Principals vs. VAM

The National Association of Secondary School Principals issued a statement on November 7 that it intended to adopt a policy statement regarding the use of Value-Added measures in teacher evaluation. The policy statement is currently in its 60-day comment period, with final deliberation on the policy at the February meeting.

You can read the whole thing here, and you should. But let me run through the sparknotes version for you.

The Challenge

States are adopting new VAM measures that count for up to 50% of teacher evaluation scores in some states. At the same time, states were adopting certain "more rigorous college- and career standards. These standards are intended to raise the bar from having every student earn a high school diploma to the much more ambitious goal of having every student be on-target for success in post-secondary education and training."

Do you detect a whiff of feistiness in the NASSP language? It's subtle, but I think I can scent it on the breeze.

For instance, the statement notes that the new standards require a departure from the "old, much less expensive" tests. "Not surprisingly," raising the bar and adding new assessments results in far fewer "proficient" students.

Herein lies the challenge for principals and school leaders. New teacher evaluation systems demand the inclusion of student data at a time when scores on new assessments are dropping. The fears accompanying any new evaluation system have been magnified by the inclusion of data that will get worse before it gets better. Principals are concerned that the new evaluation systems are eroding trust and are detrimental to building a culture of collaboration and continuous improvement necessary to successfully raise student performance to college and career-ready levels.

 And then there's VAM.

The Trouble With VAM

Given what VAM claims it can do, "at first glance, it would appear reasonable to use VAMs to gauge teacher effectiveness." But the statement continues-- "Unfortunately, policy makers have acted on that impression over the consistent objections of researchers" who have said it's a bad idea. And then they start ticking off the VAM objections.

They cite the 2014 American Statistical Association report urging schools not to use VAM to make personnel decisions. They offer some strong quotage from the ASA report.

They cite the "peer-reviewed study" funded by Gates and published by AERA which stated emphatically that "Value-added performance measures do not reflect the content or quality of teachers' instruction." This study went on to note that VAM doesn't seem to correspond to anything that anybody considers a feature of good teaching.

They cite the objections of researchers Bruce Baker and Edward Haertal. They move on to Linda Darling-Hammond. They include plenty of well-researched, clear but not inflammatory language that hammers away at how VAM simply can't be used to evaluate teachers in any real or meaningful way. It's very direct, very clear, and kind of awesome.

Their Recommendations

I'll compress here.

NASSP recommends that teacher eval include multiple measure, and that Peer Assistance and Review programs are the way to go. Teacher-constructed portfolios of student learning are also cool.

VAMs should be used to fine tune programs and instructional methods as well as professional development on a building level, but they should not be "used to make key personnel decisions about individual teachers."  Principals should be trained in how to properly interpret and use VAMmy data.

And they have footnotes.

If you are looking for a clear-headed professional take-down of the idea that VAM should be used for personnel decisions by the people who have to help make those decisions, here it is. As many reformsters on the TNTP-Fordham-Bellwether axis of reformdom bemoan the fact that school leaders don't use data to inform their personnel decisions, here is an actual national association of actual school leaders saying why they prefer not to use VAM data to make personnel decisions. Now if only reformsters and policy makers will actually pay attention to the school leaders on the front lines.

Charters Make Money. So What?

It's a response that comes frequently to the charge that modern charter schools have become all about grabbing large piles of money for their backers and operators.

"I don't care if they are making a pile of money," is the response. "If they're getting the results, what difference does it make?"

It's a response that bugs me, and it has taken me a while to figure out exactly why. You know I love a good illustrative analogy. I'm going to give you the following analogy instead.


That response makes the same sense as saying, "I don't care if I'm going to bed with a person who's committed to a loving, long-lasting relationship or if I'm going to be with a hundred dollar an hour hooker. As long as the sex is good, what difference does it make?"

I might argue that it ultimately makes a difference because sex is better within a committed relationship with someone you love than a stranger paid to fake affection. I might also argue that absent a more stable relationships, you don't really know what other factors, concerns, agendas and second-hand biological effluvium are in bed with you.

