ESSA Accountability: Part II (P.S. Mike)

Almost as soon as my head hit the pillow, I realized that I had left out an important part of my accountability plan. You can read the first part of this wonkery here-- now for the addendum (hey-- I've already shown that I'm a scofflaw, so why not blow through the 2,000 word limit for submissions)

I don't know where this fits, but for accountability we need full and open school audits.

Visits from a team that includes folks from the state capital and working educators. They will visit the school, have free rein to walk in and out of any classroom, to examine records, curriculum, watch teachers in action, interview students and faculty and parents.

I fully agree that "Just take our word for it" is not an accountability system. Neither is "Prove yourself with paperwork." You want to see if somebody is doing their job-- go look.

The audit team visits for a week and makes an evaluation of the school's strength and weaknesses, creating a full description of the school's impact on children and the state of the children it is serving. Look at all the items mentioned in the first part of the proposal, including student health and well-being, breadth and depth of programs, effectiveness of the staff, degree to which school is meeting the needs of the children and community.

Response to First Replies

Imagine my delight to wake up this morning and find my plan had already been looked at. I can already taste-- what are we getting for this, Mike? Money? Fame? A box of fudge?

@mpolikoff @palan57 Fair enough but also clarifying. It shows that #ESSA doesn't allow "anything goes" or the evisceration of accountability

— Michael Petrilli (@MichaelPetrilli) January 14, 2016

It's true that my plan may not meet the letter of the ESSA. I'm okay with that. And I'm not sure what Polikoff's objection is-- not enough hard numbers? Too many things outside the test? How exactly does my plan eviscerate accountability?

But this exchange reminds me that the ESSA leaves me with the same old question about accountability-- accountable to whom, and for what?

Because the answer in ESSA, buried in some new language, seems to be the same old "accountable to the federal government for test scores." Except that the feds can no longer be specific about how the scores should look and what happens if you "fail," making ESSA vaguer and unlikely to satisfy literally anybody at all except test manufacvturers.

Because any accountability system that is based on standardized testing materials produced and assessed on a large scale and covering only a sliver of the school program-- that's an accountability system that's a piece of useless crap, like checking the health and well-being of an elephant by analyzing its toenail clippings. Not completely and utterly useless-- just mostly useless, and a waste of resources.

So the challenge for any accountability system under ESSA will be to design a system that can co-exist with the federal regulations that mandate measures that don't provide accountability at all.

Look-- we know this! We've been doing the kind of test-based accountability called for by ESSA for over a decade, and it has accomplished absolutely bupkus other than to provide marketing fodder for the charter-based privatization of public schools, which in turn has also produced bupkus in terms of improving education. We have been trying test-based accountability and it does not work.

I would love to see real accountability for schools. But a test-based rating system is not it. So to have real accountability, we're going to have to do more than put lipstick on that pig-- we're going to have to bury that pig way inside some other structure, maybe slaughter and cook that pig and feed it to a lion.

Sure, there are nuts and bolts to work out, but I'm not giving that stuff away for free! I need something to start my consulting business with.

Okay, I'm done now. When you're ready, let me know, and I'll tell you where to send my check. Or the fudge.

ESSA, Fordham and Accountability: An Open Letter to Mike Petrilli

     TO: Mike Petrilli, Fordham Institute
FROM: Peter Greene, English teacher

RE: Design competition

You recently announced a design competition for developing a state-level design for accountability under the new ESSA. I totally meant to indicate my interest in throwing my hat into the ring, but it's the end of the grading period here and the start of rehearsals for school musical (Beauty and the Beast-- it's going to be good) and I missed the Jan 11 deadline for indicating interest. But since I intend, at a minimum, to roundly criticize your winner, I feel it's only fair to put up so that I don't have to shut up.

The competition is to design a school accountability system for elementary schools in some average-sized, demographically diverse state. The focus is to rate the schools, and not to answer the question of what to do with the ratings.

1. Design objectives. What are the priorities of the system, which I understand to mean what is the system supposed to care about or value, as much as a system can do such a thing.

