could help Pat get acclimated. Also, Pat's pretty bright, so we think Pat might take your job at the next round of layoffs. Make Pat feel welcome.
Chris: Sure thing. So, Pat, here are some tips. The office really likes it when you show movies all the time. And don't turn your grades in till the last minute; they love that. Just remember-- don't ever ask me for any help or materials, and if you ever get in any trouble, I'll be in my room contemplating my mortgage payment and ignoring you.
Because you can pretend all day that these battles over teacher effectiveness will be washed-up old guy versus fresh-faced newby, but we have studies out the wazoo to confirm what we already know-- when it comes to teacher quality, it's years of experience that make the most difference. So in an effectiveness showdown, it will be young teachers versus young teachers. Unless, of course, management decides to weigh some other factor, like, say, how much the teacher costs the district. Oh, but this is all about getting great quality, not about making schools run cheaply by churning and burning teaching staff. Right?
TNTP always seems a bit more mellow than StudentsFirst, and this piece follows that pattern. There are some softer edges on the anti-tenure argument here, but the center of the argument is still shot full of holes, contradictions, and weaknesses. And that's only if I give them the very huge benefit of a very small doubt that this isn't really all about cutting personnel costs in school by turning into non-career status temp work. I'm not sure any of us know for certain what the lessons of Vergara will turn out to be, but I don't think TNTP is in the ballpark.
Their thesis is not all that unreasonable.
Despite all the prophecies of doom during the trial, teachers need not fear this verdict. Everyone agrees that California’s children deserve an education that prepares them for success in college and life, and the state’s constitution guarantees it. Likewise, there is broad consensus that teachers should have reasonable and professional job protections. This case has always been about finding the right balance between the two.
That's what the case has always been about? Because if that's what the case was about, it was remarkably well-hidden by the plaintiffs, who seemed to be pretty intent on just plain wiping out tenure and FILO (as is StudentsFirst). But maybe we can read that piece of revisionist history as a signal that reformsters are willing to back off a bit.
But there are curious versions of alternate reality that run throughout the TNTP piece.
Throughout the trial, the plaintiffs exposed how California’s laws make it nearly impossible for schools to hire and keep outstanding teachers or dismiss teachers who simply aren’t up to the job.
I understand the argument about not being able to fire bad teachers-- but what exactly about California's laws made it hard to hire good teachers in the first place? Or are we suggesting that because young teachers have less job security, they are less likely to apply in California? In which case, the solution is even less job security? I feel as if I'm missing some crucial point here.
Daly and Weisberg suggest there are four key changes needed to properly balance the need for job protection with the need to provide the best teachers. Each one is problematic.
Give Teachers a Longer Tryout
Because the problem with FILO is that we have to fire too many of our best teachers, who are the young ones. So, we need more job protection for young teachers, except that we shouldn't give them any kind of tenure for at least four years. So, we need to not fire young teachers, but we need to make it easier to fire young teachers. Got it?
Keep Due Process, But Eliminate "Uber" Due Process
Oh, the devil is in the details, isn't it, boys. Daly and Weisberg accept that teachers should have protections for, say, outside political activities. The teacher evaluation should be given the benefit of the doubt, but teachers should be able to appeal if they think the process wasn't followed correctly, but teachers should not be able to appeal because they believe the finding of the evaluation is wrong, and the process should be allowed to go on for a while, but not too much of a while.
I actually agree that the process should not be hugely time and money-consuming, but I can only hope that trying to write this one paragraph gave these guys a sense of just how hard it is to write the rulebook that will keep the whole process under control. You can go ahead and say "The hearing process should only take one day" and isn't it pretty to think so, but how exactly do you force that to happen and keep things fair to all parties? Actual justice is messy.
Lower the Stakes of Dismissal
Daly and Weisberg say that a dismissal should not be a career-ender because "a teacher who’s a bad fit for one school might be a great fit for another school" and --gaaahhh-- do you see what you just said there, boys? Because one freaking premise of Vergara was that "bad teacher" and "good teacher" are absolute, solid state conditions and that the school in which a teachers is working is in no way related to the quality of that teacher's work.
