The USED is ready to forge the next link in the Great Chain of Effectiveness.
We're already familiar with the two links. The very first chain is the testing link-- a standardized test covering narrow slices of two subject areas is forged as a measure of the full education of a child. The second link is from that test to the teacher. Soaked in magic VAM sauce, that second chain says that the test results are the responsibility of the teacher, and so the second link measures how effective that teachers actually is.
Link number three is on the way. That link will stretch from the classroom teacher back to the college department that trained her to be a teacher. The USED is proposing a heaping side order of VAM sauce for colleges and universities.If a student's results for bubbling in answers on questions about certain narrow areas of math and reading are too low, that is clearly the responsibility of the college department that certified the student's teacher. They should be rated poorly.
But why stop there?
That college education department is composed of professors who are clearly ineffective. The institutions that issued their advanced degrees should be rated ineffective. And their direct oversight comes from college administration-- so let's include their ineffectiveness of the college president's evaluation.
And where did that guy come from? This is more complicated, but we'll need to cross-reference his salary, because we know from Chetty et al that a good elementary teacher would have made a difference of several hundred thousand dollars in salary. So if our ineffective college president is also not super-well-paid, we can clearly conclude that his first grade teacher was ineffective-- let's hunt her down and downgrade her evaluation.
Of course, that raises another problem in our great chain of accountability. College presidents aren't generally young guys, so it's possible that his first grade teacher is dead. But now that we've located her, we can locate all the students she ever taught. Now, it's possible that some of her students went on to have successful careers even though she was ineffective-- we can discard those from the sample and assume that those are all students with grit. The rest of her former students who are not making big bucks must be the result of her ineffective instruction, and the government has an obligation to send letters to all of their employers indicating that federal government has determined that, due to an ineffective first grade teacher, those employees are losers.
Now if, any of those students went on to become teachers, we have a bit of a bind. If that teacher turns out to be ineffective, do we blame his college or his first grade teacher?
But back to our ineffective college president. Somebody hired him, so those people must also be rated ineffective. Those university trustees and directors are usually folks with successful careers, but their hiring of the president who ran the department that trained the teacher who taught the child who bubble in several wrong answers on his test reveals them to be actually ineffective. Good government oversight requires that any products produced by their companies should be stamped with a warning: "Warning. This product was produced by a company run in part by an ineffective human being."
Of course, some of those college presidents are in charge of public universities. These state schools are ultimately run by state level bureaucracies, and those are of course ultimately answerable to a governor. So the governor would have to be rated ineffective as well.
But the ineffective governor was elected by the people. I realize that it would require a breach of values that we've long held dear, but I think we've established that in the pursuit of effectiveness labels for education, long-held American values can go straight into the dumpster. So-- let's find out exactly who voted for that ineffective governor, and let's rate them ineffective voters and maybe we should take away their votes in the future and just bring in a charter voting company to do the voting for all those people, who in the meanwhile, have to be Great Chained back to their own first grade teachers who are clearly responsible for their ineffective voting.
You may say that the Great Chain of Effectiveness is built out of tin foil and tenuous connections, and that it violates laws of common sense and decency. Just watch it. That's the kind of talk that gets a person's first grade teacher on a list.
Sunday, January 11, 2015
CAP and Teacher Retention
The Center for American Progress got another quick lesson in How the Internet Works. In their haste to prove that beginning teachers are sticking around for years and years (well, six years, anyway) they slapped up a lovely picture of a TFA temp who finished her two year stint and headed off to her real career in a corporate office. They helpfully included her name (Gabrielle Wooden) so that her actual job history could be found by anybody with an internet hookup and access to google. Joe Bower (in Canada) worked out this tricky research problem as well, and in the last fifteen hours a very long list have people have emailed and messaged me to join this particular swimming party in the warm waters of Lake Schadenfreude.
Did somebody in the photo department just not bother to tag carefully? Did the editor who attached the photo not pause to think things through? Was their googler broken? Did they not know the difference? Did they just not care? Can we expect more great headers from CAP such as the following:
CAP raises a couple of legit concerns beyond the not-shocking news that media do not always report scientific research accurately.
One is that the existing work on teacher retention is old, that we are talking about data from seven or eight years ago. Most importantly, we are not far enough down the road to see the effects of Common Core on the teacher force. Not to do obvious math here, but there's no way to know what percentage of teachers are staying past five years when looking at teachers who entered the profession after 2009.
Another is that this data can be highly local. My theory is that it's even worse in the most teacher-hostile states. In North Carolina, a state that has gone out of its way to make teaching non-viable as a lifetime career, it would appear (via CAP) that a good local administration can make the difference between losing 10% or 20% of the teaching staff. When there's a terrible storm blowing, what you do next depends a lot on whether you're in a tumble-down shack or a solid brick structure. This is a problem with plenty of educational research and almost all education policy-- every school is different in distinct and important ways (kind of like human children-- go figure).
CAP also notes that, hey, we don't want to retain 100% of beginning teachers because some of them probably should be seeking employment in other fields, anyway. Fair enough.
Not that CAP didn't also say some stupid things in the article.
Given what is known about how much teachers improve their classroom practices during their first few years, the fact that more beginning teachers stay could actually mean that many more students today have access to more effective teachers.
Yes, since second year teachers are the very best, a system that puts mostly first and second year teachers in front of students would be the very best one. Perhaps Gabrielle Wooden left the classroom after two years because she knew she had peaked. But CAP's use of TNTP "research" does not speak well of their research-using skills. Perhaps it's time to look at how they came up with the figures they use to dispute Ingersoll's work.
The Center for American Progress calculated this much-higher statistic of new-teacher retention using several national surveys from the U.S. Department of Education’s National Center for Education Statistics.
Oh. They used some federal reports and just sort of crunched those puppies up themselves.
I think we're done here. CAP has raised some important and legitimate questions-- our knowledge about teacher retention is always lagging by several years, and in today's climate, those years can make a huge difference. I'm not sure that there's a great deal of practical use in national knowledge other than to generate talking points for those of us who debate policy; it seems like that local districts are perfectly capable of knowing what they need to know in order to tweak their own hiring and mentoring processes.