You listed some options, but of all of them "a holistic view of school quality" comes closest. However, my design would prioritize a holistic view of student, health, well-being, growth and educational achievement. All other priorities are important only insofar as they effect the health and well-being of the child; and the health, well-being and growth are the entire purpose of the school. Period, full stop.

Strong local control. Well-paid, well-supported autonomous teaching staff. Well-maintained physical plant. Broad, well-rounded, developmentally appropriate educational program. Solid funding. These are all important only insofar as they meet the needs of the child.

And since each child and each community present a different constellation of needs, "meeting the needs of the child" will look different from school to school. Any accountability design will have to account for that.

2. Clear (uh-oh) explanation of proposed accountability system that hits each of the following:

a.) Indicator(s) of academic achievement. ESSA requires state accountability systems to include an indicator of academic achievement “as measured by proficiency on the annual assessments.” 

This is not the worst way to measure academic achievement (it still beats "reading frog warts under a full moon"), but the requirement is still the equivalent of saying "indicate basketball skill by measuring height." So my goal here would be to use the Big Standardized Scores in the least possible manner, while using the actual measure of academic achievement-- student grades-- from maybe third or fourth grade up. Giving grades to K-3 students is just silly, but more detailed descriptors of their skills and strengths as well as weaknesses and still-working-on-it areas. The indicators should cover as broad an area as possible; narrowing them to just math and English misses a large part of the important work of an elementary school.

b.) Indicator(s) of student growth or an alternative. ESSA also requires state accountability systems to include “a measure of student growth, if determined appropriate by the State; or another valid and reliable statewide academic indicator that allows for meaningful differentiation in school performance."

Again, the law lacks a convincing argument that its goal (differentiation in school performance) is a worthy one. Also, reliable indicators of student growth are, to date, as elusive as rainbow-maned unicorns (let's not insult anyone's intention by proposing that VAM/VAAS models are useful here-- particularly in the primary grades). My preferred measure-- vertical conferences among the student's teachers by grade, to compare both assessed achievement and narrative accounts of the student. That, plus asking the parents, and the students themselves. All students should grow, and that growth should be marked and documented based on the child's actually progress and achievements, not comparison to some imaginary child in some alternate universe.

c.) Indicator(s) of progress toward English language proficiency. ESSA also requires state accountability systems to measure “progress in achieving English language proficiency, as defined by the State.”

Basic English proficiency testing, over time, accompanied by a portfolio of student work.

d.) Indicator(s) of student success or school quality. ESSA also requires state accountability systems to include “not less than one indicator of school quality or student success that allows for meaningful differentiation in school performance” and that is “valid, reliable, comparable, and statewide.”

At the risk of repeating myself, this is a requirement that states do a good job of hitting the wrong target. "Differentiation" aka "ranking" is actually a terrible way to tell whether schools are getting the job done. Ranking is not measuring. But since this is the open section in which the feds don't tell us what to do, I'm going to say:

* Ask the parents and students how successful they think the school was. Ask the students again over the years after they leave the school.

* Track student success in middle school and high school (provided success is being isefully measured on those levels).

* Happiness quotient. How happy, confident and strong are the students at the school.

e.) Calculating summative school grades. ESSA implies that these various components would be combined (probably via an index) in order to generate overall school grades or ratings. 

"Implies" is not good enough to compel me to do this. There is no value in generating school grades or ranking. None. Any such rating involves reducing a complicated set of variables and elements into a single number or letter that lacks nuance, detail and the sort of richness that parents mean when they ask, "So, are the schools there any good?" Such rating is like asking the zookeeper, "So, which animal in the zoo is the best one?" There is no meaningful answer to the question.

I realize this will probably earn me the Fordham buzzer, but there is precedent for ignoring parts of the law. NCLB, RTTT, and Duncan's Waiverpalooza all contained a requirement that states identify the best teachers, then design and implement a plan for putting the best teachers in the neediest schools. No state ever took any such plan past the Baloney On Paper stage, and no state was so much as scolded for their failure to meet the requirement in any meaningful way. This proves a number of things, not the least of which is that the USED is capable of ignoring the law when it needs to. Let's see how hard USED is willing to push the 95% Testing Or We'll Cut Your Funds threat before we rush to follow their most useless directives.

f.) What about schools with low-performing subgroups?