The Vergara plaintiffs (and the StudentsFirst anti-tenure agitprop) aren't saying, "The state is failing to match teachers up with the assignments in which they will shine." The message is that there are a bunch of Good Teachers out there and a bunch of Bad Teachers, and the Good Teachers will be great wherever we put them and the Bad Teachers will be bad wherever they work, so we need to fire the Bad Teachers and put the Good Teachers in the classrooms that need them (where they will continue to be Good Teachers). You just blithely threw out the whole thing. Sloppy work, boys.
Let Schools Protect Their Best Teachers During Layoffs
Daly and Weisberg split a new set of hairs here, indicating that a great new teacher might be fired so that the district can keep a teacher who just has just a year or two more seniority. So, not the usual picture of the freshfaced twenty-five year old being thrown into the street by some washed-up fifty-something old fart.
Unfortunately, this new version brings into sharp relief just how corrosive this approach would be to the atmosphere of a school.
Principal: Hey, Chris. This is Pat, the new hire. Pat's almost your age, so I thought you could help Pat get acclimated. Also, Pat's pretty bright, so we think Pat might take your job at the next round of layoffs. Make Pat feel welcome.
Chris: Sure thing. So, Pat, here are some tips. The office really likes it when you show movies all the time. And don't turn your grades in till the last minute; they love that. Just remember-- don't ever ask me for any help or materials, and if you ever get in any trouble, I'll be in my room contemplating my mortgage payment and ignoring you.
Because you can pretend all day that these battles over teacher effectiveness will be washed-up old guy versus fresh-faced newby, but we have studies out the wazoo to confirm what we already know-- when it comes to teacher quality, it's years of experience that make the most difference. So in an effectiveness showdown, it will be young teachers versus young teachers. Unless, of course, management decides to weigh some other factor, like, say, how much the teacher costs the district. Oh, but this is all about getting great quality, not about making schools run cheaply by churning and burning teaching staff. Right?
TNTP always seems a bit more mellow than StudentsFirst, and this piece follows that pattern. There are some softer edges on the anti-tenure argument here, but the center of the argument is still shot full of holes, contradictions, and weaknesses. And that's only if I give them the very huge benefit of a very small doubt that this isn't really all about cutting personnel costs in school by turning into non-career status temp work. I'm not sure any of us know for certain what the lessons of Vergara will turn out to be, but I don't think TNTP is in the ballpark.
Monday, June 16, 2014
Yes, Virginia, There Are Bad Teachers
"So I guess you just deny that there are any bad teachers at all."
This is a popular retort to various forms of "Your system for evaluating teachers is a lousy system." It is a dumb retort. It is dumb in the same way the following exchanges are dumb.
Chris: I am going to cure your mother's cancer by poking her in the eye with a pointy stick.
Pat: I do not want you to poke my mother in the eye with a sharp stick.
Chris: Why do you not want your mother to get healthy?
Scotty: I'm pretty sure that one of the tires is flat. Can you get out and check?
Tony: How about I just whale all over the car with this pickax?
Scotty: Please don't do that!
Tony: So apparently you don't believe in wheels.
Ranger Smith: Help! There is a bear mauling my leg!
Ranger Duncan: How about I just close my eyes and shoot blindly in your general direction?
Ranger Smith: Aaaa!! No!!!!!
Ranger Duncan: I guess you don't believe in bears.
Let me be perfectly clear. I believe that bad teachers exist. I believe that most teachers believe that bad teachers exist.
How could we not? Apart from the bad teacher's actual students, nobody suffers for their sins more than their colleagues. We are the ones who have to pick up the slack for what wasn't taught last year. We are the ones have to take the reputational hit for Mr. Putzwhistle's bad behavior. We are the ones who have to answer the age-old question, "Why are we doing all this work when my buddy in Ms. Farkleton's has been watching movies for a month?"
You know what I don't believe in? The reformster plans for finding the offending educators. Every plan is more random and stupid than the one before. VAM?! Really??!! You are still peddling that when every reputable authority has told you it's baloney. The 10% rule (or 15%) that just starts with the assumption that there are X number of bad teachers? Private industry dumped that as a self-destructive mistake years ago.
