New York releases teacher ratings today, but cautions against drawing conclusions. Then, why release them?
After bitter legal battles, criticisms by researchers and protests by teachers, New York City released performance rankings of 18,000 teachers today.
And the condemnation was immediate.
“It is outrageous that the New York City Department of Education is releasing teacher rankings that, by their own admission, are based on bad, unreliable data,” said American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten. “Publicizing this data reneges on a deal I made with former Chancellor Joel Klein years ago that it would only be available to teachers and their supervisors for purposes of improving instruction. Today’s release amounts to a public flogging of teachers based on faulty data.
“Instead of working with teachers to develop and implement an evaluation system that assesses teachers based on multiple criteria and helps them improve, Mayor Michael Bloomberg and the city’s education officials preferred to publicly ridicule teachers,” she said.
The release was accompanied by a caveat from the district to not use the scores alone to judge teachers, which I find strange as what else would parents be expected to do with the data? The rationale for releasing teacher grades or ratings is to better inform parents which teacher are effective and which are not, according to proponents.
New York was ordered to release its data because a court ruled the teacher ratings, which had been collected and used internally, were public documents.
The push to release the individual rankings began in August 2010, when New York City education officials contacted the reporters who most closely cover the city’s public schools and encouraged them to submit Freedom of Information Act requests for the teachers’ rankings. Until then, the city had refused to release the names with the rankings, citing issues of privacy.
On the eve of the rankings’ release, the teachers’ union filed a lawsuit. The city has acknowledged the reports are not perfect, but one of the judges who ruled on the case as it made its way to the state’s highest court said imperfection was no reason to hide them. Last week, after the union lost its last appeal, the city announced the rankings’ release.
“City officials are disingenuously telling parents, reporters, principals, teachers and others that they shouldn’t draw conclusions based on these scores alone,” said Weingarten. “But who wouldn’t, when they have nothing else to use?”
According to the New York Times: (Please link and read the entire story before commenting.)
At a briefing on Friday morning, an Education Department official said that over the five years, 521 teachers were rated in the bottom 5 percent for two or more years, and 696 were repeatedly in the top 5 percent. But citing both the wide margin of error — on average, a teacher’s math score could be 35 percentage points off, or 53 points on the English exam — as well as the limited sample size — some teachers are being judged on as few as 10 students — city education officials said their confidence in the data varied widely from case to case.
“The purpose of these reports is not to look at any individual score in isolation ever,” said the Education Department’s chief academic officer, Shael Polakow-Suransky. “No principal would ever make a decision on this score alone and we would never invite anyone — parents, reporters, principals, teachers — to draw a conclusion based on this score alone.”
Nevertheless, the data is ripe for analysis. One fact shared by the Education Department: Many of the teachers included in the database are no longer working in city schools. Officials said 77 percent of the 18,000 who received reports were still employed by the Education Department, but of those who remained, many had moved on to administrative jobs or teach subject areas or grade levels that were not included in the reports.
For example, the teacher who was rated most highly, based on his scores for the 2009-10 school year, is now an assistant principal at another school, according to his online profile. His rating encompassed only one year of data and was based on 32 students’ test scores.
–From Maureen Downey, for the AJC Get Schooled blog
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109 comments Add your comment
bootney farnsworth
February 25th, 2012
4:02 pm
saddly, I’ve reached a point where I just no longer care. I’m gonna do the math on how long til I can retire, shut down and coast.
and if I can find something else to do between now and then, I’m outta here.
I can’t care more than parents, “administrators”, and those idiots down at the dome do.
to use a oft quoted line, I’m sick and tired of being sick and tired.
chronologically gifted
February 25th, 2012
4:03 pm
From The New York Times [Opinion Pages], Tuesday, February 22, 2012. See http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/23/opinion/for-teachers-shame-is-no-solution.html?_r=1
Shame Is Not the Solution
By Bill Gates
LAST week, the New York State Court of Appeals ruled that teachers’ individual performance assessments could be made public. I have no opinion on the ruling as a matter of law, but as a harbinger of education policy in the United States, it is a big mistake….
Mildred
February 25th, 2012
4:14 pm
Why aren’t they testing the educational administrators and making THAT public?
Shar
February 25th, 2012
4:16 pm
I understand and sympathize with all of the points being made on this subject from those who believe that the data is unreliable and therefore should not be released.
However, I am torn on this issue. Randi Weingarten and her union – an extremely strong one in union-heavy NYC – have been obdurate, unreasonable and unyielding on the issue of teacher competence. For years she has bitterly and personally denounced parent representatives and School Board personnel who have sought to have teachers dismissed for actual crimes in the classroom, she has threatened, and authorized, strikes when accountability measures were threatened, she has protected every teacher in the system without regard to any performance problems or outright failures. Her intransigence has made points for her within her union but it has kept many teachers in the classroom who were not effective in delivering education to students or value to taxpayers, all without consequence.
