DFER Tries To Swing A Primary

We live in interesting times. So many folks are sure they know what "most people" think or "most people" want, but it's hard for anybody to have a clue because the great American industry is the business of trying to sell a particular opinion. Even when the Russians mess with us, their disinformation campaigns focus not on lies about policy (free college will make your hair fall out) so much as on creating impressions of what certain people think (Miners for Trump, faking angry Black internet commenters).

This is also the nature of our elections, where people are (or at least are perceived to be) less interested in who has the best policies and more interested in knowing who's winning.

So if you have a policy that you want to plug, you could try to argue the merits of that policy with a candidate or their staff. But if you want to do something other than just argue the merits, then you argue that the policy is hugely popular and a political winner. And a good tool for that is a poll.

Democrats for Education Reform (DFER) is definitely for reformster ideas, but not all that Democraty. They are one of those groups that is interconnected with many other reform outfits, and who operates on the theory that they should have a seat at the education table because they say they should. Education Reform Now is the advocacy side of the group. And since the advent of Trump, and really, since the groundswell of insistence that the Democratic Party stop backing the privatization of public education, they've been working hard to maintain their clout.

How About A PR Poll?

All of this brings us to DFER/ERN's newly released polling data. Right now all we get is this slick pamphlet of results, put together by Charles Barrone, Dana Laurens, and Nicholas Munyan-Penney. Between the three of them, we find connections to 50CAN, Fordham Institute, Teach for America, and assorted consulting and government jobs.

The poll focuses on Presidential voters and Democratic primary voters, because the target audience here is the field of forty-seven Democratic Presidential hopefuls and their policy staff, plus other lawmakers and lawmaker wannabes. The basic message of this document is "You should support charter schools, because all the cool voters love that stuff."

Put another way, this was not a poll aimed at finding out what's really going on out there-- this is a poll ordered up to help stop the erosion of charter support among Democratic candidates. This becomes particularly clear when we see what they left out of the second of the two surveys.

The data here are softer than fresh play-do. We're actually looking at selected results from two polls (in the case of the second, very carefully selected). The information about these polls is stuck in the endnotes.

First: Do Democrats Love Charters?

In the first (by Bennenson Strategy Group-- more about them later), 1,004 Presidential voters, including 415 Democratic primary voters, were interviewed by phone at the beginning of last June. They were asked to rate their views on "Public Charter Schools," which brings us back to the use by charter schools of the term "public." Charter schools are not public schools; they are private schools funded with public money. But calling them public schools makes them sound less objectionable. In these polls, language is everything. Imagine if, instead, responders had been asked how favorably they viewed using public tax dollars to send select students to private schools.

But respondents were asked to "rate their views" of public [sic] charter schools on a scaler from very favorable to very unfavorable. 50% of the Presidential voters gave charters a "very favorable" or "somewhat favorable" rating; DFER has just combined those two ratings into one category which is yet another way to massage the data so it looks more favorable. Democratic primary voters were 51% unfavorable. So they broke that down further to determine that most of the unfavorable rating comes from White Democrats; this involved breaking the 415 Democratic primary voters into three categories, but we don't have those numbers. Nor do we have a more detailed explanation of the script the pollster followed to get these results. DFER frames its summary as "voters of color were more than twice as likely as White Democrats to hold favorable opinions of public [sic] charter schools."

Second: Cherry-picking the Millennial Data

The second batch of data are pulled from a GenForward survey of 1,910 millennials. There's a full survey covering a bunch of questions that you can find here, but DFER has chosen to just pick a couple of questions for its report. This survey used two sample sources, including both phone and web modes, worked up via the National Opinion Research Center (NORC) at the University of Chicago, and though the DFER write-up touts this as the opinions of "millennial voters," I see nothing in the original survey to indicate that respondents were selected from among those who voted in previous elections (nor could the 18 year old respondents have done so). The full survey, Millennials and Public Education in the United States, is pretty hefty, but DFER has pulled just a single response-- the majority of millennials support charter schools, with citizens of color leading the pack again.