But the article is a reminder to not just toss things around without reflection. It's easy to grab a 50% departure statistic or a picture of a pretty young woman teaching because they seem to fit whatever point we're trying to make, but a little reflection and thought and additional research never hurt anybody, and might save you an embarrassing mistake.
Did somebody in the photo department just not bother to tag carefully? Did the editor who attached the photo not pause to think things through? Was their googler broken? Did they not know the difference? Did they just not care? Can we expect more great headers from CAP such as the following:
Strong Conservative Contenders Expected in Republican Primary Race
Selecting Best Cuts for a Successful Barbecue
Honoring the Great Champions of American Public Education
All right. That concludes the Taking Cheap Shots portion of this post.
If we look past CAP's unfortunate photo choice for the article, does it contain anything useful?
Essentially, CAP wants to challenge the conventional wisdom that half of all new teachers are leaving within the first five years, and I agree that it's a stat that bears examination. The Grand Mac Daddy of this sort of research is Richard Ingersoll, and his work on the subject of the changing face of the teacher force is rigorous and nuanced-- far more nuanced than the various soundbite-sized data tidbits that are generally pulled from it.
CAP raises a couple of legit concerns beyond the not-shocking news that media do not always report scientific research accurately.
One is that the existing work on teacher retention is old, that we are talking about data from seven or eight years ago. Most importantly, we are not far enough down the road to see the effects of Common Core on the teacher force. Not to do obvious math here, but there's no way to know what percentage of teachers are staying past five years when looking at teachers who entered the profession after 2009.
Another is that this data can be highly local. My theory is that it's even worse in the most teacher-hostile states. In North Carolina, a state that has gone out of its way to make teaching non-viable as a lifetime career, it would appear (via CAP) that a good local administration can make the difference between losing 10% or 20% of the teaching staff. When there's a terrible storm blowing, what you do next depends a lot on whether you're in a tumble-down shack or a solid brick structure. This is a problem with plenty of educational research and almost all education policy-- every school is different in distinct and important ways (kind of like human children-- go figure).
CAP also notes that, hey, we don't want to retain 100% of beginning teachers because some of them probably should be seeking employment in other fields, anyway. Fair enough.
Not that CAP didn't also say some stupid things in the article.
Given what is known about how much teachers improve their classroom practices during their first few years, the fact that more beginning teachers stay could actually mean that many more students today have access to more effective teachers.
Yes, since second year teachers are the very best, a system that puts mostly first and second year teachers in front of students would be the very best one. Perhaps Gabrielle Wooden left the classroom after two years because she knew she had peaked. But CAP's use of TNTP "research" does not speak well of their research-using skills. Perhaps it's time to look at how they came up with the figures they use to dispute Ingersoll's work.
The Center for American Progress calculated this much-higher statistic of new-teacher retention using several national surveys from the U.S. Department of Education’s National Center for Education Statistics.
Oh. They used some federal reports and just sort of crunched those puppies up themselves.
I think we're done here. CAP has raised some important and legitimate questions-- our knowledge about teacher retention is always lagging by several years, and in today's climate, those years can make a huge difference. I'm not sure that there's a great deal of practical use in national knowledge other than to generate talking points for those of us who debate policy; it seems like that local districts are perfectly capable of knowing what they need to know in order to tweak their own hiring and mentoring processes.
But the article is a reminder to not just toss things around without reflection. It's easy to grab a 50% departure statistic or a picture of a pretty young woman teaching because they seem to fit whatever point we're trying to make, but a little reflection and thought and additional research never hurt anybody, and might save you an embarrassing mistake.
Saturday, January 10, 2015
Bullying in New Jersey
I've been staring into the reformy abyss for over a year, and that involves such a general ongoing background level of outrage that it takes something special to really tweak the rage-o-meter. But this week, it happened, as reported by Adam Clark at nj.com:
Contending that a Rutgers professor and public schools advocate has used her position, title and state university resources to wage a personally driven campaign against them, a group representing the state’s charter schools has filed an ethics complaint against the Save Our Schools NJ co-founder.
Yes, confronted by clear scientific data that conflicted with their position, the New Jersey Charter Schools Association did the only thing that reasonable, ethical, intelligent human beings can do in that situation-- they went after the bearer of bad tidings with a switchblade and brass knuckles. Not since Tonya Harding tried to have Nancy Kerrigan kneecapped have we seen such a reasoned and rational approach to conflicting views.
Dr. Julia Sass Rubin is the target of this baldfaced attempt at intimidation and character assassination, and she earned that privilege for her work with Mark Weber (aka Jersey Jazzman) in breaking down the demographics and achievement numbers for New Jersey charters.
The findings are, to students of charter schools, completely unsurprising. NJ charter success rests largely on enrolling fewer very poor students, fewer non-English speaking students, and fewer students with special needs. But putting that out there and backing it up with actual facts was really crimping NJCSA's style (and marketing). On top of that, Dr. Rubin has been active with Save Our Schools New Jersey, which has also upset the sad, delicate sensibilities of NJCSA (because, you know, no college professor in the history of ever has ever become involved in advocacy groups related to their field of expertise).
So, something had to be done.
You might think that "something" could include any one of the following:
* responding to Rubin's facts and analyses with facts and analyses
* sitting down with Rubin to discuss the implications and analyses of her work
* mounting a spirited response to her work, including using the data to tweak and improve the NJCSA business model
But no. We skipped right past that to, "Somebody has to shut that woman up." And so NJCSA has tried to attack Rubin professionally by bringing ethics charges against her. Her alleged unethical behavior is, as near as I can tell:
1) Saying things that the NJCSA doesn't like
2) Telling people what her job is when she speaks.
The complaint seriously seeks the remedy of having Rubin stop identifying herself as a Rutgers professor when she says these things that make the NJ Charter operators look like lying liars who lie. From philly.com coverage:
I can understand their confusion to a point. It is, of course, standard operating procedure in the reformster world to NOT identify who you actually work for, get money from, or otherwise are affiliated with. It's SOP to put out a slick "report" without actually explaining why anyone should believe you know what you're talking about, but Rubin and Weber go ahead and list their actual credentials. Apparently NJCSA's argument is that it's unethical to let people know why your work is credible.