This data, squirrelly as it is, will provide parents with evidence they can use to avoid teachers who have rock-bottom scores, and parental avoidance is one area that Weingarten, for all her strident entitlement, cannot push back on. No principal would solely assess a teacher on one year of iffy data, but equally, no principal would ignore it either. Principals assign students to particular teachers do so on the basis of a mix of considerations and I believe that parents who are concerned about their child’s placement are willing to listen to a principal’s placement rationale and adopt a wait and see attitude, probably with more attention than they would have paid without seeing the scores.
It will make more work for principals and will likely make more teachers feel vulnerable, but in the long run exposing teachers who are far outside of the norm and making parents more alert to student problems may turn out to be a good thing. In the final analysis, parent satisfaction with their child’s teacher is completely dependent on their own experience, not on data or someone else’s point of view. If teacher ratings do not reflect parental satisfaction, perhaps this situation could even lead to a better method of rating.
AlreadySheared
February 25th, 2012
4:18 pm
The phrase “pushing on a string” comes to mind. On one hand, a large proportion of new teachers (1/3? 1/2?) are gone within 5 years of starting to teach. On the other hand, there is a large cohort of older americans aging out of the workforce – the first baby boomers turn 66 this year.
So yes, if there was a large group of prospective teachers just WAITING for open positions, then shaming/embarassing/undermining the bottom 20% or so of current teachers might allow for some ‘creative destruction’ and make room for ‘new blood’. But honestly, who on earth is going to step into these vacated jobs with tough working conditions and low pay?
Playing games that are feasible during the ‘great recession’ might make things incredibly tough once our long economic night ends.
Realist
February 25th, 2012
4:23 pm
Yep, it makes no sense other than to shut down teachers and public education. I’m sick of the teacher bashing and thinking this NY thing had more to do with positioning against the teacher unions than any other reason. I wonder if teachers who are wrongly affected would have legal discourse? Liable? What disclaimers? Oh well, I didn’t take time to read the NYT article.
Ron F.
February 25th, 2012
4:46 pm
” but in the long run exposing teachers who are far outside of the norm and making parents more alert to student problems may turn out to be a good thing.”
Shar: While I see your point, think about this. The teachers you’re referring to, trust me, are known. For a long time, they could hide behind tenure laws and keep a job. That just isn’t as easy anymore, and I find that more and more school systems are pushing prinicpals to identify and deal with these teachers. While I think these numbers may reveal a few truly “bad” teachers, the unfortunate fact is a lot of relevant information is overlooked. I purposely teach the low-achieving kids. I love working with struggling learners and helping them grow. I regularly see major gains in reading levels, but kids who are 3,4, or sometimes more years below “grade level” can’t grow that much in a year. They seldom reach grade level in one year, and generally don’t perform well on grade level standardized tests. My numbers would stink, but I’m choosing, because of my passion for them, to work with groups of kids who learn slower, learn differently, and who don’t care about bubble sheet tests. And I spend precious class hours teaching the language of the test and all the guessing strategies that in the end won’t help my kids gain any of the educational ground they’re missing. But I do it in the hopes that the test score numbers will look better. Would the numbers themselves be relevant data? Of course not- but parents reading a list in the local paper probably wouldn’t know, as Paul Harvey used to say, “the rest of the story.” I’m all for ferretting out the bad teachers and having tools to use to either get them better or get them out. But is it worth the damage it will do to teachers like me who choose to work with the kids who don’t score well?
Ron F.
February 25th, 2012
4:50 pm
bootney: @4:02- I feel your pain, and I have to admit I’ve been on the TRS website to see what 25 years vs. 30 does to my pension. I love teaching, and even if I retired, I’d still be doing something along those lines. I’m waiting to see what the next couple of years hold before I make a decision. The fact that retiring or leaving the profession crosses my mind worries me. It’s not where I expected to be at any point in my career- I love teaching, but…
The facts are teachers won't lose jobs
February 25th, 2012
5:36 pm
The facts are that even when teachers are identified as being at the bottom of the lists, they won’t be fired. it takes years and mountains of evidence and public outrage for a teacher to lose their job. Just look at the monster who fed sperm to kids — he is still getting his pension.
As other evidemce read the post from the teacher who says he or she is sick and tired of being sick adn tired and plans to “shut down and coast” until retirement.
Shut down and coast…for years.
How many of us oculd shut down for a week without losing our jobs? even when we work hard and are beyond reproach, we in the private sector, those non-government employees lose our jobs for no fault of our own and we never had a pension to start with.
the truth is bad teachers will continue to be on the payroll just as the 178 teachers who cheated are still on the payroll…6.2 million dollars later.