Now, that's an accurate-ish report of the finding in the GenForward survey; that support for charters is mostly "somewhat support," with "strongly support" coming in behind "somewhat oppose." Here are some other findings from the survey that DFER did not choose to include:

* Millennials, across race and ethnicity, name increasing school funding as the most important way to improve public education-- and they rate that over options like school choice, improving teacher training, and hiring more teachers.

* 75% of all millennials believe that paying teachers more would do more to improve public education than creating more charter schools.

* There's also big support for vouchers for low income students to attend private schools, but it still comes in far behind "give schools more funding" as a fix.

* Very few millennials consider "lack of school choice" the biggest challenge facing public education.

* Most millennials give their own education a B.

Third: Back To the "Public" Dodge

Now DFER turns back to Bennenson and some carefully fudged questioning. Those surveyed were asked how high a priority it should be that "families have access to a variety of public school options no matter where they live or how much money they have."

Well, that's a carefully loaded question. First, we've hidden charter schools behind the word "public." And look-- you may disagree with me that charter schools are not public schools, but even if you are among the folks from Betsy DeVos to Governor DeSantis to charter fans on Twitter, at a minimum you ought to accept that the issue is not settled and certainly not settled for the general public. Again-- let's rephrase this as "the government should use your tax dollars to send select students to a private school" and see what the numbers look like.

This is also loaded by the "no matter etc" clause. How many respondents are going to think, "No, I want to say that if you are poor or live in a crappy neighborhood, you ought to have a crappy school." Nor did the pollsters ask a question such as, say, "Which policy choice would most help improve schools in poor neighborhoods."

The other loaded questions include the "importance of expanding charter schools so that every child has a chance to attend a school that meets their needs" which is only a slightly fairer framing than asking about the "importance of expanding charter schools so that every child can have a pony and an x-box." In other words, it's assuming facts not in evidence and making claims for charters while pretending to ask about them. Do charters give every child a chance? Nope. Charter preference for students who have few special needs or who don't speak English as a second language have been oft-noted, and that's before we even get to stuff like the Texas rule that lets a charter refuse to accept any student who has ever been sent to the principal's office.

And the survey also asks if it's important that "public school options include access to charters, magnet and career academies irrespective of zip code or income." Again, this is not compared to any other options and again, the inclusion of zip code and income make it less likely that respondents will say no.

In all cases, the shades of answers (respondents cold rank priority from 1 through 7) are compressed, so we can't see what the nuanced spread is here. Just the highs and lows-- and the mediums have been omitted entirely from the charts. The resulting charts indicate big support for all three propositions, just as they were designed to do.

One More Really Shady Detail

I've been typing "Benneson Strategy Group" because that's how it's listed in the report. Except there appears to be no such group. Instead, lets talk about the Benenson Strategy Group-- a group that is not exactly a polling outfit. Instead, their home page touts their "reputation as a premier consulting and strategic research firm." Also, "We help leaders connect with, persuade and activate the audiences you need to win." They handle "rebranding" and "building reputation" and "strengthening trust."

This is not the Gallup Poll crew here.

The endnote also indicates that Benenson is working "in consultation with 270 Strategies," and those guys are also not pollsters. 270 Strategies is a "progressive digital strategy firm" founded by veterans of both of Barack Obama's campaigns.

So What Can We Learn Here?

Well, DFER will pull all sorts of baloney to try to further the cause of corporate education reform and privatization. This is not news. They would very much like to convince the Dem candidates who are not already on their team (looking at you, Cory Booker) to join up. Also not news.

Is this piece of "research" completely useless? Not entirely. If any of the Democratic nominees fall for this baloney, that will tell me something important about that nominee. A nominee who actually falls for this doesn't deserve my vote, and one who tries to use it as cover can't be trusted. Any legislator who is influenced by this baloney also deserves some extra scrutiny. This report is a big piece of smelly dead bait hanging on a rusty hook; I'm hoping only a few candidates get suckered.

