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February 24, 2012

As ratings near, a teacher reiterates what test scores don’t say

by Philissa Cramer, at 10:10 am

In October 2010, when the city first said it would fulfill a Freedom of Information Law request and release individual teachers’ ratings to news organizations, teachers started buzzing about what the scores would mean — and what they wouldn’t.

One of them was Stephen Lazar, a high school teacher, who listed 18 elements of teaching and learning in his classroom that his students’ state tests didn’t take into account. The list appeared in the GothamSchools Community section at the time.

This week, Lazar re-posted the piece on his personal blog, Outside the Cave, and added a note expressing astonishment that news organizations would be going ahead with publishing the scores alongside teachers’ names. (Lazar is part of an informal advisory group for GothamSchools but was not consulted on our decision not to publish individual teachers’ ratings.)

Lazar was discussing his students’ exam scores and not the kind of “value-added” measure contained in the Teacher Data Reports that tries to show students’ growth compared to their expected growth. Also, Lazar’s students took Regents exams, not the grades 3-8 state tests factored into the ratings being released today. Still, his list provides a useful reminder about the limitations of using test scores as a single measure of teacher quality on a day when New Yorkers are likely to be tempted to do just that.

Here’s an excerpt:

  • [Test scores] don’t tell you that that I spent six weeks in the middle of the year teaching my students how to do college-level research. I estimate this costs my students an average of 5-10 points on the Regents exam.
  • They don’t tell you that when you ask my students who are now in college why they are succeeding when most of their urban public school peers are dropping out, they name that research project as one of their top three reasons nearly every time.
  • They don’t tell you which of my students had a home and a healthy meal the night before the test.
  • They don’t tell you that 20 percent of our seniors come to me every year for letters of recommendation because they feel they did their best work in my class.

Read Lazar’s entire list from 2010, then check out his 2012 update. And feel free to suggest additional entries in the comments section.

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  • Larry Littlefield

    They can cut the value of pensions for future teachers to less than zero, but it won’t change the fact that the schools are re-doomed for a generation due to past retroactive enhancements for existing teachers.

    They can put through all kinds of complicated rating systems, but it won’t change the fact that the schools are re-doomed for a generation due to past retroactive enhancements for existing teachers.

    They can close and re-open schools, but it won’t change the fact that the schools are re-doomed for a generation due to past retroactive enhancements for existing teachers.
    They can release the names of lower rated teachers, but it won’t change the fact that the schools are re-doomed for a generation due to past retroactive enhancements for existing teachers.

    As best as I can tell, a lot of this is nothing more than political retaliation for the fact that the UFT took all the extra money New Yorkers have paid for schools and provided nothing in return.  Retaliation is all that is possible, but retaliation in this way both covers up the real source of the damage and provides false hope.

  • Celia Oyler

    Thanks, Gotham Schools for not publishing the flawed data reports. I took up Leonie Haimson, from Class Size Matters, suggestion and have donated to you and Inside Schools as a concrete way to say “Thank you.” 

  • Guest

    Boy, you are a dog with a bone.  

    Get over it and move on.  

    No one cares.

  • Nychistoryteacher

    Larry,You
    often point to teacher pensions as an unfair
    burden for tax payers. I don’t understand why you are ignoring the true burden on tax payers – the lowest top
    marginal income tax rate and lowest capital gains tax rate in modern history.
    To make up for the reduced contributions from the wealthiest Americans,
    middle class tax payers have had to contribute more. Is our
    state really losing money because teachers are living a life of luxury,
    or is the real issue that wealth in our country has been redistributed
    to the richest 1% of Americans at an alarming rate?

     

  • Flerplunk

    No one here, probably.

  • NUFF SAID

    I wonder what Cuomos reaction to the data will be knowing the margin of error is astronomical and comical? He may have signed on the reform bandwagon a wee bit early–you think?—and now he must justify the indefensible—fun!

  • Larry Littlefield

    You are talking about the federal level, and yes, the 1 percent has ruled teh federal government and not paid its fair share.