Every school district in the country already knows what its low-performing subgroups are. Ask them to tell the state. Ask the parents in the district to tell the state.

g.) School grades or ratings. What would you propose by way of “labels” for the school grades/ratings themselves: an A–F scale, or something else?

I would propose the following ratings:

-- Well-supported by the state
-- Adequately supported by the state
-- Not sufficiently supported by the state
-- Level of state support indicates criminal abdication of state responsibility for supporting schools

3. Any recommendations for the Department of Education. Is there anything in your proposed accountability system that is not clearly allowed by the letter of the law? 

I think I've pretty well covered this. I know the Department is concerned that districts (and states) will under-serve certain populations and try to shove their dereliction of duty under the rug. I assert that making sure that parents, teachers and community members all have a strong voice in how their schools are run and in evaluating those schools is the solution to that problem. This does not mean abandoning parents to the continual huckstering of charter operators, and it doesn't mean bringing in high-powered top-down overseers to tell them what they need. Parents by and large know whether their children are being well-served by their local school. School districts know what their needs are and what support they aren't getting from the state. Teachers know what their students need.

Yes, there are levels of complexity and nuance to this-- not all parents are wise and responsible, and not all school districts are well run. But the solution to the problems of democracy has never been less democracy. I would love to discuss all of this in greater detail-- perhaps when you fly me to the Fordham Institute to make my presentation and offer me a thinky tank fellowship. But in the meantime, I'm mindful of this other point from your call for proposals

Proposals should not exceed two thousand words in length. 

Yeah, that's not really my thing.

Best of luck with this competition. I am sure the entries will give us all something to think about.

PS-- I forgot an important point, and I have responses to this already, so if you're not too bored, move on to Part II

Testing Five Year Olds

Well, we can at least thank Bailey Reimer for giving us one more look at how reformsters think, and a chance to confront just how wrong-headed that thinking is.

Reimer is the author of "How Bailey Reinmer's kindergartners came to love testing" (nothing about if they stopped worrying), and the piece in Catalyst Chicago is every bit as bad as you would imagine.

Reimer loves the Test, and her love leads her to say some astonishing things. She loves it, and she opens with the astonishing story of how much her students love it too-- so much that they are sad when they learn they won't be taking one tomorrow. "They love the uninterrupted work time and comparing their new score to their old one." Because, yes, five year olds are famous for their long attention spans and their desire to do seatwork.

Reimer correctly points out that ESSA has cemented the Big Standardized Test into schools, and so her school figures why not just get started practicing with kindergartners (because apparently her charter school is run by people who don't know much about child development). As Reimer tells her story, she throws in this set of non sequitors:

To get to a point where my students appreciate and understand testing, I had to first appreciate it myself. I love tests that give me relevant, timely information about how my students are doing, from how many letter names they know to how many words per minute they read. According to reports by the Annie E. Casey Foundation, children who read proficiently by the end of 3rd grade are four times more likely to graduate from high school.

If you need regular daily testing to tell how your kindergarten students are doing, you do not belong in a kindergarten classroom. And before one cites research, one should be clear on the difference between correlation and causation. However, Reimer might want to check out the research that shows that early "head starts" in learning pretty much disappear within a few years.

But that's not the most astonishing thing she says.

Of course, 5-year-olds don’t come to school automatically loving testing. As educators, it’s our job to build that appreciation and understanding.

No. No no no no no no no no no, no. No, Ms. Reimer, that is most decidedly NOT our job. It is our job to build appreciation and understanding for reading, art, math, running and playing, and learning in general. It is not our job to make them love the test. It is certainly not our job to teach that school is a place we go to take tests and get ready to take tests.

And get ready they do. Reimer also matter-of-factly observes that she "allows" students to spend time on test prep, but, you know, it's fun because they do it on a rainbow rug.

