(no subject)

[barking_iguana]

Intelligent disucssion on rating teachers 

5 hours ago
nels	...and it will get worse. They didn't even touch the tip of the iceberg in the problems with this kind of rating system.  Teachers will more clearly see the problems, most others will not.:(  Here you go:  http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/26/nyregion/in-new-york-teacher-ratings-good-test-scores-arent-always-good-enough.html?hp  At Public School 234 in TriBeCa, where children routinely alight for school from luxury cars, roughly one-third of the teachers? ratings were above average, one-third average and one-third below average.  At Public School 87 on the Upper West Side, where waiting lists for kindergarten spots stretch to stomach-turning lengths, just over half the ratings were above average. The other half were average or below average on measure, based on student test scores.  And at Public School 29 in Cobble Hill, Brooklyn, where young parents move to send their children, four of the teachers? ratings were above average, seven were average and five were below.  The New York City Education Department on Friday released the ratings of some 18,000 teachers in elementary and middle schools based on how much they helped their students succeed on standardized tests. The ratings have high margins of error, are now nearly two years out of date and are based on tests that the state has acknowledged became too predictable and easy to pass over time.  But even with those caveats, the scores still provide the first glimpse to the public of what is going on within individual classrooms in schools. And one of the most striking findings is how much variation there can be even within what are widely considered the city?s best schools, the ones that each September face a crush of eager parents.  At Public School 321 in Park Slope, Brooklyn, for example, 10 teacher ratings were above average, 13 were average and 5 were below. At Public School 89 in TriBeCa, one of six rated math teachers received higher-than-average rankings, a lower rate than in the city as a whole. In many cases, teachers received two career ratings, one for math and one for English.  The principle cause of the wide variation within schools is the methodology of the ratings, which compares teachers with similar student demographics and scores. So for teachers in schools with high-achieving students, good test results are often not good enough, at least by the standards established by the formula.  The data released Friday, for example, showed 73 cases in which teachers whose students produced consistently outstanding test scores ? at or above the 84th percentile citywide ? were nonetheless tagged as below average. The reason? The formula expected even better results, based on the demographics and past performance of the students.  While the formula is only one aspect of teacher evaluations, the system represents a sea change in that teachers of such high-performing students will be held accountable for student improvement even if their students are far from failing.  In one extreme case, the formula assigned an eighth-grade math teacher at the prestigious Anderson School on the Upper West Side the lowest possible rating, a zero, even though her students posted test scores 1.22 standard deviations above the mean ? normally good enough to rank in the 89th percentile. Her problem? The formula expected her high-achieving students to be 1.84 standard deviations higher than the average ? roughly the 97th percentile.  By definition, not all teachers who work with the city?s better-off students can be ?above average,? said Sean Corcoran, an associate professor of educational economics at New York University who has written about the city?s scores, developed through a system called value-added modeling.  ?The value-added measures are controlling for many of these factors,? Mr. Corcoran said, ?so even if you just take the top students in the city, there is going to be a full distribution of teachers working with them, from high scoring to low.?  For parents, seeing the rankings of the teachers they know well can be shocking. Vicki Khan, a parent at Public School 333, the Manhattan School for Children on the Upper West Side, was surprised to see that some of the teachers whom she considers outstanding had poor ratings, including one who routinely sends many of her students to a highly selective middle school. One teacher who was often late and had poor control of the class, she said, did well. ?I?m finding it really interesting because it seems completely wrong,? Ms. Khan said, adding that one of the co-teachers in the sixth grade did not even get a rating, in an apparent mistake.  .Anna Rachmansky, whose son is a fifth grader at P.S. 89 in TriBeCa, was visibly stunned upon discovering that a teacher she held in high regard scored in the 10th percentile in math.  ?I?m very surprised she would get poor in anything,? Ms. Rachmansky said. ?She?s a very strong educator. She individualizes the curriculum.?  Sandra Blackwood, the co-president of the parent teacher association at Public School 41 in Greenwich Village, said she had little confidence that the data would be meaningful, though she felt it was important to look.  ?If it is anything like the school grading system,? she said, ?it will probably be highly arbitrary and not make any sense.?  But even though parents can get a peek inside of school buildings for the first time to see differences among teachers, that does not help if the underlying information is incorrect, Elizabeth Phillips, the principal of P.S. 321, said.  ?What people don?t understand is that they are just not accurate,? she said. ?We are talking about minute differences in test scores that cause a teacher to score in the lowest percentiles,? like a teacher whom she finds great and who scored in the sixth percentile because her students went to a 3.92 average test score from a 3.97, out of a possible 4.  And that is not to mention the teacher who had test scores listed for a year she was out on child care leave, Ms. Phillips said, and the team teacher in a classroom who did not get a report at all.  ?The only way this will have any kind of a positive impact,? she said, ?would be if people see how ridiculous this is and it gives New York State pause about how they are going about teacher evaluation.?  Despite the problems in the data, Dr. Corcoran said he did think the rankings could be useful in conjunction with classroom observations and what a parent already knew about a teacher. ?Even if you don?t learn anything about teachers in the middle, which is most of them,? he said, ?maybe you can see who the standouts are and who are the lowest performers.?  ------------------------------------------------  With the students I have been assigned and the classes I've been assigned to teach them...there is only one result from playing these kind of number games (you sim guys know them well)...I know I will get very low ratings from this kind of system.  I'm 63 so it really doesn't matter to me in the long run because there is no long run left...but, I still care about what is best for kids.  OK, I'm going to toot my own horn (foystein, another out of date saying). I have extra help sessions for kids (mine and those assigned to other teachers) before school on Tuesdays and after school on Wednesdays and Thursdays. I teach Saturday school for 3 hours for our lowest performing students (none of which are mine). Will those factors factor in...of course not. I could go on, but the end result will still play out from who I have been assigned and what I have been assigned to teach them (read some of my previous posts to understand that comment).  An educational leader who has kids as their main concern needs to step forward. This system will drive out good teachers even though the apparent attack is on unions (again, read some of my previous posts to understand that comment).  Thanks for your indulgence.