    But who rules New York State.  The other oligarchy.  We have the highest state and local tax burden as share of personal income in the U.S.  Taxes have been increased. And yet services are cut.
     
    “You often point to teacher pensions as an unfair burden for tax payers.”
     
    It wasn’t an unfair burden when those now in or near retirement were hired.  It was more than most people get, but fine, that was the deal that was signed up for.  But retroactively enriching those pensions, lying and saying the cost was zero, allowing the pension funds to get deep in the hole, then slashing services and sticking it to new hires, was wrong, and irrevocable.
     
    And ever since then, there has been this nasty battle between the UFT and the city, which this is a part of.  One nasty battle after another.  I believe the battle has been a sideshow, which cannot and will not help. But there is nothing that can be done about the real source of the damage.

  • NUFF SAID

    ps: 4 pm and still no data for the public–just as predicted-imagine that!

  • Larry Littlefield

    Moreover, what is the purpose of all this?  In a sane world, teachers who aren’t doing a good job would be asked to move on, not faced with a public humiliation.  Management 101 says you don’t criticize subordinates in front of co-workers, let alone do so publicly.

    It’s about making the parents with kids stuck with teachers identified as low performance mad at the union.  But not for the thing that they ought to be mad at the union about, because everyone was in on that.  It is about managing the blame for the inevitable.

  • Flerplunk

    Retiree: “Oh, you have less money for the classroom than you did last year?  Go tell it to the 1%.  But first pay me.”

    Larry: There’s also the issue of healthcare expenses, which to my knowledge have not been retroactively increased, but rather have exploded in line with the general explosion in healthcare costs. This was not a trendline anticipated in the 1960s, I don’t think. And it’s unsustainable, assuming that (contrary to Nychistoryteacher’s wishes) the feds don’t swoop in and pick up the tab.

  • Flerplunk

    I’m picturing a Keystone Cop routine over at the Times and the Daily News.  ”Does anybody know how to use Excel?!” 

  • http://perdidostreetschool.blogspot.com/ reality-based educator

    Unfortunately since the UFT and the NYSUT stood on stage with Cuomo and held his hand while he announced the new teacher evaluation system that makes test scores THE determining factor, Cuomo knows that the unions co-own this near-future mess along with him. 

    I argued that the unions should have framed the eval system as essentially unworkable given the MOE involved in the VAM, spent lots of money to get that message out via the media, then made Cuomo impose his “straight-forward” system himself.  When the public saw how many new standardized tests were going to be added to the school year in order to pull the system off, how large the MOE involved was, how crazy and arbitrary the system is for teachers in untested subjects, how the system was anything BUT straight-forward and scientific, Cuomo would have owned the mess himself.

    Instead the UFT and the NYSUT co-own the mess which is why you have UFT hack Leo Casey attacking Carol Burris, Diane Ravitch, Aaron Pallas and other esteemed critics of the deal as “hysterical”.

    Cuomo will say “Hey, the unions thought it was a good idea!”

  • Tiredofyou

    Over and over again. The sky is falling again and again
    You can’t get over something when you ocd.

  • Larry Littlefield

    Health care is a general problem not specific to New York of public service.  But part of the general problem with it has been unlimited health care at an unlimited cost for those inside the charmed circle, and nothing for those outside.  Obamacare didn’t go far enough, but at least it would do something for the sefs.  We’ll see if it survives.

  • Flerplunk

    My point was just that, as with pensions, each year healthcare expenses, for both current employees and retirees, take up a larger and larger chunk of the budget, leaving less and less money for spending on services (i.e. the classroom).  And as with pensions, the union’s attitude is basically:  ”Pay us what’s ours, then go try to get it back from the 1%.”

  • Guest

     The test results are a JOKE.  The same teacher can be Above average and Below average.  Check them out:  http://www.ny1.com/content/top_stories/156599/now-available–nyc-teacher-performance-data-released-friday#ny1reports

  • NUFF SAID

    true–they all look to be fools

  • Larry Littlefield

    The difference is the health care expenses are not irrevocable. The employees and retirees could be asked to pay more, and costs could be controlled.  The pension deals are irrevocable.