Is she done saying stupid things? Nope. Next she opines about the beauty of her data wall, which features flowers that move up the wall as each student hits a new benchmark.

As our class’s flowers climb up the wall, my students are not just becoming better readers but they are more aware of and interested in their progress. As soon as students see other flowers starting to move up, the most frequently asked question in the room is, “Can we do my test yet?”

It's at this point that we glimpse the real depth of Reimer's cluelessness. Here in her own story we plainly see that her students aren't interested in learning, and they like taking tests because it gets them a reward, because being left behind by their classmates is something five year olds really hate

Reimer finishes as off-base as she began.

As teachers, we have a chance to build a culture around testing that allows students to understand its value and the opportunities that come with it. That way, when it is time to announce an upcoming test, students can look like mine: smiles wide, fully attentive, delighted to show what they can do.

Actually, as teachers, particularly as teachers of very small children who would eat poop and punch themselves in the face if they thought it would win them the approval of the adults in their lives, we have a chance to build a culture around anything we choose. So why not build it around a love of learning. Why not build it around a small child's natural joy and curiosity about life. Why not build it around intrinsic motivation instead of the idea that success will always be defined by other people. Why not build it around play. Why on earth would you build a culture around testing?

Does Reimer seem like an untrained amateur? You will be unsurprised to learn that her background is Teach for America and Teach Plus, she's teaching at a Chicago charter, or that her LinkedIn profile she says, " In the future, I am interested working nonprofits or schools to provide students programming in service learning, literacy or the arts, or working as a leader amongst adults who are creating opportunities for students." So, not trained as a teacher, and not planning a teaching career. Just passing through.

I don't know if Reimer is full of it when she says her students love testing. But there's no reason on earth to report that as if it's a good thing. This is the kind of clueless amateur that reformsterism has set loose in classrooms. May Heaven help our children.

Freedom

MEMO
To: The Little People
From: Your Betters

We can just about taste sweet victory in what we're calling the "teacher freedom" case, and what better name for it? Because it's all about freedom.

Teachers need to be freed from requirements to support the unions (In fact, all pubic workers need freedom from their unions). All across the country, teachers have been begging to work more hours. They yearn for the freedom to be paid as little as employers want to pay them. They long for a manager to grab them in his big strong arms and tell them how it's going to be, without some dumb union jumping in and trying to interrupt with stupid talk of "rules" and  "fairness." (Our little joke here at Betterocracy HQ is that the unions are big Koch-blockers.)

We hear the complaints that this case could end up weakening the unions, and to that we say-- duh! Of course. That's the point. Unions should be weaker, because the whole point of unions is to gather together a bunch of you weak little people and give you as much power as your Betters-- and that is a violation of the proper order of things. If you little people deserved to be powerful, you would be. Unions are a violation of the natural order of things. Forming a union is just cheating, and it saps power away from those of us who are supposed to have it to exercise without Little People getting in our way.

That is why we fight for freedom throughout America. We are trying to free poor people from the tyranny of welfare, because having money infringes on their freedom to be poor. Buying food infringes on their freedom to be hungry. Welfare and other government support are taking away poor people's freedom to experience the consequences of their poverty. We have fought for freedom in "Right To Work" states so that workers can have the freedom to be hired and fired for whatever reason their Betters concoct. We have suspended democratically-elected boards and governing bodies so that people can enjoy the freedom to be led by their Betters without any confusing "voting." And we want to give families the freedom to choose whatever school their Betters decide they deserve.

True freedom comes when you Little People no longer have to jostle and argue with each other, but can simply relax and enjoy the blissful freedom that comes when society is organized and run by those of us who are Better. A truly Free society is one in which the people who have proven their Betterness are free to exercise their judgment, for everybody, without being hindered by the Little People who simply don't know what's best for them. Little People should be weak and voiceless; Betters should be in charge. That's what true freedom is about.