Parenting Is All About Losing

As I've been immersed again in the world of children's music, I'm struck by how much of it is sad. Not "when the bough breaks, the cradle will fall sad," but a kind of melancholic ache behind the music itself.

I think it's the losing.

My wife asked me the other day, "Is it always like this?" We had turned around and had one of those moments when you realize that your baby looks like a small child, an undersized person, but not an infant any more. It's a truly mixed moment emotionally, one part pride and joy at how big your child has grown, and one part sadness and loss because there was an infant just here a moment ago and now that tiniest person is gone forever.

"Yes," I said, and I think back to my older children who are now in their early thirties with children of their own, and I can't even count how many versions of those people have gone by. It's not necessarily all transitions into new versions of themselves, but every step of growth is a step away, a loss of something. You knew everything about them. They lived under your roof and had their own room and you saw them every morning and last thing at night and you were keyed into their every need and then, not in a long slow glide, but in a seemingly endless series if jerks, like tectonic plates snapping past each other, each of those things is lost.

Not that it's all loss and sadness. Every stage of my older children's lives was the best so far, the best until the next new stage revealed itself to be even better. They get stronger and wiser and more terribly beautiful each time. It would never be enough to try to hold them back, to trade the unnatural prolonging of one stage for an unrealized better stage to come. Not that some parents don't panic and try some emotional equivalent of binding their children's legs so they won't learn to walk or run. It never works. Children were born to grow, and grow they will, with or without our help. We can only make the process better or worse, but we can't stop-- only do damage by trying.

This is the season where parents feel it. Some of these changes sneak up quietly, and you never see them coming until you turn around and think, "Good lord, he's like a little man." But some you can see barreling toward you from far away. The Prom. Graduation. The stuff that forces a parent to realize "There are only so many days left with this person, and then she'll be gone, and dammit, she's actually excited about it but please, oh, please God, let me have just a couple more extra days with this person before I lose her."

Mother's Day is tied up in ancient history and churchiness and Civil War stuff. The modern version  became quickly tied up in commercialism to the point that one of its major founders withdrew her support. So I guess it's just fortunate that it lands here in May, when parents are counting down those last days and can use an excuse to say "Come here and actually look at me for a few minutes before you go back to planning your escape."

Teachers go through the cycle of loss, too, but without the burden of having known the students when they were a younger version of themselves. Where a teacher can just be delighted by a students progression, a parent always has to feel that pang, however tiny, of loss. I expect that when I was in the classroom, even with parenting under my belt, I sometimes failed to really appreciate and hear that parent stress, that sometimes I was unthinkingly saying, "Look at how great a job they're doing of leaving you behind. Look at how swiftly you're losing this one!" It's on the not inconsiderable list of ways in which I could have been a bit more sensitive.

I don't want to overstate the case. Good parents are excited and filled with joy to see how great and strong and brave and capable and awesome their children can become, and it is an unspeakably great big warm ball of blasting sunshine to experience your children as grown humans, fully themselves and making their way in the world.

But there is always the losing.

I had to take a break in the middle of writing this to go hold Twin B, who stirred from his nap and needed to be held for a bit while he fell back asleep. My chest and arms are still warm from where he was lying. Some day the little guy who needs me to wrap him up in my arms so he can feel comfortable will be gone, a bigger stronger little guy in his place. That's a great thing, a thing that is as it should be, and the thing that puts a little core of loss in the heart of parenting.

ICYMI: Do You Feel Appreciated Now Edition (5/12)

So, teachers, did this week do it for you? Here are some pieces to read while you bask in the warm glow.

A Bridge Too Far

Wow. Florida Senator Tom Lee (R) is a long time supporter of charters, but during this last round of legislative baloney he stood up to say "enough." Accountabaloney reports some of his speech and it is rough and honest and nobody paid attention, but you should.

Firing Day At A Charter School  

What's it like to teach at a charter? This former charter teacher talks about the ritual of firing day.

Teachers Are the Classroom Experts

Steven Singer on the absence of teacher voices in education coverage.