    As for the 1 percent, too bad New York State didn’t pass the $millionaire’s tax.  What, you mean it did?

    The 1 percent have not been earning their excess bucks.  When the excess stops, where will NY be?  They’re cutting bonuses 30 percent this year.  Well, perhaps that gets them half way there.

  • Nychistoryteacher

    @f9b2cb395abd5a101456b3b0a40912e1:disqus

    The combination of state, federal, and local taxes are at a historical low. We would have to go back eighty years to see lower effective tax rates.

    The amount of revenue generated through taxation as a percentage of GDP is the lowest it has ever been and far lower than other industrialized countries. We could acknowledge that and fix a broken tax code, or we could pretend that taxes are the highest they have ever been and demand cuts to public employee pensions.

  • Flerplunk

    “The combination of state, federal, and local taxes are at a historical low.”

    Probably best to give citations for statements about historical tax rates.  This stuff isn’t as simple as we’d like it to be.

  • Michael M. (parent still)

    “Retaliation is all that is possible.”  Wowzers.  So glad all other alternatives have been evaluated and ruled out.

    New Yorkers have been paying plenty, but I dare say it’s not the teachers who have provided nothing in return. And plenty may not be enough.

    As a parent, activist, and CEC member, I see how much teachers put in.  I also see rising class sizes, rampant school overcrowding, co-location fights, increasing over-reliance on testing, and endless data cooking from DOE — today’s data (too complimentary a term for this random info) release being just the latest insult to reason, fairness, and accountability, let alone scientific analysis or productive policy.

    The Campaign for Fiscal Equity lawsuit “victory” — which the city appealed for roughly a decade — did not result in either the state or city providing the adequate or targeted funds necessary to ensure a “sound, basic, education.”  The UFT and talk of “retaliation” have nothing to do with it.

  • Flerplunk

    http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/omb/budget/fy2013/assets/hist01z3.xls

    OMB figures show that federal tax receipts as a percentage of GDP are more or less where they’ve been for the past 70 years. Given that state and local taxes — not to mention sales taxes, property taxes, sin taxes, lotteries, etc. — have risen significantly over that period, I’m having a hard time validating your statement.  But like I said, this stuff isn’t simple, this is just the first source I was able to google up without spending more than a couple minutes.

  • Flerplunk

    Leaving the state aside — what would I find if I graphed city pension and healthcare expenditures from the date of the C4E decision through today?  Might that have any relationship with how much funding the city has been able to provide for “sound, basic, educations”?  Assume for argument’s sake that how much the city spends has an impact on how much it can spend on other things.

    For all the hard work that Leonie H. does on this topic, her dogged refusal to even ACKNOWLEDGE this factor makes it difficult for me to take her seriously. 

  • Michael M. (parent still)

    Flerp,
    If there is a zero-sum game afoot, who says it has to be so all within the school budget, albeit a big third of the total city budget?

    And why leave the state out of it?  SED was complicit in the city redirecting Contract for Excellence funds to non-earmarked general uses, which were NOT pension-related.

    And if indeed you’re a parent, SHAME on you for knocking Leonie Haimson.  When you’ve done a smidgeon as much for NYC kids as she has, drop me a line.

    Children have needs.  Adults setting budgets need to meet those needs.  This administration has had a decade to meet those needs, and fulfill its promises to significantly raise performance levels.  Maybe a fourth term and some more privatization…

  • Michael M. (parent still)

    Oh Flerp, what’s so hard about Googling up the top marginal tax bracket?  Can we get back to WWII to JFK?  North of 80%!

    Oh my, just look at 1932 – 1986!
    http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/taxfacts/displayafact.cfm?Docid=213

    Or how about the split between personal and corporate taxes, as a percent of federal revenue: 
    1955: Income+Payroll 58%, Corporate 27%
    2010: Income+Payroll 82%, Corporate 9%
    As a percent of GDP, the individual percent is going up, from 9% to 12% over that period, while the corporate percent couldn’t get much lower, dropping from 4% to 1%.
    (Yeah, the same 13% combined.  But fairness is out the window.)
    http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2011/04/corporate-tax-rates-then-and-now/

  • Chom

    If the teacher scores are published, the student scores should also be published.