But even those arguments assume that you're using the right metric, and maybe comparing the quality of the sex is not the only way to weigh the relative merits of a long term committed relationship versus the merits of hiring a hundred dollar hooker. Maybe we should be comparing on the basis of other, deeper, ultimately more important considerations. I mean, if the quality of the sex is the only thing you care about, then maybe the hundred dollar hooker is the best choice for you. But I'm pretty sure that is not the prevailing metric for most people.

In particular, I would argue about the "long term commitment" part. Your hundred dollar hooker will only be around as long as you can come up with a hundred dollars, whereas in a long term committed relationship, the idea is to stick around for the long term. The hundred dollar an hour hooker is not worried about your needs or concerned; the hooker is just watching the clock and the money, and not because the hooker is a wretched evil awful human being but because that's just the nature of the transaction. Yes, many LTR and marriages are miserable or unsuccessful or fall apart. Even then, I don't believe the most commonly suggested solution is hundred dollar hookers.

Yes, yes, yes. I'm aware that this analogy is imperfect, and I don't mean to suggest that all charter school operators are prostitutes (some classic charters are like, I don't know, Mother Teresa), and I certainly don't mean to suggest that standardized tests and the results thereof are like sex. And, no, I haven't really figured out where charter teachers or students themselves would fit in this analogy.

My point remains. "Who cares if charters make money as long as they get results" fails for the following reasons:

1) "Results" inevitably means "test scores." Test scores are the not the ultimate measure of student achievement, teacher effectiveness, or school quality. You might as well tell me "I don't care if charters make a profit as long as they have pretty door jambs." If by "results" you mean something other than "test scores," we might be able to have a real conversation here. (And if you mean test scores, you need to look at what charter results actually are.)

2) Charters make more money by spending less on students. Charters will always only be able to get more money by taking it away from students. They are not worrying about student needs; they are just watching the money. That is not because they are evil or terrible human beings, but because that is the nature of the transaction.

3) Charter schools will be there only as long as it makes good business sense to be there. If they aren't making enough money, they will close up shop. A public school starts with the premise that the community, through its school, must provide an education. A charter school starts with the premise that it must bank enough money to be viable. Just because a charter school has good (test) results today doesn't mean it won't be a MegaMart parking lot next week. Is that hard on students and the community? See #2.

Public education, like other important relationships in life, is not best served by being re-interpreted as a simple retail transaction. That's my answer to "so what?"

A Note To Your Hero

I've been a local newspaper columnist for almost sixteen years, and every year at this time, I write a column about heroes. I thought I'd carry that on here.

The premise is this: take out a piece of paper, and write a note of appreciation and send it to one of your heroes. I always think this is the perfect time-- just before the onslaught of the holiday season. It has become a small tradition here, and many of my colleagues use it as an i class writing assignment (so if you want a connection to education, I guess there it is). Here's how I explained it a few years ago:

We all have our heroes—people we admire, people who we think are examples of what’s good about humans. And yet somehow, we never get around to telling them how much we appreciate them.

You know when we finally get around to talking about all the great things we really loved about them? After they pass away. After they could actually get to hear how much they are appreciated.

Why do we wait?

Sometimes we wait because we think we have all the time in the world. We really ought to know better. Tomorrow is not guaranteed for anyone.

Sometimes we refrain from praise because the act we admire seems like a small thing. But you don’t have to save the entire world to make your corner of the planet a better place. Every little bit helps.

Sometimes we hold back because our heroes are not perfect. I don’t mean quirky movie-style minor flaws, like Indiana Jones and his fear of snakes or Patrick Dempsey and his fear of shirts. Real people can come with pretty significant flaws. Our own founding fathers were loaded with them, from Thomas Jefferson and his slaves to John Adams and his mega-jerkiness.

We struggle with the brokenness of human nature. If someone behaves like a hero on Monday and a terrible person on Tuesday, what do we call him on Wednesday? We keep waiting for a perfect person to elevate to hero status, and it never happens.