Teacher Appreciation and Fair Pay

Jan Resseger on what would really make for a good TAW.

How NOT To Evaluate Education Policy

Jersey Jazzman once again provides the invaluable service of explaining clearly why a talking point is baloney. Here he takes on the "four times more likely to attend a successful school" PR.

Who Do I Appreciate? Music Teachers. 

I can't disagree with Nancy Flanagan here.

Florida Teachers: Arming Us Is Most Dangerous Decision Ever

And dumb.

Cyber Charters Aren't Free  

Susan Spicka speaks up for Pennsylvania taxpayers and students    

Thoughts About Reading from a Classroom Veteran

Fewer tests. More reading for pleasure. And stop buying programs. A Florida teacher speaks up.

If Education Advocacy Were More Like Pharmaceutical Ads

Yes, it's the reformy Robert Pondiscio. Read it anyway.

Success Academy Being Sued For Violating Student Privacy 

It's a fairly gobsmacking violation, too. But you know how it is-- rules are for little people.

FBI Investigating Tennessee Voucher Vote 

There was a lot of horse trading done to get the necessary votes. Apparently actually bribing legislators is bad.

Can Choice Save Public Schools Revised 

Well, this is kind of interesting. Deborah Meier looks at her own evolution on the subject of choice.

Policies Harmful for Children of Color 

Wendy Lecker looks at some misguided policies in education reform, including the rise of the school resource officer.

Louisiana's Voucher Program Featured As Failure

The indispensable Mercedes Schneider looks at LA vouchers, recently held up as failures (spoiler alert: they are)

5 DeVos Puzzlers

Valerie Strauss looks at some of the striking things DeVos did-- and didn't-- say at EWA gathering.

Why The Tests Must Be Kept Secret 

Continuing to pursue the mystery of why the Big Standardized Test must be kept shrouded in secrecy.

Knewton Is Gone

John Warner looks at the passing of the big data giant, and we shouldn't throw a party just yet.

Rebranding My Mom

Not an education story, but a great little essay for Mom's Day. What happens when your mom loses her job?      

PA: More Charter Shenanigans in Harrisburg

On May 7, a group of four bills related to charter schools suddenly popped up, referred to the House education committee in the state capitol. Surprise! Let's take a look:

HB 355: 

This bill is supposed to strengthen the "ethical requirements" for charter schools (including cybers). It sets requirements for annual independent financial audits and puts limits on how much money charters can hold in unassigned fund balances (just parked in the bank); public schools also have a limit on fund balances. And there are new requirements for some financial transparency between the charter and the local district.

There are also some advertising limits. For instance, charters can no longer advertise themselves as "free" but must acknowledge that they are paid with taxpayer dollars. There is some language tightening rules  on self-dealing and nepotism and financial disclosures for charter bosses.

Other than a section that deliberately blurs the line between public and charter schools, this is a pretty good bill.

HB 356:

This bill focuses on facilities. It gives charters the right of first refusal for purchase or lease of any unused district facilities. It requires public schools to provide testing locations for charters. And  charters can use religious facilities if they keep the religious stuff covered up or out of sight.

It also allows charters to expand to multiple locations within the authorizing district-- this used to require district approval, but would no longer do so.

HB 357:

This bill is intended to "improve" the chartering process by creating a standard charter application form and "improving" the student enrollment process. It also gives families with multiple students in the same cyber charter to opt out of having multiple computers (because cybers need one more way to make a few more bucks).

The bill lays out some of the specifics that the charter application form should include-- things like how the trustees will be selected and an organizational chart for the school and evidence that the management company has done some work before. But it also makes it clear that local school districts may not fiddle with, alter, or go beyond the state's official form, thereby stripping them of a b it more power over local education and taxation.

And the bill includes a requirement for a standard student application.  The unified application form is usually a red flag.

HB 358:

This bill would allow charters to offer dual enrollment with any college willing to enter into such a deal.