  • Flerplunk

    Michael — nothing’s hard about doing that.  It’s the easiest thing to do, which is why it’s a very popular talking point for people who don’t want to get into the dirty business of investigating how tax brackets have actually intersected with marginal income over the years. Suffice it to say that comparing top marginal rates is not very informative.  (The top marginal income bracket from the 40s kicked in so high that it applied to very, very few people.)  That’s not to say it’s meaningless.  It’s important and interesting and, along with tax policy in general,  should be discussed–just, based on every indication I”ve seen, not by anyone on this site (including me). 

    Anyway, Nychistoryteacher was talking about tax revenue as a percentage of GDP. So that’s what I was googling for.

  • Flerplunk

    I take it from your silence that you, too, have no interest in thinking about the fixed expenditure side of the budget.  

    “If there is a zero-sum game afoot, who says it has to be so all within the school budget, albeit a big third of the total city budget?”

    I’m not sure I understand you here.  Are you saying that the city should shift money from other departments to the DOE?  You could make that argument, but you’d have to respond to complaints from the vested interests within those departments and the people who use those services, which would probably include the complaint that the city has spared and even increased the DOE budget at the expense of their budgets for several years running.

    “And why leave the state out of it?  SED was complicit in the city redirecting Contract for Excellence funds to non-earmarked general uses, which were NOT pension-related.”

    I left the state out of it to focus on your assertion that the *city* has not provided sufficient funds to lower class sizes or meet other mandates of C4E.  The state is obviously a huge part of this issue.  That’s why it makes no sense to me to class size increases on the DOE when the state has been cutting its funding.  I left the state out of it because that’s what the state itself has done, because ultimately it is the city that has to pick up the tab when state and federal funding wanes.  If the DOE loses a billion dollars from the state and the feds, and pension and healthcare costs tick up a billion, that’s two billion dollars that the city has to find.   It can’t make billions of dollars materialize out of thin air by just “setting budgets need to meet [children's] needs.”  It needs revenue.  

    I can see how there are plenty of things about the Bloomberg admin’s record that don’t sit well with teachers.  There are plenty that don’t sit well with me.  But to say that Bloomberg has a bad record on funding the DOE is borderline laughable.  Ask the NYPD, the FDNY, or a host of other city agencies how Bloomberg’s underfunded the DOE over his three terms. 

    “And if indeed you’re a parent, SHAME on you for knocking Leonie Haimson. When you’ve done a smidgeon as much for NYC kids as she has, drop me a line.”

    Sigh.  I confess that this a bit of a bizarro world to me.  None of the statements I’ve made on this thread should be remotely controversial among educated people.  I suppose there’s a code among activists that any argument that doesn’t further your goal is your enemy’s argument.  It makes sense, from the perspective of advocacy.  But it bores me.

  • Bearoflittlebrain

    flerp, what is your point, that you’re smarter than a couple public school teachers? mission accomplished, now move on with your life.

  • Larry Littlefield

    Are you aware how much NYC is spending on schools compared with other places?  It used to be low, but now it is sky high.  Spending increased, adjusted for inflation, for the U.S. avg, but it increased far faster for NYC.  I compile this data every year.  FY 2010 data will probably come out in May.  Here is last year’s data.  Print the tables and look at them!

    http://www.r8ny.com/blog/larry_littlefield/census_bureau_fy_2009_education_finance_data_not_anthony_weiner_or_sex.html

    Note the table.  No one wanted to look at the data when I tabulated it — they had other things on their mind.

    And a spreadsheet with trends over time is here.

    http://www.r8ny.com/blog/larry_littlefield/trends_in_nyc_education_finance_same_victims_new_predator_part_1.html

    More discussion here.  Look at the numbers!

    http://www.r8ny.com/blog/larry_littlefield/trends_in_nyc_education_finance_same_victims_new_predator_part_2.html

    What will FY 2010 show?  More of the same for NYC.  The only curiosity is whether there will be a spending drop at the national average level due to recession, after adjustment for inflation.