When all of this has settled, you will thank us for putting the nation back in its proper order. You will be grateful that we made it easier to silence the people who don't deserve a voice in politics and policy. You will feel the peace that comes with knowing that all decisions will be made by the people who should make them, and who will so richly and benevolently reward you with pay, job security, and and benefits as They see fit. You will not experience the stress and turmoil that comes from trying to act as if you, collectively or individually, are your Betters equals. Then you will be truly free.

You're welcome,

Your Betters

Ranking Is Not Measuring

This point came up in passing a few days ago when I was reviewing some writing by Mark Garrison,
but it is worth hammering home all by itself.

We have been told repeatedly that we need to take the Big Standardized Tests so that we can hold schools accountable and tell whether our teachers are succeeding or not. "Of course we need accountability systems," the policy makers say. "Don't you want to know how well we're doing?"

And then we rank schools and teachers and students. But ranking is not measuring.

Would you rather be operated on by a top-ranking surgeon or one who was the bottom of his class? What if the former is the top graduate of Bob's Backyard School of Surgical Stuff and the latter is the bottom of Harvard Medical School? Would you like homework help from the dumbest person in MENSA or the smartest person in a 6th grade remedial class? And does that prompt you to ask what we even mean by "dumb" or "smart"?

"But hey," you may reply. "If I'm going to rank people by a particular quality, I have to measure that quality, don't I?"

Of course not. You can find the tallest student in a classroom without measuring any of them. You can find the heaviest box of rocks by using a scale that doesn't ever tell you how much they weigh. Ranking requires no actual measurement at all.

Not only that, but when we are forced to measure, ranking encourages us to do it badly. Many qualities or characteristics would best be described or measured with a many-dimensional matrix with a dozen different axes. But to rank-- we have to reduce complex multidimensional measurement to something that can be measured with a single-edged stick.

Who is most attractive-- Jon Hamm, Ryan Gosling, or George Clooney? It's an impossible question because it involves so many factors, from hair style to age to wry wit vs. full-on silliness all piled on top of, "Attractive to whom, exactly?" We can reduce all of those factors and  measure each one independently, and that might create some sort of qualitative measure of attractiveness, but it would be so complicated that we'd have to chart it on some sort of multi-matrix omni-dimensional graphy thing, and THAT would make it impossible to rank the three gentlemen. No, in order to rank them we would either have to settle on some single measurement that we use as a proxy for all the rest, or some bastard offspring created by mashing all the measures together. This results in a ranking that doesn't reflect any kind of real measurement of anything, ultimately both meaningless and unconvincing (the ladies of the George Clooney fan club will not change allegiance because some data-driven list contradicts what they already know in their hearts).

In fact, when we create the bastardized mashup measurement, we're really creating a completely new quality. We can call it the Handsomeness Quotient, but we might as well call Shmerglishness.

So let's go back to "smart," a word that is both as universally used and as thoroughly vague as "good" or "stuff." Smartitude is a complex of factors, some of which exist not as qualities but as relationships between the smart-holder and the immediate environment (I'm pretty smart in a library, average under a car hood, and stupid on a basketball court). Measuring smart is complicated and difficult and multi-dimensional.

But then in the ed biz we're going to fold that quality into a broader domain that we'll call "student achievement" and now we are talking about describing the constellation of skills and abilities and aptitudes and knowledge for an individual human being, and to rank requires to use a single-axis shmerglishness number.

We could go on and on about the many examples of how complex systems cannot be reduced to simple measures, but I want to go back and underline that main idea--

Ranking is not measuring. In fact, ranking often works directly against measuring. As long as our accountability systems focus on ranking students, teachers, and schools, they will not tell us how well the education system is actually working.

DFER: Trust Clinton To Betray Unions

In his semi-regular email to supporters, allies, and hate-readers, Whitney Tilson led one item with this subheading:

Hillary (and Bill) have a long history of breaking with the teachers’ unions, which bodes well: 

Tilson is a leading light of DFER (Democrats for Education Reform), a group of faux Democrat, hedge fundy, union-hating, privateering reformsters. These are exactly the people who love Clinton when she's getting all Wall Street warm and corporate cozy, but who become alarmed when she starts talking crazy, like suggesting that charter schools don't actually serve all students.