Each of the bills has a group of co-sponsors, though the proposer of record is different for each one. Despite the different names on each of the bills, each bill's memo concludes with this same language:

The reforms embodied in my legislation is part of a legislative package of four bills critical to improving and strengthening our laws related to charter schools, which was groundbreaking upon its enactment in 1997 but has become outdated over time. We must make these reforms now in order to maintain charter, regional charter and cyber charter schools as a strong, quality school choice option for the Commonwealth's children and families.

If that sounds odd, it's because whoever wrote this butchered subject-verb agreement. But don't let that distract you from the assumption that charters are strong, quality schools. Cyber charters in particular are expensive failures, stripping districts of money while producing lousy results.

HB 355 provides some useful reform. The other three bills are an attempt to expand the reach of charters in Pennsylvania.

If you are in PA, you need to speak up-- and quickly. The House education committee will be considering these bills on Monday, 13. Did I mention that they only just turned up three days ago?  So check out the list of members and shoot off an email or even a phone call before Monday 11:30 AM.

Update: All four bills passed the committee vote.

What She Taught Me

I've written about Miss Gause before. She was my elementary school vocal music teacher, and she had a critical effect on me in two major ways.

First, she was fairly relentless in confronting the Monotone Boys I'm-Too-Cool-To-Sing Chorus in the back of the room. She harangued us into listening to pitches and more or less matching them. Now, in my school students took a listening aptitude test in fourth and fifth grade to determine if we were eligible to study an instrument. I flunked in fourth grade and passed in fifth; the difference was Miss Gause. It is not humanly possible to imagine what my life would have been like if I hadn't played an instrument.

Second, she paddled me (it was the sixties). I was in the back of the room performing what I was certain was a hilarious imitation of her conducting technique. She failed to grasp my comic genius, and I received a fairly fierce paddling, there, in front of the class, so that it was painful, and embarrassing, plus I had to keep from showing how much it hurt.

The paddling itself was not terribly influential. But what stuck with me was what came next, which was nothing. She didn't treat me any worse because i had screwed up. I was not forever after branded a Bad Kid. I misbehaved, I received a consequence, and then the incident was over and done. For me, it was the beginning of understanding that "I disagree with you" or "I think you've done wrong" were not synonymous with "I hate you" or "You are a terrible human being."

I carried that into my classroom, and always tried to keep "No, that's wrong" and "I need you to knock that off right now" separate from "You suck" or "I want you to get off the planet." I was pretty explicit about it, too, because I wanted students to be able to hear the difference between assessing the quality of a piece of writing and judging someone's right to take up space on the planet. I think the world would be a better place if we could all approach disagreement without considering it a referendum on a person's right to exist.

So in some fairly important ways, I am who I am because of Miss Gause. And, in retrospect, I think she offers another important lesson of Teacher Appreciation Week.

We all know versions of the Very Heartwarming Story of a Very Special Teacher, the teacher who finds a special connection with a student or sees something in that student that she nourishes and grows, the teacher who goes the extra mile to create a transformative bond with a student.

But I have to tell you this about Miss Gause-- she was not that teacher. We had no special bond. I didn't stay in touch when I went to high school. She didn't send me little notes. While I was in her class, she did her job-- I don't think any extra miles were involved. And yet.

As a teacher, it's easy to measure yourself against those heroic super teachers, like the awesome teachers on tv (who apparently only teach one class a day) who touch hearts and lift lives and just generally make us feel as if we're not quite up to that super standard. And yet.

It's one of the oddities of teaching. Every day that you step into a classroom, something you say or do will have a huge effect on some student. But you will never know ahead of time what it is you're going to do. You may not even recognize it when it's happening; retirement shook loose a lot of old students with "That one time you said X really affected me" stories, and in many cases, I had absolutely no memory of that really important moment that they remember.

If you are teaching, you are literally accomplishing more than you know. Your challenge is to make every moment of every day count. There are certainly moments of high drama and shattering success in teaching, but there is also a steady dailiness to the work that comes with a focus on trees while the forest fades into the background. But if you are a teacher, you are planting that forest, whether you can see its full shape or not. Know that what you do changes things.