We could pull lots of lessons from that, but here’s the one I prefer to focus on: everything great ever done was done by somebody with flaws, but it was still great.

We can wait for our heroes to be perfect, or we can wait until they’re dead and their flaws suddenly don’t seem so awful. Or we could honor their best stuff while we still have the chance.

If you want to strengthen your world and make it even a marginally better place, you give your strength and support to the things you want to see more of. Honoring someone for the good they do is not the same thing as applauding their mistakes and messes. If anything, it can lend a compass to people who might be having trouble finding their way. When they are standing puzzled at a crossroads, it’s a way to say, “This. This is what is best in you. This is what you should trust about yourself.”

So once a year, I give you homework. Here it is.

Write a letter to one of your heroes. It doesn’t have to be complicated (even if your feelings are). It doesn’t have to be long. It can follow this simple formula:

Dear [insert name here], You are my hero because

Fill in the blank with just a sentence or two. Do not add a “but” or an “even though” or some account of a time they let you down to “balance” things. You can work that out some other day, if you must. Your assignment here is to focus only that quality that you admire.

It has to be a letter. You can’'t just send an email or make a phone call. A letter is something your hero will be able to get out and read, more than once, over the days or weeks or years ahead. Letters have permanence. My elementary phys ed teacher Lou Slautterback still has a thank you note from my folks. Write a letter.

It may feel awkward or odd to write something so directly positive. Trust me. You’ll feel better once you’ve done it. One of the best pieces of advice I ever heard was given to a woman who was having trouble figuring out how to handle a difficult relationship in her life. “Imagine that the person has died,” the advice-giver said. “Think about what you would regret not having done or said. Now go do that.”

We all have heroes, and we all too rarely tell them why they are heroes to us, why they are valuable and important people in our lives. They deserve to know why they matter, how they inspire you, what they do to make the world a better place, even if their heroics happen in small ways. You have your assignment. Write a letter.

Bush: Nuanced and Wrong

As Jeb Bush's Reformapalooza gets under way, Bush himself is tap-dancing carefully to stick with his beloved Common Core without letting it actually stomp on the toes of his Presidential hopes.

At the Washington Post, Lyndsey Layton gives us a look at his opening speech and gives him credit for slathering on the nuance. Perhaps. Let's look.

Bush includes a comparison to the Chinese, because when it comes to cultures we want to emulate, you can't beat the Chinese. This is one of the wonders of modern education reform-- that we've come to a place where some conservatives idolize the world's largest repressive Communist regime. Anyway, he compares this to his mischaracterization of the Florida district that imposed a 50% floor for grades (I'll tackle that subject another day). Shanghai gets higher scores than we do, says Jeb, "So let's get real." If we're talking about ways to emulate the production of high test scores, Bush may be suffering from a little reality disconnect himself.

“We have built a nationwide reform movement based on a set of proven principles,” Bush told the gathering of several hundred state policy leaders, charter school managers and executives from education companies.

 “Of course, choice is at the center of our reform efforts. But there are others: High standards. Rigorous, high-quality assessments. Accountability for school leaders. Early childhood literacy and ending social promotion. Digital and distance learning. Transparency for parents to see whether their schools are getting better or getting worse.”

Speaking of getting real, Bush might want to reconsider calling anything on his wish list a "proven principle." None of those have been proven to be effective.

“If we were designing our school system from scratch, what would it look like? I know one thing: We wouldn’t start with more than 13,000 government-run, unionized and politicized monopolies who trap good teachers, administrators and struggling students in a system nobody can escape. We would be insane if we recreated what we have today.”

That's an interesting way to approach it. It would be interesting to see him finish the thought. Would we be insane to try to create a system that provides a free education for every single child in the United States as long as the country exists? Does he imagine that a free market choice approach could do that? Because if he does, I believe he's nuts. A free market will gladly provide an education for the students who can be profitably served, for as long as it pleases the vendor to do so. A free market will gladly discard any children it doesn't think it can make a buck educating. That would be an insane system.