  • Flerplunk

    “The city spent more than average on school buses and custodians even though a higher than average share of NYC students walk to school.”

    Now $1 billion per year at last count, thanks largely to the city’s longstanding practice of no-bid contract renewals with a union that for most of the last 30 years was controlled by the mob.  Should the city try to rein in these costs by more competitive bidding? No.  Why not?  Because Mitt Romney doesn’t pay enough federal income tax, apparently.

  • Pogue

     Nor does GE and many other mega-companies.

  • Flerplunk

    Exactly.  And therefore, the city should not try to rein in bus contract costs. We’re on the same page and our logic is impeccable. 

  • Tiredofyou

    Larry Little Brain and Flerpi
    Day after day all we hear from both of you are numbers and more numbers. It”s funny both of you take up most of our time with pensions and heath care and the prices of buses and cost of custodians. All of this stuff really has nothing to do with teaching.

    With all of the numbers you both throw around you never said one word about teaching being judged with a standard of error that makes the test not worthy of being used.(numbers game)
    Kids are bused because either they need the bussing or the school they are going to is a distance away.The concept of neighborhood schools is being destroyed by this mayor.
    Not one school employee has gotten a raise in the last three years so where is it their fault?

     I said this once and I’ll say it again you both have a hidden agenda and truthfully with all your numbers and all of your nasty comments there isn’t an educator who reads this who cares what you write.
    You use this site not to be constructive but to deliver your message of nothing. You both deserve each other your message will not change a thing but you have the right to say what you want but nobody is listening. 
    If all this bothers you so why don’t both of you run for public office.
    Larry you tried that once but you didn’t get elected so run again and lets see if your message will get listened to this time.
    Its hard enough these days to be an educator but when everything you have ever done isn’t appreciated you just laugh at people whose only agenda is to get under peoples skin.
    When you perseverate on certain issues day in and day out, its time to find something else to do.
    I know a lawyer and a city planner who need something else to do as they have way to much time on their hands. Any ideas?

  • Vote NO!

     The  Bush  tax cuts  will  expire  on  December  31  of  this  year.  Under  the  current  tax  structure,  top  income  earners  are  paying  about  15%  on  their  income.  There  is  about  47%  of  the  population  which  is  currently  paying  NO  Federal  income  tax.  Whether  Obama  wins  or  loses,  the  Bush  tax  cuts  will  NOT  be  renewed.  Large  sums  of  revenue  should  start  flowing  into  government  coffers,  which  should  alleviate  some  of  the  fiscal  problems  faced  around  the  country.

  • Vote NO!

    I  ask  all  teachers  with  TDRs  with  wide  margin of  errors,  or  with  wide  percentile  differences for   teaching  the  same  subject  to  different  grades,  to  print  them  out.  Take  them  to  work  tomorrow.  Be  ready  to  calmly  defend  yourselves  from  angry,  and  worried  parents.  Explain  to  the  parents  how  the  wide  discrepancies  in scores  from  year  to  year  or  grade  to  grade,  demonstrate  the  unreliability  of  VAM  assessment  for  teachers. Most  parents  are  reasonable  if  you  remain  calm,  and  explain  to,  and  show  them   just  how  bogus  this  form  of  assessment  is.  The  defense  against  VAM  assessment  is  going  to  have  to  be  done ” face  to  face.”  The  politicians,  UFT,  and  the  media  are  NOT  going  to  help  us.

  • H Harris

    Hey.  If I’ve got a kid in one of these schools can I insist on a “high value added teacher” or will he get just a mediocre one?  Will I get to sue for a better seat, or will those go to kids of more influential parents?  Are we going to need a lottery here for class placements, or will the teachers all become so motivated they will all become equal?  Do I want my kid’s teacher to have ONE MORE REASON to focus on test scores and not much else?  I’m beginning to think education policymakers don’t know much about the real world in schools.

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