Comments

[gwendally.livejournal.com]

We have a problem here in Massachusetts that MCAS requires continuous improvement. We're several years in now and really high-achieving teachers are not continuously getting better than 97th percentile and so they are getting low scores.

The metrics were designed by people who don't understand exponents.

[unclejam.livejournal.com]

I would contest that they knew exactly what they were doing, and that the fact that in three to five years even the 'good' teachers would begin looking like they weren't making the necessary gains - in other words, that Public Schools Were Failing - was probably a design feature, not a bug.

By doing this they can then repeat the statements that Unions Are Protecting Failing Teachers and set out to bust them. This will lower the wages and benefits of teachers, and the savings can either be converted into tax reductions for key donor constituencies, or taken as profits by a new charter school.

[barking-iguana.livejournal.com]

Indeed. The original requirements for NCLB said that by a certain date (about now) 100% of students must be at grade level or a school would be deemed failing. That requirement has still not been rescinded. That should tell you all you need to know about the motivations behind the school reform movement, as well as telling you even teachers who dislike aspects of the status quo oppose what is going on to change things.

[unclejam.livejournal.com]

I could see a requirement that the average reading level of the school be grade-level or within a rounding error of it; that makes sense. But I am sure they meant exactly what they said.

[gwendally.livejournal.com]

I have trouble believing that the people imposing NCLB were motivated by an over-arching evil plot involving hundreds with the diabolical plan of ruining education in America.

Never attribute to malice that which can adequately be explained by stupidity.

[eyelessgame.livejournal.com]

What I think you might consider is this: you have a group of people who fundamentally do not believe in public education... some of whom, at the very least, believe that due to the absence of a profit motive and a competitive market, and due to an unspecified but onerous set of "red tape and regulations", public schools are intrinsically inferior to private schools and would remain so.

Some of them, idealistically, believed that the schools could be improved by a ratcheting-up set of standards, with severe penalties for failure to meet the standards, because this provided a motive that is comprehensible to these people; because they did not really understand the mission of schools and teachers, or how they operate, what they need, or what motivates them, it was always certain to fail.

But there are certainly many among them who expected the schools to fail despite this attempt, not because they clearly understand what it would have taken for schools to succeed, but because they are fundamentally hostile to any public project, and will tell you so frankly if you ask.

It is neither pure malice nor pure stupidity, but an alliance between two camps.

[eyelessgame.livejournal.com]

And to emphasize: they do not believe they are ruining education. They believe that education will be better when it's fully privatized, and they recognize that privatizing education is unpopular; they are (some of them) willing to disguise their motives to achieve their goal.

In their minds they are not evil. They are deceptive, but they believe they need to be. They see the public sphere as evil, and they are, they believe, fighting a war to defeat it, in which deception and misdirection are legitimate tools.

[gwendally.livejournal.com]

I am having trouble finding evidence of the malice of which you speak. Your fundamental premise that "they believe education should be fully privatized" is flawed at the outset. Who is the "they" that believes this? I suspect that you are attributing motives to other people that reflect your misunderstanding of their position.

For example, I do not know a single conservative Republican who is against public schools. They are against FEDERAL OVERSIGHT of public schools, but they volunteer for the school committee, they live in towns where they want educated populations (reduces crime, dontcha know, also trains up cogs for the factories).

Leaving a role for private schools cannot be conflated to mean "against public schools" the way I see you doing this.

Anytime anyone asserts their opposition's opinion on things in such simplistic ways - particularly if they are attributing MALICE to those evil-doers - I suspect the writer of being the misinformed one.

[barking-iguana.livejournal.com]

See my response (concurrence) to Tom (unclejam).

[unclejam.livejournal.com]

Also to address PMac's criticism: Leaving aside the fact that most teachers' groups see these rating systems as an attack (which they frankly kind of are), I have heard consensus that the following outline:

* Over some time (cumulative over 3-5 years, to buffer out 'bad' classes or personal disasters)
* Involving multiple metrics, which can include standardized tests (but which should specifically not necessarily and infallibly track IMPROVEMENT, because as has been brought up there, if you are teaching in the 95+% percentile, you are not doing anything wrong) but which should also include peer and supervisor evaluations
* Involving some aspect other than pure automatic judgment or the fiat of the administrator

[freelikebeer.livejournal.com]

Should it be surprising that a merit system will find some group in the middle, then roughly speaking equal fractions of the population on either side of it?

It's a fundamental of position of a labor union that its members are equally, minimally capable. Maybe the union can find a way to assess its teachers in a way that raises that minimal capability. No-action isn't any better than bad action in this case, I think.

[yolen.livejournal.com]

It's a fucking plot! What trash!