It takes a tsunami worth of motion to rid the system of a bad teacher or bad government employee and that is a tragedy.
Good Mother
Shar
February 25th, 2012
5:43 pm
Ron F and others: I completely understand your position, and I agree that being publicly judged by data that could well be either A: Wrong and/or B: Irrelevant is more than frustrating. However, I also know the frustration of a parent and taxpayer watching helplessly as a child, with one and only one shot at an education, is put in a class with a crappy, disinterested or plain lazy teacher.
Shutting parents out of the system or trying to do so by starving them of information is counterproductive, just as hounding teachers to ‘do more with less’, to somehow make up for parental failures and/or to reach irrelevant scores set by administrators and policy people who are stumped by the complex skill sets needed and too lazy to find measures to truly judge performance sends people like bootney into despair. Neither side is right, and neither side is wrong.
Intransigence on both sides of this issue – that neither teachers nor individual students can be held intrinsically accountable for poor performance – has not helped, nor has a failure to acknowledge that the teacher-student relationship is complex cannot be reduced to a single index on either part. I do believe that the release of this data has more to do with the monolithic pressure of the union in NYC than it does with any actual improvement for teachers, students, parents or administrators, and I am frustrated that Weingarten drove her teachers off a cliff.
Ron F, I would imagine that teachers such as you have a significant relationship with the parents of your students, and that their satisfaction with your work is a direct result of their perception of the progress of their particular child. What would you think of having some sort of ‘Rate My Professors’ website, where parents and students could write their thoughts on a teacher and the teacher could write their own thoughts on the makeup and progress of the class? I know that the college administrators’ rap on RMP is that only students with strong opinions one way or the other bother to participate, but at least the classroom year would not be reduced to a meaningless score.
To ROn F..."it aint all that...
February 25th, 2012
5:46 pm
You said that your kids say about your job “it ain’t all that”….I;m sure they do as I did…but things like pensions and medical insurance are out of their scope right now. They can’t appreciate it and…
neither can government employees. Gov’t employees of all kinds are accustomed to griping about low pay and ignorning their golden benefits. The truth is now government jobs are HIGHER paying than private sector jobs. The “whoa is me” mentality has no merit. All government employees have a golden egg and they should appreciate it…or quit and make room for someone else…
and…
it is absolutely horrible to hear a teacher on this blog feel so confident and secure that they claim they have “shut down, quit caring and will coast for a few more years to retirement.” This teacher is admiitting they don’t give a rip, plan not to work and then just sit bakc, collect a paycheck for several years and then retire….and brag about it. It is absolutely outrageous.
Good Mother
redweather
February 25th, 2012
7:18 pm
A quick visit to Ratemyprofessor.com will show you that comments (perhaps a majority of the time) are directly related to the grade the student did or did not get.
From the standpoint of a professor, I have seldom found the site helpful. Personal attacks and untruths abound. However, students tell me that they screen out the comments that seem malicious (my word not theirs), and pay more attention to the comments about the clarity of a professor’s lectures, or how quickly he/she returns graded assignments, or how available a professor is for conferences, etc.
The main weakness in a website like this is that the teacher can’t respond directly to unfair criticism. And much of the commentary will be just that.
Ron F.
February 25th, 2012
8:40 pm
Shar: In my district (granted, it’s small and rural), parents make it known when a teacher isn’t performing well, and if enough of them speak up, things change. In my position, I wouldn’t mind at all having a comment system for parents and students to use. You’re right- I do maintain very close contact with parents and develop strong ties with my kids. They regularly come to me for help after I teach them. I don’t begin to think I’d get 100%, and I would love honest feedback from the negative views. I haven’t heard a lot of good things about Rate My Profressor, but I think some type of direct feedback system would be helpful. That, combined with standardized test scores and some type of growth records for kids throughout a year could, in my opinion, give a much fairer rating and offer useful feedback for teachers. I still remember one mom who cried on the phone when I called to talk to her about how hard her son was working in my class. He was 15 and a teacher had never called her with good news. Definitely made me stop and think about how important it is to make contact and establish that communication. It ought to be required and there ought to be time set aside for just that purpose.
Why we need feedback from stakeholders
February 25th, 2012
8:47 pm
This statement explains exactly why evaluations from parents and students are needed to evaluate teachers: (This quote is from a teacher on this blog)
“So long, Georgia. Enjoy your generations of totally stupid kids.”
“…Generations of totally stupid kids.”
See? This is exactly the attitude and the mindset that Georgia parents are angry about. When a teacher looks at a room full of innocent children and declares they are “….generations of totally stupid kids,” then it is time to rid the school system of the damaging and offending teacher.