“In my view, every education dollar should depend on what the child needs, not what the federal bureaucrat wants,” he said. “Where the child goes, the dollars should go as well. When that happens, we’ll see major reforms and major gains for America’s children and the federal government will go back to playing the supportive and completely secondary role it should be playing.”

A talking point straight from the charter school marketing bible. It makes two hugely incorrect assumptions:

1) It costs no more to educate 100 students in 100 schools than it does to educate 100 students in a single school. This is self-evidently bunk.

2) That the only two parties with a stake in education are the child and the federal government. School tax money is not a stipend paid to each individual child. It is an investment by the community in the community. I agree-- the feds should play a secondary, or even quaduciary role, in education. Particularly when federal ed policy is being dictated by the kind of anti-public-ed amateurs we've been subjected to for at least two administrations (and probably the next one, too). But local communities and, to a lesser extent, states should be hugely involved.

Choice and charters are, of course, all about cutting local control and community investment out of the picture. That is simply wrong, and bad for education as well.

Bush may be nuancing himself from CCSS cheerleading back to charter champion, but he's still bad for education.

Questions for Professional Development

Originally posted at View from the Cheap Seats

Once upon a time, when teachers and outside presenters gathered together for PD, there was a sense that we were All In This Together. We were there, as teachers, to provide a public service through educating students, and the presenters at PD were there to give us some tools to help do that job.

Those days are gone.

Now we are surrounded by people who view public education not so much as a public service but rather as a giant money tree waiting to be pruned, and here they come to professional development sessions, shears in hand. We've always had our share of PD run by people who served up heaping plates of condescension with a side of contempt sauce, but PD increasingly resembles a sort of unarmed assault on teaching staffs.

This creates a new professional dilemma for teachers. Instead of asking "How can I apply this in my classroom," teachers are asking themselves, "How much longer can I keep from saying something unprofessional and rude?" Unfortunately, some teachers don't want to be impolite, and so PD behavior often runs to vacant smiling and nodding, with honest reactions to be reserved till afterwards.

Some presenters are just trying to do a job, but others really are the barbarians at the gate who deserve to be met with resistance. Here are some questions to ask in PD to separate the wolves from the sheep.

Which company is producing this product, and how do they expect to make money from it?

It's not that the desire to make money is automatically evil. This is not a gotcha question. But the question goes to motivation and long term costs. We used to  assume that programs and materials came from kindly gnomes that created it all in workshop somewhere and gave it away because it made them happy to do so. Nowadays virtually every program or tool that comes into a district  is somebody's proprietary product, and we need to remember that their primary purpose is not to make our lives swell, but to make enough money to make the business worthwhile.

If you are making money from the sale of widgets, I have to cast a dubious eye on your claim that it's really the widgets that will revolutionize learning. If you're giving me free software that will require us to renew licensing every two years at full cost, you're not really giving me free anything.

If you're here to help, that's great. If you're pretending to help when you're just here to sell us something (or to sell us on something the district already bought), I reserve the right to treat you like the huckster you apparently are.

What is your teaching background? Do you have any other special expertise in the material you're presenting?

There is apparently some sort of law requiring all PD presenters to work the phrase "when I was in the classroom" into their presentation, as well as some claim to having been a teacher at some point. Unfortunately, those phrases can be thrown around by both of the following presenters:

Presenter A: Taught a couple of years, possibly as TFA temp. Couldn't hack it. Couldn't wait to get out and start real job.
Presenter B: Taught for a couple of decades. Enjoyed the work but eventually decided to move on to a new career.

The distinction is important, because Presenter A doesn't know what the hell she's talking about. Furthermore, Presenter A has tried to claim a kinship with the audience of teachers that she hasn't earned. Put these together and you get Presenter Whose Word Cannot Be Trusted.

What proof can you offer that these techniques/programs/materials are actually effective?

If you can't get a straight answer to this, that's because the straight answer is most likely, "None." If you get an answer such as "research says," it's fair to ask exactly which research and exactly how did the researchers arrive at this conclusion.