I think reformsters have about as much chance of locating bad teachers as a one-armed blind man looking for a gnat's fart in Carlsbad Caverns. I think there are faux tin hat physicists who are closer to building a cold fusion generator and a perpetual motion machine than reformsters are to building a reliable and accurate system for identifying bad teachers.
Do I think there's a valuable conversation to be had about less effective teachers and how to best deal with them in a school system? Oh, boy, do I. But we aren't ready for that conversation, because you aren't ready to admit that you don't have a clue how to tell a great teacher having a bad day from a good teacher with a tough class from a bad teacher who probably should be a shoe salesman from a great teacher who just got randomly swept up by whatever mangled metric you loosed upon the teaching world.
You keep saying you want to raise the bar when mostly you're just swinging the bar wildly around with closed eyes and every time you randomly clobber something you cry out, "There-- it's another bad teacher!" As long as you are swinging bad metrics around like so many long-dead cats on a ten-foot pole, no teacher is going to be comfortable getting anywhere near you and your super-secret method for weeding out the riff from the raff.
It really is not that we don't believe in bad teachers, or that we think they should be enshrined and preserved. What we don't believe in is you, and your cockamamie untested unvalidated unproven evaluation systems. Until you fix that (or--gasp-- ask us teachers to help you fix it), you might as well go dowsing for bad teachers with a rod made out of woven skunk hair.
This is a popular retort to various forms of "Your system for evaluating teachers is a lousy system." It is a dumb retort. It is dumb in the same way the following exchanges are dumb.
Chris: I am going to cure your mother's cancer by poking her in the eye with a pointy stick.
Pat: I do not want you to poke my mother in the eye with a sharp stick.
Chris: Why do you not want your mother to get healthy?
Scotty: I'm pretty sure that one of the tires is flat. Can you get out and check?
Tony: How about I just whale all over the car with this pickax?
Scotty: Please don't do that!
Tony: So apparently you don't believe in wheels.
Ranger Smith: Help! There is a bear mauling my leg!
Ranger Duncan: How about I just close my eyes and shoot blindly in your general direction?
Ranger Smith: Aaaa!! No!!!!!
Ranger Duncan: I guess you don't believe in bears.
Let me be perfectly clear. I believe that bad teachers exist. I believe that most teachers believe that bad teachers exist.
How could we not? Apart from the bad teacher's actual students, nobody suffers for their sins more than their colleagues. We are the ones who have to pick up the slack for what wasn't taught last year. We are the ones have to take the reputational hit for Mr. Putzwhistle's bad behavior. We are the ones who have to answer the age-old question, "Why are we doing all this work when my buddy in Ms. Farkleton's has been watching movies for a month?"
You know what I don't believe in? The reformster plans for finding the offending educators. Every plan is more random and stupid than the one before. VAM?! Really??!! You are still peddling that when every reputable authority has told you it's baloney. The 10% rule (or 15%) that just starts with the assumption that there are X number of bad teachers? Private industry dumped that as a self-destructive mistake years ago.
I think reformsters have about as much chance of locating bad teachers as a one-armed blind man looking for a gnat's fart in Carlsbad Caverns. I think there are faux tin hat physicists who are closer to building a cold fusion generator and a perpetual motion machine than reformsters are to building a reliable and accurate system for identifying bad teachers.
Do I think there's a valuable conversation to be had about less effective teachers and how to best deal with them in a school system? Oh, boy, do I. But we aren't ready for that conversation, because you aren't ready to admit that you don't have a clue how to tell a great teacher having a bad day from a good teacher with a tough class from a bad teacher who probably should be a shoe salesman from a great teacher who just got randomly swept up by whatever mangled metric you loosed upon the teaching world.
You keep saying you want to raise the bar when mostly you're just swinging the bar wildly around with closed eyes and every time you randomly clobber something you cry out, "There-- it's another bad teacher!" As long as you are swinging bad metrics around like so many long-dead cats on a ten-foot pole, no teacher is going to be comfortable getting anywhere near you and your super-secret method for weeding out the riff from the raff.