Years and years later, I let Miss Gause know some of what she had done for me. If you're a teacher, I hope that this week someone does the same for you. And I hope that everyone does the same for a teacher who mattered.

Knewton, A Big Name in Big Data, Bites The Dust

Adaptive learning. Computer-enhanced psychometrics. Personalized learning via computer. Knewton was going to do it all. Now it's being sold for parts.

Knewton started in 2008, launched by Jose Ferreira. By 2012, Ferreira led the ed tech pack in overpromising that sounded both improbable and creepy. In a Forbes interview piece, Ferreira described Knewton as "what could become the world’s most valuable repository of the ways people learn." Knewton could make this claim because it "builds its software into online classes that watch students’ every move: scores, speed, accuracy, delays, keystrokes, click-streams and drop-offs." How does this work?

Students go at their own pace, and the software continuously adapts to challenge and cajole them to learn based on their individual learning style. As individual students are correlated to the behaviors of thousands of other students, Knewton can make between 5 million and 10 million refinements to its data model every day.

This guy.

You will be unsurprised to learn that founder/CEO Ferreira has no real background in education. He has a BA from Carleton College and an MBA from Harvard Business School. He worked for Kaplan for a few years, then went into the money biz, first as a derivatives trader for Goldman Sachs and later working venture capital for Draper Atlantic. In between he was strategist for the John Kerry campaign; that may be because he's John Kerry's nephew. From venture capital, it was a quick step to Knewton.

It raises one question that I don't have an answer for. Ferreira obviously had nothing to do with the actual creation of the software that was Knewton's heart and soul. Whose work was Knewton? A puzzle for another day.

Ferreira had a gift for the colorful claim. In the Forbes article, we find the suggestion that "it will know what kids will get on the SAT, so they won’t have to take it." When he appeared at the White House's 2012 Datapalooza (the real name of a real thing), he claimed that Knewton would be able to tell students what they should eat for breakfast in order to get a good test score that day. In 2015, he told NPR, "We think of it like a robot tutor in the sky that can semi-read your mind and figure out what your strengths and weaknesses are, down to the percentile." Their adaptive learning technology was going to end up in "every classroom in the country." It would customize educational content "down to the atomic concept level" and would not just be personalized, but "hyper-personalized."

The Knewton story is the story of yet another "innovative,"  "game-changing," "trailblazing," education technodisruptor that was given tons of breathless press-- it was, I kid you not, going to "solve the global education crisis." At Davos, Knewton was going to "take education by storm." Not a single writer or reporter paused for even a second to ask if this weren't all a bunch of bullshit.  (Michael Feldstein caused an online uproar by saying re the NPR piece that Ferreira was selling snake oil.) And the investors lined up to throw money at Knewton. From 2012:

In October Knewton raised $33 million from Pearson and Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund, reportedly at a valuation north of $150 million. The company had already raised $21 million from venture firms such as Accel Partners, Bessemer Venture Partners and First Mark. Says Thiel, an impassioned advocate for shaking up the college model: “We like companies that have breakthrough technologies but not disruptive technologies, which typically don’t work. Knewton tries to make the existing system better with a very powerful tool.”

Knewton partnered with several publishers, most notably the behemoth Pearson, once heavily committed to a digital ocean of learning, but more recently backing away from that sea.

People who actually know education have been unconvinced all along by thee over-promising and underperforming of Big Data and adaptive learning (when you have a few minutes, go ahead and read everything that Audrey Watters ever wrote).  But it has taken a while for thee wind to leave Knewton's sails.

Knewton tried a little side step and set aside its dreams of Big Brothering the world to become a player in higher education. In 2016, Ferreira stepped down, and the new focus became selling digital courseware to the higher ed market. That, apparently, has not worked out for them. The purchase price has not been divulged, but analysts think it's far below the $180 million in venture capital sunk into the company.

So another big time adaptive learning personalized learning company has promised big and failed to deliver.