The irony here is that Rubin and Weber's work is simply collecting and crunching numbers, and so is completely checkable. It wouldn't really member if they were a couple of garbage collectors-- their work would still stand up. But NJCSA wants to make sure that Rubin never again invokes the magic title of Rutgers professor, and they don't want SOSNJ to have the credibility of being connected to an actual certified professional with a university job. Oh, and they also want Rubin to stop "embarrassing" Rutgers.
This is bullying, and not even very impressive bullying, at that.
“We cannot sit back and allow our accomplishments, our achievements, to be questioned in the way that they have been questioned by Dr. Sass Rubin,” said Michael Turner, spokesperson for the New Jersey Charter Schools Association.
What way is that, exactly, Mr. Turner? If you think her facts are wrong, present your facts. If you think her analyses is wrong, present your analyses. If you think her reasoning is wrong, explain why.
Exactly. The NJCSA is behaving like a punk, and like a weak punk at that who lacks the tools or the skills to come at Rubin and Weber directly. And they have more work to do, because as Weber points out on his own blog, the conclusions have already been acknowledged as the truth but Cami Anderson and Paymon Rouhanifard, so NJCSA better start ginning up a full scale job-threatening division for the entire state.
Rubin and Weber have been remarkably good sports. In the face of attack, Weber has written things like this:
If these fine, reformy fellows want to have a serious debate about charter school proliferation, that's cool with me. I'm not anti-charter; as I've said many times before, I started my K-12 teaching career in a charter school. There are some very good people working in charters, and many of these schools serve their students well. Good for them.
And in an op-ed response, Rubin wrapped up with this:
We need to bring all the stakeholders together to discuss these and other solutions instead of wasting time on useless personal attacks.
So, given the opportunity to let loose a "neener neener" or "so's your old man" on attackers who had shown no sign of being interested in actual dialogue, both Weber and Rubin kept their eyes on the real point-- the question of how best to serve the educational needs of students in New Jersey-- and acted like grown-ups.. If NJCSA has an ounce of class, they will put down their brass knuckles, put on their big girls pants, and deal with reality honestly and productively instead of trying to bully Rubin into silence.
Contending that a Rutgers professor and public schools advocate has used her position, title and state university resources to wage a personally driven campaign against them, a group representing the state’s charter schools has filed an ethics complaint against the Save Our Schools NJ co-founder.
Yes, confronted by clear scientific data that conflicted with their position, the New Jersey Charter Schools Association did the only thing that reasonable, ethical, intelligent human beings can do in that situation-- they went after the bearer of bad tidings with a switchblade and brass knuckles. Not since Tonya Harding tried to have Nancy Kerrigan kneecapped have we seen such a reasoned and rational approach to conflicting views.
Dr. Julia Sass Rubin is the target of this baldfaced attempt at intimidation and character assassination, and she earned that privilege for her work with Mark Weber (aka Jersey Jazzman) in breaking down the demographics and achievement numbers for New Jersey charters.
The findings are, to students of charter schools, completely unsurprising. NJ charter success rests largely on enrolling fewer very poor students, fewer non-English speaking students, and fewer students with special needs. But putting that out there and backing it up with actual facts was really crimping NJCSA's style (and marketing). On top of that, Dr. Rubin has been active with Save Our Schools New Jersey, which has also upset the sad, delicate sensibilities of NJCSA (because, you know, no college professor in the history of ever has ever become involved in advocacy groups related to their field of expertise).
So, something had to be done.
You might think that "something" could include any one of the following:
* responding to Rubin's facts and analyses with facts and analyses
* sitting down with Rubin to discuss the implications and analyses of her work
* mounting a spirited response to her work, including using the data to tweak and improve the NJCSA business model
But no. We skipped right past that to, "Somebody has to shut that woman up." And so NJCSA has tried to attack Rubin professionally by bringing ethics charges against her. Her alleged unethical behavior is, as near as I can tell:
1) Saying things that the NJCSA doesn't like
2) Telling people what her job is when she speaks.
The complaint seriously seeks the remedy of having Rubin stop identifying herself as a Rutgers professor when she says these things that make the NJ Charter operators look like lying liars who lie. From philly.com coverage:
"The paper's conclusion and
recommendations are identical to - and clearly intended to provide the
appearance of legitimate academic support for - the lobbying positions
that Dr. Rubin and SOSNJ have zealously promoted for years," the Charter
Schools Association wrote in its complaint.
So, as a citizen, she's not allowed to believe what she believes as an academic? When her research as an academic leads her to certain conclusions, she must never talk about them outside of school? Or when she's speaking as a citizen, she is not allowed to note that she has professional training and skills that qualify her to make certain conclusions?
I can understand their confusion to a point. It is, of course, standard operating procedure in the reformster world to NOT identify who you actually work for, get money from, or otherwise are affiliated with. It's SOP to put out a slick "report" without actually explaining why anyone should believe you know what you're talking about, but Rubin and Weber go ahead and list their actual credentials. Apparently NJCSA's argument is that it's unethical to let people know why your work is credible.
The irony here is that Rubin and Weber's work is simply collecting and crunching numbers, and so is completely checkable. It wouldn't really member if they were a couple of garbage collectors-- their work would still stand up. But NJCSA wants to make sure that Rubin never again invokes the magic title of Rutgers professor, and they don't want SOSNJ to have the credibility of being connected to an actual certified professional with a university job. Oh, and they also want Rubin to stop "embarrassing" Rutgers.
This is bullying, and not even very impressive bullying, at that.
“We cannot sit back and allow our accomplishments, our achievements, to be questioned in the way that they have been questioned by Dr. Sass Rubin,” said Michael Turner, spokesperson for the New Jersey Charter Schools Association.
What way is that, exactly, Mr. Turner? If you think her facts are wrong, present your facts. If you think her analyses is wrong, present your analyses. If you think her reasoning is wrong, explain why.
"If you can silence academics that easily,
then basically you have no freedom of speech for a lot of people who
are often the only ones who can speak up," Rubin said. "And that's the
whole idea of an academic institution, is, you have the ability to
speak. No one assumes you're speaking for the university."
Exactly. The NJCSA is behaving like a punk, and like a weak punk at that who lacks the tools or the skills to come at Rubin and Weber directly. And they have more work to do, because as Weber points out on his own blog, the conclusions have already been acknowledged as the truth but Cami Anderson and Paymon Rouhanifard, so NJCSA better start ginning up a full scale job-threatening division for the entire state.