The other teachers in the room may hate you for prolonging the session. Tough. Too many teachers still think that if something's being pitched in PD, it must be legit good practice. Hell, there are too many teachers who still think that the Common Core was written by teachers and based on solid educational research. One of the side effects of reform has been the removal of any sort of quality-based filter between profiteering companies and the rest of us.

If we are going to be champions for our students and their educations, we have to stop accepting the judgment of people with barely an iota of our professional expertise. We have to start casting a critical eye on every program that tries to slink through the door.

Why don't you answer that question now?

This must be part of PD 101. When somebody asks a difficult question or raises an issue that the presenter was hoping wouldn't be brought up, just say, "That's a really good question, and I'd like to talk to you more about that at the break." The goal is to avoid dealing with any contentious issues in front of the whole group. They might get the wrong idea, you know.

A person who can't give you a clear answer either doesn't have one or doesn't want to. Neither is acceptable. If you want to implement your stuff in my classroom, you need to give me an answer.
In many schools, PD has become an assault on teachers' standards and practices, and we should no more sit politely through the worst of it than we would politely sit through an explanation of why our minority students are inferior. Simply ignoring the people who come to coach teachers in educational malpractice isn't working. Standing up and telling them to go to hell is probably a poor employment choice.

But we can always ask questions, and we should, pointedly and repeatedly. If that makes PD sessions a little uncomfortable, so be it. We have a responsibility to our profession and our students to call out powerful baloney when it presents itself.

It may not stop the baloney advance. Pennsylvania years ago shifted state level PD from an attitude of "We want to win hearts and minds" to one of "Sit down, shut up, and do as you're told." It's hard to slow down a steamroller, but we don't have to lie down and make it easy on the destruction crew.

Ask the questions.

Brookings to Poor: Stop Fornicating, Dammit

Oh, Brookings. Some day I want to travel to the happy, warm, comfortable planet that your institute headquarters sit upon.

Yesterday Ron Haskins, Co-Director of Center on Children and Families (not "for," but "on") and a senior fellow of economic studies in Brookingsland, dropped some wisdom about income inequality ("about," not "on"). You will never guess whose fault it is.

Okay, it's Brookings so you probably will. The income gap is the fault of the poor. Honest to goodness, the Onion could not write this stuff.

First, Haskins notes that while, yes, the figures about how the top 1% saw their share of the wealth pie jump from 10.5% in 1979 to 21.3% in 2007 (Why he stops in 2007 I don't know? Has anything significant happened since then? Like, I don't know, an economic crash that wrecked the poor but from which the wealthy bounced back stronger than ever? Anybody? I'm sure there must be something I could find with a two-second google.)

But-- not so fast, young whipper-snappers. Those figures fail to account for the effects of wealth distribution by Uncle Sugar, which made the poor practically wealthy and serious cut into the wealth of the actually wealthy. So, you know, income gap so not wide, really. Great news for everyone in the bottom 90%.

But Haskins is just warming up. He correctly notes that A) nobody really knows what an optimal wealth redistribution would be and B) the Republicans are in charge so talking about how to redistribute wealth is like talking about the best way to shine unicorn horns. He mentions that the GOP will use current high tax rates on the rich to justify their stance. Hmm. If only there were some way to add some context to that claim, just in case it's, you know, bogus.

So, Haskins says, since DC won't be doing anything about the gap, there are only two things to fix it.

Education

Education has always been a major key to economic mobility for individuals and demographic groups, but despite almost permanent reform since publication of the Nation at Risk report in 1983, schools are doing little to equalize opportunity across income groups. Recent research shows that children from poor and minority families come to school already behind their classmates from more affluent homes, and the schools actually increase these differences in achievement.

I had to emphasize that last part. Yes, schools cause students to fall behind and not learn stuff. Also, having firemen come to your house increases the likelihood that your house will be on fire, so if you want your house to never catch on fire, make sure that firemen never, ever come there.

Poor People Should Make Better Choices

Do you know how I found this article in the first place? Because Brookings put the following quote in a graphic on twitter, because apparently they are actually proud they said this!!