As for Ferreira, don't worry. After he was out the door at Knewton, he was on to another start-up. He co-founded BakPax with two other guys who have no background in education. Did Ferreira learn anything about making audacious promises you can't back up? Well, here's what BakPax says it's about:

Bakpax reads handwriting and grades assignments for you. It gives you deeper insight into class performance and gives your students immediate feedback.

Sigh. You give the BackPax server your answer key, then you-- or your students-- take a picture of student papers with your phone and BakPax grades it. Right now it's free. At least, I guess, it doesn't pretend it can grade essays. In the meantime, other purveyors of personalized [sic] adaptive data mining learning stuff could learn a lesson from all this-- something about trying to stage an education revolution when you mostly just know about investing and data. They could learn a lesson. I'm betting they won 't.

Maine Dumps Test-Centered Teacher Evaluation

Maine has broken with the status quo of test-centered accountability for teachers.

Beginning with No Child Left Behind, public schools have committed to test-centered accountability, using student results on a single standardized math and reading test to drive assessment of districts, schools and ultimately teachers. For years, the prevailing definition of a good teacher in this country has been one whose students score well on that standardized test.

The problems with this approach are legion. Schools have narrowed their focus and their curriculum to focus on tested subjects. States have developed bizarre assessment systems in which teachers of non-tested subjects might be evaluated based on the test scores of students they never taught. Nor has any convincing evidence ever emerged that raising a student's test scores improves her lot later in life. After a generation, the promised improvement in US education that test-centered accountability was supposed to drive simply hasn't arrived; NAEP scores ("the nation's report card") have not budged significantly in all this time, nor have colleges announced that their freshman classes are now the best they've ever seen. Using standardized test scores to evaluate teachers has not fixed anything, and it has made things worse in many cases by pushing schools to focus on test taking skills instead of a broad and deep education for all students.

Now Maine has taken a step away from this with LD 92 (to see the full affect, look also at the amendments). The bill removes any requirement to base teacher evaluation on test results. Maybe even more importantly, it requires districts to form a committee to regularly review and revise their evaluation process. This may seem like common sense, but teacher evaluation systems are historically taken out of the box and used without any subsequent discussion of how well they are actually working.

Maine's law also requires that a majority of that committee be teachers. Some critics may argue that giving teachers a voice in teacher oversight is a mistake, but I'd argue that aside from parents and students, nobody has a greater interest in improving a struggling teacher than the other teachers who have to work with her.

Teacher evaluation has never been easy. All good teachers do not look the same, and no good teachers are good for all students. Any system must be flexible and nuanced, but the overwhelming pressure exerted by everyone from overworked principals to bureaucrats who want easily-crunched data is for a system that is a simple cut-and-dried checklist. Madeline Hunter and Charlotte Danielson are two big names in teacher instruction models; their work has been debated and argued, but both have been surprised to find it reduced to simple evaluation checklists that have frustrated and angered teachers over the years.

And like all evaluation, teacher evaluation must have a specific purpose. Do you want to find weak teachers and help them get better, or do you want to identify them so you can fire them? Do you want to identify areas of improvement for the entire staff? Do you want to be able to compare teachers within a building, within a system, or within a state? Do you want to identify your exemplary teachers in order to reward them, or in order to enlist them as trainers? Each of these answers changes how the evaluation system is set up, and how teachers will react to it.

All of this means that much of the hard work lies ahead for Maine. That's okay. When challenged on the toxic results and general ineffectiveness of test-centered accountability, testocrats often reply, "Well, then, what do you want to do instead." That's not a legitimate answer. If I collapse on the sidewalk and someone runs up with a chainsaw and yells, "Step aside. I'm going to cut off his legs!" I don't need to have a better treatment to propose in order to know that sidewalk chainsaw amputation should not be happening. Every state should understand that test-centered teacher evaluation is not helpful, actually harmful, and should not be happening. Finding an alternative will not be easy, but getting rid of the toxic, ineffective, test-centered method is a necessary first step. Let the guy with the chainsaw step aside so that a real doctor can get through.

Originally posted at Forbes