Rubin and Weber have been remarkably good sports. In the face of attack, Weber has written things like this:
If these fine, reformy fellows want to have a serious debate about charter school proliferation, that's cool with me. I'm not anti-charter; as I've said many times before, I started my K-12 teaching career in a charter school. There are some very good people working in charters, and many of these schools serve their students well. Good for them.
And in an op-ed response, Rubin wrapped up with this:
We need to bring all the stakeholders together to discuss these and other solutions instead of wasting time on useless personal attacks.
So, given the opportunity to let loose a "neener neener" or "so's your old man" on attackers who had shown no sign of being interested in actual dialogue, both Weber and Rubin kept their eyes on the real point-- the question of how best to serve the educational needs of students in New Jersey-- and acted like grown-ups.. If NJCSA has an ounce of class, they will put down their brass knuckles, put on their big girls pants, and deal with reality honestly and productively instead of trying to bully Rubin into silence.
Brookings Fails To Makes Case For Annual Testing
I kind of love the guys at Brookings. They are such a reliable source of earnest amateur writing about education. They're slick, polished, and professional, and they rarely know what they're talking about when it comes to education.
Like most everybody paying attention, they see the writing on the wall for an ESEA rewrite by the GOP Congress, and the four (!) authors of this piece would like to put their oar in for maintaining the regimen of annual testing.
"The Case for Annual Testing," by Grover J. "Russ" Whitehurst, Martin R. West, Matthew M. Chingos and Mark Dynarski of the Brown Center on Educational Policy, presents an argument that they contend is composed of four part. And not one of them is correct. The central foundation of the structure is that testing, standards and accountability are discrete and totally separable. So we're in trouble already with this argument. But let's go ahead and look at the four legs of this stool.
Federal control of standards and accountability is unnecessary, but the provision of valid and actionable information on school performance is a uniquely federal responsibility.
Information on school performance in education is a public good, meaning that individuals cannot be effectively excluded from using the information once it exists. Because it is impossible to prevent consumers who have not paid for the information from consuming it, far too little evidence will be produced if it is not required by the federal government.
IOW, local districts won't produce information because they are afraid that someone will see it, so only the federal government can force the production. And, the authors continue, only the feds can produce the high-grade top-quality stuff. The argument is some combination of "nobody else as good as the feds" and "others can do it, but they won't unless the feds make them.
The states, they argue, are perfectly capable of setting standards and holding schools accountable. But somehow, only the feds can get good information. How does that even make sense? States are perfectly capable of making a good pancake and telling if it's any good, but only the feds can go to the store for the ingredients? How would states set standards or hold schools accountable if they couldn't also come up with the information implicit in each of those activities?
Nevertheless, Brookings says sternly, "If the federal government doesn't support it, it will not happen."
Note: they have made another bad assumption here, but I'll wait a bit to bring it up.
Student learning impacts long-term outcomes that everyone should value, and test scores are valid indicators of such learning.
Neither half of this sentence is correct.
The first half of the sentence is supported entirely and only in the article by the work of Chetty, Friedman and Rockoff. This is the infamous study asserting that a good teacher in elementary school will make a difference of $250,000ish dollars in future earnings. Disproving the study is a popular activity, made extra popular because much of the proof is right there in the original study's own data set. If you'd like to read a scholarly takedown, try this. If you'd like one with plain English and a Phineas and Ferb reference, try this. Either way, the study is bunk.
But while the first half is substantially wrong, but still kind of right (yes, student learning results in stuff that people should care about), the last half is just silly.
The authors try to shoe-horn some Chetty et al in to prove the second as well, but it doesn't. This whole argument boils down to, "There's one paper that shows some teeny tiny correlation between test scores and doing well later in life."
But in terms of offering support for the assertion that test scores are a valid measure of important learning, they offer nothing at all. Nothing. At. All.
And here's the other thing-- even if they were a valid measure, so what? What is the purpose of knowing before the fact which students are headed for greater success as adults?
Many school management and improvement functions depend on annual measures of student growth.
The functions they're talking about include marketing charter schools and "differentiating" teachers. They assert, with a straight face, that you can't run VAM systems without test data, which they suggest is important by alluding again to Chetty, thereby managing to cram two discredited and debunked pieces of work into a single paragraph.
They also assert that test results are needed to evaluate policies that are foisted on schools (because, I guess, the schools themselves don't know or won't say). And they are looking out for the schools, which won't be credited for their success (credited? by whom? who is out there giving schools credits for doing a good job?).
Finally, you can't disaggregate data for subgroups if you don't have data.
Most of the opponents of federally imposed standards, testing, and accountability should be in favor of federally imposed annual testing shorn of standards and accountability.
Brookings' fourth and final point is that everybody really ought to love annual testing once you remove accountability and standards from the mix (if I could insert a Jon Stewart "Do tell" gif here, I surely would).
Conservatives should love it because testing data can be used to feed school choice. And to assuage their fears of federal oversight, the writers offer this astonishing assertion:
And it doesn’t have to be the same test across the nation to provide this information, or even a single end-of-the-year test as opposed to a series of tests given across the year that can be rolled-up into an estimate of annual growth. All that is required is something that tests what a school intends to teach and is normed to a state or national population.
I have no words. Apparently this entire article is a waste of time because when they say they're in favor of annual testing, they just mean that at least once a year teachers should give some sort of test. Well, hey! Done!! I will leave it to you guys to figure out how those tens of thousands of tests will be normed up so that all of those schools doing testing a completely different way can somehow be legitimately compared. Get back to me when you sort that one out, in a decade or two.
For progressives, we offer the argument that disagregated test data is a useful tool for lobbying on behalf of whatever subgroup you're concerned about. I've contemplated this argument before, and while I understand the appeal of keeping groups from disappearing, I have serious ethical issues with using students as tools to generate talking points. If your argument for testing is, "Well, no, it doesn't really serve the kids. It might even be damaging for the kids. But it generates some real good lobbying material for advocates," I think you're on shaky ground, indeed.
And parents? Well, there's this:
Surely, such parents no more want to be in the dark about a K-12 school’s academic performance than they would want to ignore the quality of the college to which their child will eventually seek enrollment.