Inequality and poverty could both be substantially reduced if more adults were married and had two incomes, but the trends in declining marriage rates and growing rates of nonmarital births have been progressing for four decades with no reversal in sight.

Yes, you lazy fornicating poor people! You would have more money if you were properly married. From this one can only assume that every single member of the 1% is currently married-- and not just married, but married to somebody who also works, because that is the road to prosperity! Haskins does not comment on whether the rise of gay marriage might offset some of this; now that The Gays can all get married, I can only assume they will also get rich. Good for you, The Gays!

Nothing Else?

That's it. Haskins figures that unless education can suddenly propel lower-wealth people up into (not "onto") the non-existent middle class, or "unless individuals and families can make better choices about their own education, work, and marriage," this massive income inequality will continue and the government won't be able to do a damn thing about it. Sorry, irresponsible fornicating poor people.

As God is my witness, he actually said this stuff.

Somehow this economist, this senior fellow at the Brookings Institute, seems to have overlooked the possibility that other factors could influence the distribution of wealth in this country. I mean, I'm just an English teacher, but isn't the whole corporate-business-employment-wages thing supposed to be a natural engine for moving money around? I feel like we're overlooking some obvious ideas, like if Glut-Mart paid its workers enough to shop at Glut-Mart, Glut-Mart would sell more stuff and have to hire more people and then more wages would be paid etc etc etc.

I don't expect a Brookings economist to suggest things like getting the government involved in business matters, but couldn't he even muster a simple, "If corporate leaders would start pumping some of their huge profits back into the economy instead of jamming coin into their already stuffed pockets, that might help."

Instead we've got to go with the Magic of Education! Yes, if we just got poor kids to do better on standardized tests, they could go to college, rack up some massive debt, and find out that nobody is hiring in their field. If I just teach harder, companies will just start hiring more people and paying them more? Try as I might, I just can't figure out the cause and effect on this one.

I mean, I believe in education. I believe in it big time. Kind of why I went ahead and became a teacher and, like some kind of sucker, stuck with it for decades instead of quitting after two years to go work in a brokerage firm. But how can an actual economist for a living look at the vast complex engine that is our economy and conclude that the only thing wrong here is Not Enough Education and Too Many Poor Fornicators. I'm beyond amazed (that's "beyond," not "beneath.")

PA Cyber Charters Failing

Let me be clear up front-- I reject the use of standardized tests to measure the education of students, the effectiveness of teachers, and the quality of schools. The best predictor of student results on standardized test remains their socio-economic class.

Oh, no, wait. In Pennsylvania, there is apparently one other factor that can predict how poorly a student will do on the Big Test.

Whether or not he attends a cyber charter.

Here's a chart that tells the story

SPP stands for School Performance Profile, the data that the state keeps to judge the schools within the Commonwealth. The "quality threshhold" is 70 or higher.

Research for Action did some number crunching for a report about charter performance in PA.

The validity of SPP as a measure of school quality is suspect due to its heavy reliance on test scores that are highly correlated with socioeconomic characteristics of students that are beyond the control of schools. Indeed, RFA’s analysis of the 2012-13 SPP scores revealed that SPP scores were heavily correlated with the percentage of economically disadvantaged students in a school building.

And yet, cyber charters still couldn't outperform the brick-and-mortar schools-- even those serving large low-income populations. And cyber-charters low-income population percentages are lower than even the charter school numbers.

The RFA report notes that while cyber-charters hit low percentages for English Language Learners, they have grown significantly in special education population. Perhaps that is related to the fact that cyber charters get about $8K for regular students and $23K for special education students. Do you suppose that has affected their marketing and recruiting at all?

Data is no longer available on turnover rates at cybers in PA, but the RFA report concludes that given cyber-charter's consistently terrible performance by the state's standards, the state would be crazy to authorize further cyber charter operations in the state. As I said, I reject SPP as a true measure of education quality, but if that's the rule we have to play by, then cyber charters have earned a severe benching.

The report is a good one, with more charts for those who like such things. Follow the link and read the whole thing.