It really is not that we don't believe in bad teachers, or that we think they should be enshrined and preserved. What we don't believe in is you, and your cockamamie untested unvalidated unproven evaluation systems. Until you fix that (or--gasp-- ask us teachers to help you fix it), you might as well go dowsing for bad teachers with a rod made out of woven skunk hair.
Why Conservatives Should Not Love the Vergara Decision
Over at the National Review, Rick Hess catches what conservatives should have noticed before they started applauding the Vergara decision.
While I am clearly someone who isn't a fan of that decision, I was surprised that some conservatives were not also at the very least nervous about it, given that it involved
1) Serious judicial activism in the service of
2) Extending government control over anything it feels like
3) Based on made up non-facts
The rationale behind the Vergara decision could become the rationale behind any number of decisions that conservatives might not be so happy about. If we are going to say that the courts have the power to rewrite the rules of schools in any area for any sort of reasons that are not even supported with actual facts, I see no limits to what the courts could do.
Some of what I imagine is pretty fanciful and unlikely (the state of California owes every of-age poor student a car to drive to school), but some is not. If we are going to talk about civil rights being violated by lesser facilities at a particular school, it seems absolutely no stretch at all for the court to step in and say that David Welch and his hedge fund friends are going to start forking over school tax money until every school in every neighborhood is just as well-funded as the schools in California's richest neighborhoods.
Hess has his own list of nightmares.
If plaintiffs pick the right judge and present the right experts, can they get judges to require that preschool teachers serving poor or minority children have a teaching credential from a school of education? Can judges order schools to adopt the Common Core if they think that will help ensure that all students are held to an equal standard? Can judges order legislators to double teacher pay if that’s what they think it will take to ensure that poor and minority students have good teachers?
He's right. And the list can get a lot longer, because if we're allowed to use made up numbers and fake facts to make our case, the sky's the limit.
Conservatives and liberals both have a long, troubled tradition of choosing victory over principles, and it hasn't helped anyone in the long run. I'm not a fan of sticking to principles even in the face of common sense and reality, but some days it seems that our whole political spectrum is a muddy mess, united by the principle of "Hey, whatever, as long as we get what we want."
Almost everybody should be unhappy with the Vergara decision for one reason or another. Some of us just aren't ready to admit it yet.
While I am clearly someone who isn't a fan of that decision, I was surprised that some conservatives were not also at the very least nervous about it, given that it involved
1) Serious judicial activism in the service of
2) Extending government control over anything it feels like
3) Based on made up non-facts
The rationale behind the Vergara decision could become the rationale behind any number of decisions that conservatives might not be so happy about. If we are going to say that the courts have the power to rewrite the rules of schools in any area for any sort of reasons that are not even supported with actual facts, I see no limits to what the courts could do.
Some of what I imagine is pretty fanciful and unlikely (the state of California owes every of-age poor student a car to drive to school), but some is not. If we are going to talk about civil rights being violated by lesser facilities at a particular school, it seems absolutely no stretch at all for the court to step in and say that David Welch and his hedge fund friends are going to start forking over school tax money until every school in every neighborhood is just as well-funded as the schools in California's richest neighborhoods.
Hess has his own list of nightmares.
If plaintiffs pick the right judge and present the right experts, can they get judges to require that preschool teachers serving poor or minority children have a teaching credential from a school of education? Can judges order schools to adopt the Common Core if they think that will help ensure that all students are held to an equal standard? Can judges order legislators to double teacher pay if that’s what they think it will take to ensure that poor and minority students have good teachers?
He's right. And the list can get a lot longer, because if we're allowed to use made up numbers and fake facts to make our case, the sky's the limit.
Conservatives and liberals both have a long, troubled tradition of choosing victory over principles, and it hasn't helped anyone in the long run. I'm not a fan of sticking to principles even in the face of common sense and reality, but some days it seems that our whole political spectrum is a muddy mess, united by the principle of "Hey, whatever, as long as we get what we want."
Almost everybody should be unhappy with the Vergara decision for one reason or another. Some of us just aren't ready to admit it yet.
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 tosecond-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.
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
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.
Sunday, June 15, 2014
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.]
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.
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.
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