Because, of course, all students will eventually seek enrollment in a college. Beyond that, I'm wondering as always-- where is this great mass of parents clamoring for and demanding federal testing? Where are all these parents who have no idea how well their child's school is doing and so are desperately demanding federal test results so they will know?
Brookings finally notes that teachers unions might be a lost cause on this issue because 9and they use very nice fancy language to say this) teachers are all afraid of being evaluated and punished for the results. But teachers should be practical enough to see the value in trading an end to test-linked evaluations in exchange for keeping the annual tests themselves.
To wrap up
As always, Brookings really captures the point of view of economists who haven't an actual clue about what goes in actual schools.
The biggest gaping hole in their proposal is an unfounded belief in the validity of The Big Test. They believe that The Big Test is a valid measure of learning, and that is an assumption that nobody, anywhere has backed up. The closest these guys come is throwing around the infamous Chetty results, and all that Chetty shows is that there is a slight correlation between test scores and later financial success (thereby creating supremely narrow definitions of learning and success). For their purposes, that means nothing. I'll bet you that there's a correlation between how nice a student's shoes are and how successful that student is later in life, but that doesn't mean buying nice shoes for every student would make the student successful later in life.
But every piece of the Brookings argument rests on that foundation-- that a narrow bubble test with some questions about math and some reading questions somehow measures the full depth and breadth of a student's education. Brookings assumes that people are just upset about the High Stakes part of High Stakes Testing; they fail to grasp that a major reason for being upset about the High Stakes portion is that the Testing is crap. You can play with the data from the crap test all day, but at teh end of the day, you'll just have crap data in a shiny report.
Final verdict? Brookings has completely failed to make a case for annual testing.
Like most everybody paying attention, they see the writing on the wall for an ESEA rewrite by the GOP Congress, and the four (!) authors of this piece would like to put their oar in for maintaining the regimen of annual testing.
"The Case for Annual Testing," by Grover J. "Russ" Whitehurst, Martin R. West, Matthew M. Chingos and Mark Dynarski of the Brown Center on Educational Policy, presents an argument that they contend is composed of four part. And not one of them is correct. The central foundation of the structure is that testing, standards and accountability are discrete and totally separable. So we're in trouble already with this argument. But let's go ahead and look at the four legs of this stool.
Federal control of standards and accountability is unnecessary, but the provision of valid and actionable information on school performance is a uniquely federal responsibility.
Information on school performance in education is a public good, meaning that individuals cannot be effectively excluded from using the information once it exists. Because it is impossible to prevent consumers who have not paid for the information from consuming it, far too little evidence will be produced if it is not required by the federal government.
IOW, local districts won't produce information because they are afraid that someone will see it, so only the federal government can force the production. And, the authors continue, only the feds can produce the high-grade top-quality stuff. The argument is some combination of "nobody else as good as the feds" and "others can do it, but they won't unless the feds make them.
The states, they argue, are perfectly capable of setting standards and holding schools accountable. But somehow, only the feds can get good information. How does that even make sense? States are perfectly capable of making a good pancake and telling if it's any good, but only the feds can go to the store for the ingredients? How would states set standards or hold schools accountable if they couldn't also come up with the information implicit in each of those activities?
Nevertheless, Brookings says sternly, "If the federal government doesn't support it, it will not happen."
Note: they have made another bad assumption here, but I'll wait a bit to bring it up.
Student learning impacts long-term outcomes that everyone should value, and test scores are valid indicators of such learning.
Neither half of this sentence is correct.
The first half of the sentence is supported entirely and only in the article by the work of Chetty, Friedman and Rockoff. This is the infamous study asserting that a good teacher in elementary school will make a difference of $250,000ish dollars in future earnings. Disproving the study is a popular activity, made extra popular because much of the proof is right there in the original study's own data set. If you'd like to read a scholarly takedown, try this. If you'd like one with plain English and a Phineas and Ferb reference, try this. Either way, the study is bunk.
But while the first half is substantially wrong, but still kind of right (yes, student learning results in stuff that people should care about), the last half is just silly.
The authors try to shoe-horn some Chetty et al in to prove the second as well, but it doesn't. This whole argument boils down to, "There's one paper that shows some teeny tiny correlation between test scores and doing well later in life."
But in terms of offering support for the assertion that test scores are a valid measure of important learning, they offer nothing at all. Nothing. At. All.
And here's the other thing-- even if they were a valid measure, so what? What is the purpose of knowing before the fact which students are headed for greater success as adults?
Many school management and improvement functions depend on annual measures of student growth.
The functions they're talking about include marketing charter schools and "differentiating" teachers. They assert, with a straight face, that you can't run VAM systems without test data, which they suggest is important by alluding again to Chetty, thereby managing to cram two discredited and debunked pieces of work into a single paragraph.
They also assert that test results are needed to evaluate policies that are foisted on schools (because, I guess, the schools themselves don't know or won't say). And they are looking out for the schools, which won't be credited for their success (credited? by whom? who is out there giving schools credits for doing a good job?).
Finally, you can't disaggregate data for subgroups if you don't have data.
Most of the opponents of federally imposed standards, testing, and accountability should be in favor of federally imposed annual testing shorn of standards and accountability.
Brookings' fourth and final point is that everybody really ought to love annual testing once you remove accountability and standards from the mix (if I could insert a Jon Stewart "Do tell" gif here, I surely would).
Conservatives should love it because testing data can be used to feed school choice. And to assuage their fears of federal oversight, the writers offer this astonishing assertion:
And it doesn’t have to be the same test across the nation to provide this information, or even a single end-of-the-year test as opposed to a series of tests given across the year that can be rolled-up into an estimate of annual growth. All that is required is something that tests what a school intends to teach and is normed to a state or national population.
I have no words. Apparently this entire article is a waste of time because when they say they're in favor of annual testing, they just mean that at least once a year teachers should give some sort of test. Well, hey! Done!! I will leave it to you guys to figure out how those tens of thousands of tests will be normed up so that all of those schools doing testing a completely different way can somehow be legitimately compared. Get back to me when you sort that one out, in a decade or two.