But in his email, Tilson wants to re-assure everyone that Clinton can be counted on to break with unions just as soon as she's elected. Here are his historical supports:

…after Bill got elected governor four years later, many of his early boosters from labor felt betrayed. Specifically, the teachers unions were infuriated over the couple’s advocacy of an education reform proposal that mandated teacher testing. The National Education Association and its Arkansas affiliate worked against the Clintons after they backed the measure in 1983.
— Hillary’s first significant public role was heading an education commission for Bill, a precursor to her role as health care czar in his first term. The efforts she supported were heartily endorsed by the business community, including a dark-money nonprofit group funded by WalMart founder Sam Walton. (Tom and Matea Gold explored this in part one of their story on the Clinton money machine yesterday, which you can read here.)
— Hillary was booed by teachers when she showed up at education forums as Arkansas First Lady to pitch her proposal. “I believe the governor’s teacher testing bill has done inestimable damage to the Arkansas teaching profession and to the image of this state,” Peggy Nabors, the president of the Arkansas Education Assn, wrote in a 1983 letter to her members. She called it “a radical departure from what educators or the makers of standardized test themselves believe is appropriate or fair.” She added that the proposal “represents the final indignity” and closed by urging teachers to “make a contribution to political candidates who will support a more progressive education program.”

Lots of folks have suggested that Clinton can be trusted just about as far as you can throw the giant pile of money that Wall Street and corporate interests have invested in her. And I am one of them-- from where I sit, Clinton isn't any better for education than Jeb! unless you prefer to be smiled at while you're being gutted.

But it certainly tells us something about where we are and who she is that a group like DFER is out there re-assuring the money men that Clinton can be trusted to "break with" the teachers' unions, as if that's a basis for endorsing her. God, but 2016 is going to be a long year in politics.

ICYMI: Edu-reading from the week

This isn't everything there is to read out there, but it's a damn fine sampling of worthwhile stuff.

PA Budget or Hell Freezing Over-- Which Will Come First

Pennsylvania may become the first state to ever lap itself in the budget process. Okay, this is actually just me, writing in this case for NEA's Education Votes website not because I've suddenly developed a love for NEA's political choices, but because I support any attempt by NEA to A) join the late twentieth century and B) include a variety of voices. For the record, they don't pay me, so I still do not qualify as a full-fledged union stooge.

An Open Letter to Janelle Monae : TFA's cultural appropriation

It is hard not to love someone who writes under the name Walter Crunkite. This open letter (to one of the more awesome and underappreciated artists out there) does a great job of addressing the problems of TFA.

Detroit Schools Plan Shows Lack of faith in Democracy

The Detroit Free Press gets exactly to the heart of what is so wrong with the sort of school takeover that so many urban systems are seeing.

Return to Teachers' Village (Part IV)

Begun back in December, Jersey Jazzman has been unrolling an impressive and well-researched look at New Jersey's plan to create its own little educational oasis, and why it all went South. This installment puts a cap on the story, as well as including links to the first three installments.

An Open Letter to Darrell Earley

It would have been easy to miss this gem tucked away in facebook. Here's a teacher's response to one more boneheaded state official.

The Joyful Illiterate Kindergartners of Finland

Not a new piece, and references many pieces that are also not new, but the perspective of an American teacher in Finland makes this special.

All I Really Need To Know I (Should Have) Learned in Kindergarten 

You may remember Emily Kaplan as the Boston-area teacher who wrote a guest post here that gave a gut-wrenching look inside a No Excuses school. She's back this week at Edushyster (connecting those two near-neighbors will stand as one of my more useful accomplishments) with another must read post about pushing young kids too hard.

Reformy Myth Busting: 2016 Edition

Jersey Jazzman again, swatting down some of the currently-favored reformster talking points.

Gaslighting and Turnaround Schools 

You've probably caught this must-read piece from must-read bloggist Peg with Pen, but on the off-chance you missed it, here is a brave, bold take-- from inside a turnaround school-- at how deliberately crazy-making the process is.