The approach that we are taking now will actually hurt students because of the implied insult to teachers when we talk of giving tests to evaluate them. You can be certain that the “best and the brightest” will not accept these conditions unless the country is in dire economic straits.
Until recently I pretended that I wanted my Harvard and Stanford educated sons to become teachers, but now I know that I was being dishonest with myself. The truth is that they never would have considered K-12 teaching, nor would any of their classmates. In fact I was told that Stanford discourages their students from classroom teaching because “we educate leaders” or something along those lines. I don’t know if that is true or not but it has the ring of authenticity. “Holding teachers accountable” might impress many citizens but people in education should know that to get and keep quality teachers you have to pay them, provide good working conditions (yes, teachers, like central office people, like air conditioning) and professional autonomy. Teachers do make a huge difference but you aren’t going to attract them with threats, tests or insults.

One more thing: All (and I mean 100%) of the highly educated women I know are entering the fields of medicine, law, business and university teaching. Once the baby boomers retire, there will no longer be the captive group of talented women to fill our nation’s classrooms. I say GOOD because that might be the best thing to happen to K-12 education. Any district that wants experienced and highly qualified teachers will have to pay them and treat them with respect. At that time, we MIGHT see improved learning in our schools.

Until one studies the “value added” calculation, one cannot simply say, “teach where the scores are high.” The proposed formula puports to measure value added — not just test scores — or I’d agree immediately.

One of the problems with DOE’s School Progress Report Cards MIGHT be repeated here: misguided notions of how to measure “progress” might be echoed in how to measure “value-added.”

If Teacher A teaches in Affluent School, where kids score at 85th percentile, year after year, what value has the teacher added? 85 – 85 = net zero.

If Teacher B teaches at Impovershed School, where kids score at 10th percentile one year, but say 30th percentile next year, for a net increase of 20 percentile points, is Teacher B a better teacher?

Which teacher kept his or her kids 35 points above the mean? Which teacher didn’t even have 20 points of “headroom” over 85?

What might the results be if Teachers A and B switched places for year 3? Who knows. So why make a pay differential that falsely rewards for value-added. And I haven’t even looped back on socio-economic or family variable or variables outside the teacher’s control yet.

P.S. Is the Chancellor’s pay dependent on how his system educates kids? Just a thought. Cheers.

My advice to new teachers: Appy only in districts with high test scores. If you can’t get a job in one of these schools, apply to be a substitute until there is an opening. To veteran teachers: Apply for a transfer to an affluent school in your district. If this is not possible, gather as much evidence of student achievement in the fall (tape recordings, tests, compositions etc.) and get other teachers to observe your students. In the spring, give your own evaluations to show progress. This evidence can be used to counter the results of standardized testing, which may or may not represent growth made by your students during the year. Yes, I want poor children to have the best possible teachers but not until these dedicated professionals are assured of fair evaluations.

And that’s assuming, of course, that the tests measure all of the value the teacher has added to each student’s educational growth, wholistically (sic) speaking.

Excuse me, but I’ve already gotten off the bus.

P.S. What of a teacher who might nominally provide more “added value” to some types of students than others? Will THAT be disaggregated?

The problem right now is that this test is too narrow and that too many educators are resorting to horrific instruction and drill. However, teaching wholistically is not going to work either. This new system requires a mix of teaching wholistically while targeting specific skills in context. This is hard and not enough people are doing it. The way out of this problem is national standards, radical innovation of the assessments so that they also measure skills in context and wholistically.

Below I have linked to a fantastic explanation of the past and the possibilities for innovating assessment.

We need to figure out how to create assessments that we can teach to that will actually push our instruciton to higher levels and not short change our students. http://www.educationsector.org/media/media_show.htm?doc_id=830339

I say you should post it, Elizabeth; and let them try to sue you.

Transparency rules!

Aren’t we ALL reporters?

Click hyperlink for another treat.

1) http://www.timeoutfromtesting.org/

2) Click hyperlink for a related treat.

This is an admission on DOE’s part that the larger the class, the less a teacher is expected to raise student achievement. All the other factors in the model pertain to characteristics of the students themselves, such as economic status, prior test scores, absences, etc.

I discuss this on the parent blog here: http://nycpublicschoolparents.blogspot.com/2009/02/bloomberg-administration-blames-parents.html

Unfortunately, the class size data is extremely unreliable at the middle shcool and esp. the HS level, so that the class size factor used to help evaluate a teacher’s effectiveness will likely be inaccurate, and thus the information yielded by these reports wrong.

DOE hasn’t put a penny into improving the accuracy of its class size data, which still counts both CTT classes in HS as two separate classes; also they use HS data as late in the year as possible, in order to take credit for the thousands of kids who drop out between Sept. and January.