For progressives, we offer the argument that disagregated test data is a useful tool for lobbying on behalf of whatever subgroup you're concerned about. I've contemplated this argument before, and while I understand the appeal of keeping groups from disappearing, I have serious ethical issues with using students as tools to generate talking points. If your argument for testing is, "Well, no, it doesn't really serve the kids. It might even be damaging for the kids. But it generates some real good lobbying material for advocates," I think you're on shaky ground, indeed.
And parents? Well, there's this:
Surely, such parents no more want to be in the dark about a K-12 school’s academic performance than they would want to ignore the quality of the college to which their child will eventually seek enrollment.
Because, of course, all students will eventually seek enrollment in a college. Beyond that, I'm wondering as always-- where is this great mass of parents clamoring for and demanding federal testing? Where are all these parents who have no idea how well their child's school is doing and so are desperately demanding federal test results so they will know?
Brookings finally notes that teachers unions might be a lost cause on this issue because 9and they use very nice fancy language to say this) teachers are all afraid of being evaluated and punished for the results. But teachers should be practical enough to see the value in trading an end to test-linked evaluations in exchange for keeping the annual tests themselves.
To wrap up
As always, Brookings really captures the point of view of economists who haven't an actual clue about what goes in actual schools.
The biggest gaping hole in their proposal is an unfounded belief in the validity of The Big Test. They believe that The Big Test is a valid measure of learning, and that is an assumption that nobody, anywhere has backed up. The closest these guys come is throwing around the infamous Chetty results, and all that Chetty shows is that there is a slight correlation between test scores and later financial success (thereby creating supremely narrow definitions of learning and success). For their purposes, that means nothing. I'll bet you that there's a correlation between how nice a student's shoes are and how successful that student is later in life, but that doesn't mean buying nice shoes for every student would make the student successful later in life.
But every piece of the Brookings argument rests on that foundation-- that a narrow bubble test with some questions about math and some reading questions somehow measures the full depth and breadth of a student's education. Brookings assumes that people are just upset about the High Stakes part of High Stakes Testing; they fail to grasp that a major reason for being upset about the High Stakes portion is that the Testing is crap. You can play with the data from the crap test all day, but at teh end of the day, you'll just have crap data in a shiny report.
Final verdict? Brookings has completely failed to make a case for annual testing.
Friday, January 9, 2015
Boston's Reformy Olympics
The US Olympics bosses have chosen Boston to make the US bid for hosting the 2024 Olympics. This would be the first time the US has hosted the games since the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt lake City (for which I, true story, was a torch runner) and a real coup for the Massachusetts port city.
But I have learned, through some of my more advanced fake journalism techniques, that the US plans to use the games to showcase our awesometastic Common Core reformy initiatives. Therefore, principles of Core and reform will be applied to these games. Here are some of the CCSS-flavored nougats we can expect to enjoy:
* All athletes for all sports will be assessed for running and swimming skills. Cut scores will be set to insure a 35% failure rate. All athletes who are not ranked as proficient will be sent home. We anticipate that this may thin the field in some sports considerably (e.g. badmitton and weightlifting), but sometimes you have to break a few eggs.
* To show full understanding of the concepts behind their sports, athletes will complete their tasks using multiple techniques. For example, table tennis teams must complete rounds by holding their paddles in their teeth or strapped to their foreheads. Swimmers will be required to complete one lap with feet strapped together, another lap carrying a small farm animal, and a lap wearing those foam #1 fingers on their hands. Shot putters will complete at least half of their throws without using their hands. If they really understand how the sport works, it shouldn't make any difference.
* Athletes will be required to display critical thinking in their competition. We're not really sure what that means, so we're going to lock their equipment in a box, show them four boxes, and make them pick the correct one, and we'll just go ahead and call that a test of their critical thinking.
* Athletes will be required to display grit. Instead of sticking to cushy, comfy mats, gymnasts will be required to complete routines on concrete, beach sand, a giant vat of eels, and a giant air mattress covered with mousetraps. Rowing teams will compete in the open sea, in the middle of shipping lanes, during a gale, dragging shark bait behind their sculls. If they really have grit, it won't matter.
* Costs will be kept low by getting multiple uses out of resources. The court used to assess volleyball skills can also be used for finding the best cyclist. You just have to be creative, and believe. After all-- a court is a court. One size fits all, and a tool
* If an athlete fails to win a medal, his coach will be fired. Also, the athlete's kindergarten teacher will be penalized. Also, the college that his kindergarten teacher attended will be fined.
All ribbons will, of course, be provided by Pearson. And they will all be exactly the same size.
But I have learned, through some of my more advanced fake journalism techniques, that the US plans to use the games to showcase our awesometastic Common Core reformy initiatives. Therefore, principles of Core and reform will be applied to these games. Here are some of the CCSS-flavored nougats we can expect to enjoy:
* All athletes for all sports will be assessed for running and swimming skills. Cut scores will be set to insure a 35% failure rate. All athletes who are not ranked as proficient will be sent home. We anticipate that this may thin the field in some sports considerably (e.g. badmitton and weightlifting), but sometimes you have to break a few eggs.
* To show full understanding of the concepts behind their sports, athletes will complete their tasks using multiple techniques. For example, table tennis teams must complete rounds by holding their paddles in their teeth or strapped to their foreheads. Swimmers will be required to complete one lap with feet strapped together, another lap carrying a small farm animal, and a lap wearing those foam #1 fingers on their hands. Shot putters will complete at least half of their throws without using their hands. If they really understand how the sport works, it shouldn't make any difference.
* Athletes will be required to display critical thinking in their competition. We're not really sure what that means, so we're going to lock their equipment in a box, show them four boxes, and make them pick the correct one, and we'll just go ahead and call that a test of their critical thinking.
* Athletes will be required to display grit. Instead of sticking to cushy, comfy mats, gymnasts will be required to complete routines on concrete, beach sand, a giant vat of eels, and a giant air mattress covered with mousetraps. Rowing teams will compete in the open sea, in the middle of shipping lanes, during a gale, dragging shark bait behind their sculls. If they really have grit, it won't matter.
* Costs will be kept low by getting multiple uses out of resources. The court used to assess volleyball skills can also be used for finding the best cyclist. You just have to be creative, and believe. After all-- a court is a court. One size fits all, and a tool
* If an athlete fails to win a medal, his coach will be fired. Also, the athlete's kindergarten teacher will be penalized. Also, the college that his kindergarten teacher attended will be fined.
All ribbons will, of course, be provided by Pearson. And they will all be exactly the same size.
Sigh. Another Teacher CCSS Love Letter
I feel as if I've become a connoisseur of the teacher-to-Common Core love letter. It is, at this point, a noble genre with a rich and varied history. And by "rich and varied," I mean they've found a lot of fairly similar people to say exactly the same thing. Sigh.
So, anyway, today's entry comes from Tennessee via the 2014-2015 Teacher of the Year (so, kudos to Tennessee on figuring out who's going to be awesome this year before this year is even half over), and it hits all the right notes.
Our TOTY kicks things off with a personal touch. After introducing herself, she says, "I am ill at the thought that these standards could be repealed." So that's an extra touch. After that, it's the usual required portions.
Claim that doesn't exactly make sense? Check. "We have data showing our students are performing at a rate faster than any other state in the nation." I am the last person to cast aspersions on an apparent lapse in proofreading, but I'm betting this isn't what she really means, unless Tennessee's big achievement is students who rip through tests really fast, which, when you think of it, is one possible solution to the problem of tests taking up too much of school time.
Standing up for localism? Check. "We (Tennesseans, not the federal government) made decisions about how the standards would be implemented and how our educators would be trained." But not what the standards would be or whether they had value. But nobody, she insists, mandated curriculum and materials, though in the same graph she asserts that TN teachers received extensive training in just how to apply the standards. So, TN teachers were completely free to do exactly what they were trained to do?
Senseless critical thinking plug? Check. When she started teaching, she just taught students to pass tests. "I would ask questions, a student would reply correctly and I replied, “Good job”, and moved on." But the Common Core standards fixed that:
The beauty of the standards is they allow teachers and students the opportunity to delve deeply into concepts.
Sigh. So I will ask for the six gazillionth time (because I'm going to keep asking until someone provides an answer) -- what is it that kept you from doing this before? You say that the standards "allow" this opportunity-- exactly who was forbidding it previously? And are you saying that if today the standards were thrown out of Tennessee, tomorrow you would not be able to do any critical thinking stuff in class?
This teacher appears to be no slacker. She teaches at an "option" K-5 school (the Memphis equivalent of a magnet school). She is National Board Certified. She throws in some anecdotes that would seem to indicate that despite the picture she paints of herself as clueless when a newbie, she is now a fine professional educator.
So why give the Core credit for simply doing her job well? Here's her own description of reaching one challenging student: "I pushed his thinking when he solved problems by expecting him to justify his solutions. When he saw my excitement he wanted more, and he got it." Which part of that has some direct basis in the Core? Was it only the Core that made it possible for her to push his thinking? Was the Core responsible for the excitement that he saw in her? Would she be a dull, uninteresting, unexciting teacher tomorrow if the Core were taken away today? She also advocates student centered learning-- was she unaware that such a thing existed before she was Core trained?
Concluding with plea to stay the course? Check. Despite "growing pains," she believe that the Core will lead Tennessee to the land of awesome.
Teachers have received and will continue to receive training, but it takes time to learn and implement a methodology representing the most sweeping reforms in education history.
Sigh. First, what exactly is this sweepingly new methodology? Because critical thinking is not a new invention. Neither is displaying excitement. And student centered learning is not something David Coleman made up (nor, honestly, do I think there's much of anything in the Common Core Standards that requires or encourages it). And why are we talking about methodology when the standards are supposedly a list of things students are supposed to know? Why are we talking about methodology when the Core is supposed to be completely devoid of any directions about methodology?
This love letter is built on the usual assertion of connections for which there is no proof.
Are you using good teaching practices in your classroom? That's great-- but what does it have to do with the Core? Are you suggesting that the presence of the Core is somehow necessary for those practices to be followed? Are you suggesting that those practices are so mysterious and groundbreaking that only people who have been Core-trained can grasp them? Are you suggesting that if the Core were rejected by your state, all teachers would have to stop using those practices tomorrow?
Furthermore, what reason do you have to believe that the Core will lead to excellence? Can you point to any use of similar standards anywhere in the world that has led to excellence? Can you point to a research base for the standards themselves to suggest that there's some reason to expect them to be linked to excellence?
This lady seems like a nice person and is probably a swell teacher. I am sorry that she somehow became involved in making this sad, empty pitch for the poor, doomed Common Core, and it is not my intent to pick on her in any personal way. But if people are going to keep writing these ridiculous love letters to the Core, somebody has to keep pointing out how poorly they make the case.
So, anyway, today's entry comes from Tennessee via the 2014-2015 Teacher of the Year (so, kudos to Tennessee on figuring out who's going to be awesome this year before this year is even half over), and it hits all the right notes.
Our TOTY kicks things off with a personal touch. After introducing herself, she says, "I am ill at the thought that these standards could be repealed." So that's an extra touch. After that, it's the usual required portions.
Claim that doesn't exactly make sense? Check. "We have data showing our students are performing at a rate faster than any other state in the nation." I am the last person to cast aspersions on an apparent lapse in proofreading, but I'm betting this isn't what she really means, unless Tennessee's big achievement is students who rip through tests really fast, which, when you think of it, is one possible solution to the problem of tests taking up too much of school time.
Standing up for localism? Check. "We (Tennesseans, not the federal government) made decisions about how the standards would be implemented and how our educators would be trained." But not what the standards would be or whether they had value. But nobody, she insists, mandated curriculum and materials, though in the same graph she asserts that TN teachers received extensive training in just how to apply the standards. So, TN teachers were completely free to do exactly what they were trained to do?
Senseless critical thinking plug? Check. When she started teaching, she just taught students to pass tests. "I would ask questions, a student would reply correctly and I replied, “Good job”, and moved on." But the Common Core standards fixed that:
The beauty of the standards is they allow teachers and students the opportunity to delve deeply into concepts.
Sigh. So I will ask for the six gazillionth time (because I'm going to keep asking until someone provides an answer) -- what is it that kept you from doing this before? You say that the standards "allow" this opportunity-- exactly who was forbidding it previously? And are you saying that if today the standards were thrown out of Tennessee, tomorrow you would not be able to do any critical thinking stuff in class?
This teacher appears to be no slacker. She teaches at an "option" K-5 school (the Memphis equivalent of a magnet school). She is National Board Certified. She throws in some anecdotes that would seem to indicate that despite the picture she paints of herself as clueless when a newbie, she is now a fine professional educator.
So why give the Core credit for simply doing her job well? Here's her own description of reaching one challenging student: "I pushed his thinking when he solved problems by expecting him to justify his solutions. When he saw my excitement he wanted more, and he got it." Which part of that has some direct basis in the Core? Was it only the Core that made it possible for her to push his thinking? Was the Core responsible for the excitement that he saw in her? Would she be a dull, uninteresting, unexciting teacher tomorrow if the Core were taken away today? She also advocates student centered learning-- was she unaware that such a thing existed before she was Core trained?
Concluding with plea to stay the course? Check. Despite "growing pains," she believe that the Core will lead Tennessee to the land of awesome.
Teachers have received and will continue to receive training, but it takes time to learn and implement a methodology representing the most sweeping reforms in education history.
Sigh. First, what exactly is this sweepingly new methodology? Because critical thinking is not a new invention. Neither is displaying excitement. And student centered learning is not something David Coleman made up (nor, honestly, do I think there's much of anything in the Common Core Standards that requires or encourages it). And why are we talking about methodology when the standards are supposedly a list of things students are supposed to know? Why are we talking about methodology when the Core is supposed to be completely devoid of any directions about methodology?
This love letter is built on the usual assertion of connections for which there is no proof.
Are you using good teaching practices in your classroom? That's great-- but what does it have to do with the Core? Are you suggesting that the presence of the Core is somehow necessary for those practices to be followed? Are you suggesting that those practices are so mysterious and groundbreaking that only people who have been Core-trained can grasp them? Are you suggesting that if the Core were rejected by your state, all teachers would have to stop using those practices tomorrow?
Furthermore, what reason do you have to believe that the Core will lead to excellence? Can you point to any use of similar standards anywhere in the world that has led to excellence? Can you point to a research base for the standards themselves to suggest that there's some reason to expect them to be linked to excellence?
This lady seems like a nice person and is probably a swell teacher. I am sorry that she somehow became involved in making this sad, empty pitch for the poor, doomed Common Core, and it is not my intent to pick on her in any personal way. But if people are going to keep writing these ridiculous love letters to the Core, somebody has to keep pointing out how poorly they make the case.
Duncan Calls for NCLB Repeal
Last night, Politico ran a story announcing that Arne Duncan will on Monday issue a call "for repealing and replacing the nation’s landmark federal education law, No Child Left Behind." They characterize this "joining Republicans in Congress." I would characterize it as trying to jump on the bus before somebody throws him under it.
"Repeal NCLB" just means "rewrite and reauthorize ESEA" and that job has been due since 2007. The Elementary and Secondary Education Act has been around since 1965, regularly reauthorized/rewritten to reflect the current administration policies. NCLB is just the version we're currently stuck with.
NCLB is the foundation for the administration's current reformster program. The universal failure of states to meet the NCLB requirement that all students be above average by 2014-- that failure is the engine that drives RttT and waivers. Remove NCLB, and you remove the chief motivation for states to accept Common Core (a motivation so powerful, you will recall, that states signed up for CCSS before it was even finished).
But rewrite it as what?
The Obama administration has always known what their vision of a rewritten ESEA would be, and we are living it. The administration's ed program appeared first as Race to the Top in 2009, then next appeared as its proposed "Blueprint for Reform" aka proposed ESEA/NCLB rewrite in 2010; both highlighted Common Core (or something just like it), data collection, teacher evaluation based on tests, more charters. When the administration was unsuccessful in rewriting ESEA their way, they created the waiver program as an end run around the law.
So there is nothing shocking about a Duncan call to rewrite ESEA/NCLB. The administration has essentially already done it by the use of waivers.
Why is he doing it now, when he's had his way for the past several years? The answer is obvious-- if the GOP really rewrites ESEA, all of Duncan and Obama's reformy work will be trashed. Duncan's announcement is not a clarion call to change a single comma of the administration's policy-- it's an announcement that he intends to preserve it against the GOP onslaught that's about to begin. For all intents and purposes, Duncan has had the ESEA rewrite he's wanted for five years, and the GOP is threatening to take it away from him. Duncan is jumping on the bus before he is thrown under it, but there will now be a hell of a battle over who's going to drive and where the bus is going to go.
"Repeal NCLB" just means "rewrite and reauthorize ESEA" and that job has been due since 2007. The Elementary and Secondary Education Act has been around since 1965, regularly reauthorized/rewritten to reflect the current administration policies. NCLB is just the version we're currently stuck with.
NCLB is the foundation for the administration's current reformster program. The universal failure of states to meet the NCLB requirement that all students be above average by 2014-- that failure is the engine that drives RttT and waivers. Remove NCLB, and you remove the chief motivation for states to accept Common Core (a motivation so powerful, you will recall, that states signed up for CCSS before it was even finished).
But rewrite it as what?
The Obama administration has always known what their vision of a rewritten ESEA would be, and we are living it. The administration's ed program appeared first as Race to the Top in 2009, then next appeared as its proposed "Blueprint for Reform" aka proposed ESEA/NCLB rewrite in 2010; both highlighted Common Core (or something just like it), data collection, teacher evaluation based on tests, more charters. When the administration was unsuccessful in rewriting ESEA their way, they created the waiver program as an end run around the law.
So there is nothing shocking about a Duncan call to rewrite ESEA/NCLB. The administration has essentially already done it by the use of waivers.
Why is he doing it now, when he's had his way for the past several years? The answer is obvious-- if the GOP really rewrites ESEA, all of Duncan and Obama's reformy work will be trashed. Duncan's announcement is not a clarion call to change a single comma of the administration's policy-- it's an announcement that he intends to preserve it against the GOP onslaught that's about to begin. For all intents and purposes, Duncan has had the ESEA rewrite he's wanted for five years, and the GOP is threatening to take it away from him. Duncan is jumping on the bus before he is thrown under it, but there will now be a hell of a battle over who's going to drive and where the bus is going to go.
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