Good Mother
Unfunded pension
February 25th, 2012
8:53 pm
Why do teachers always reach for legal recourse. We see that our so called protections have resulted in continuing to pay the AJC cheaters.
Who is being protected?
Not the taxpayers. Not the students.
Prof
February 25th, 2012
9:12 pm
The U.S. Constitution is being protected.
Public HS Teacher
February 26th, 2012
3:59 am
@Unfunded pension -
Ummmm. Your post makes no sense. The AJC cheats? And teachers are causing the AJC to cheat? And teachers like lawyers?
HUH?
@Hey Teacher
February 26th, 2012
7:05 am
HT wrote “Would anyone tolerate a police officer’s performance review being made public knowledge? A social worker? A fireman?”
Actually, I would not only tolerate it, I would chamption it. It’s a good idea to rate ALL government employees. Gov’t employees work for tax payers. We tax payers and citizens are the people to whom government employees work. We have the right to know who is spending our money wisely and who isn’t. We need more ratings of all government employees just as we have statistics and data about our elected Senators and Congressman. We can find out which Senators and Congressman vote for or against amendments and bills. We know which judges on the Supreme Court voted for or against a verdict and why — we can read their dissenting opinions….and…we can actually watch televised live transmissions of our Senators actually debating bills and amendments and topics while they are live on the floor in the capital.
Transparency for all government employees is what is necessary and prudent.
You ask “why” would we want to rate firemen and police officers? The answer is simple. It is because government employees work FOR us. Government employees are accountable to US.
Good Mother
see
February 26th, 2012
7:40 am
D – I do not recommend disruptive students return to their regular school. I teach students proper ways of dealing with frustration, how to ask for help, etc. The kids return to their main school slowly, one class at a time. A successful student is able to return to his/her regular school by NOT causing disruptions. These are truly the success stories of our school. They may not pass the CRCT and they may not be able to understand the curriculum, but they will be able to hold down a job because they have learned socially acceptable ways to disagree and/or ask for clarification.
ScienceTeacher671
February 26th, 2012
8:43 am
@Mary Elizabeth, 1:49 a.m.: “This means that if a 7th grade student is reading on 5th grade level that he will be able to function in the material for the 7th grade, but if he is reading on 4th grade level or below, in 7th grade, then he will not be able to function on 7th grade material.
The problem for high school teachers in Georgia is that students who are promoted to 9th grade with a minimum score on the 8th grade CRCT are reading at a 4th-5th grade level — so we get students in 9th grade who aren’t really prepared to do middle school work, and we’re supposed to prepare them for college.
And that’s just the regular ed. kids.
Beverly Fraud
February 26th, 2012
8:54 am
“No principal would solely assess a teacher on one year of iffy data, but equally, no principal would ignore it either.”
Yes they would Shar, YES THEY WOULD! It’s called administrative RETALIATION, and it is RAMPANT, even if it is GROSSLY under reported.
You know, if the same people pushing these assessments spent even a TENTH of the time dealing with the issues of DISCIPLINE and administrative RETALIATION, they may even find teachers THEMSELVES would be happy to embrace getting their DEADWEIGHT peers away from them.
But when you CONSISTENTLY cut teachers off at the knees, set them up to fail THEN blame them for failing, all the while do virtually nothing to protect them from RETALIATION when they try to advocate for students, why is anyone surprised that teachers resist such treatment?
It’s simple. Deal with DISCIPLINE. Deal with RETALIATION. Then you have set teachers up to SUCCEED, so rightfully you hold the DEADWEIGHT accountable.
But we as a society really aren’t THAT invested in giving teachers the AUTHORITY to succeed are we? We just want someone to BLAME, when our collective lack of WILLPOWER leads to the inevitable result.
Beverly Fraud
February 26th, 2012
8:58 am
The three words that drive the education process today:
LACK of integrity.
bootney farnsworth
February 26th, 2012
9:26 am
@ Shar
+1 for Beverly.
it happens all the time. I’ve seen some really good and dedicated
people hounded right out of their jobs because of bogus evals
created specifically to create trumped up data to use against faculty
and staff alike.
bootney farnsworth
February 26th, 2012
9:40 am
@ Beverly
let me walk you through a senario I see at work almost weekly
and see if it seems familiar…
hardworking, dedicated employee with no political ax to grind goes
about their daily routine. said person is identified as either a
threat or a non supporter to someone’s political ambitions.
said person is told to come onboard, or else. employee opts to not
play stupid games and focus on educating kids. in short, denies the
political one’s ambitions.
within weeks (often sooner) said person is finding themselve under intense scrutiny for every action from color of shirt to lack of so
called professional development. and anything else the politician
can think of.
within in weeks of this, the letters from HR start showing up warning
of dire consequences if said person doesn’t play ball. often in just
so many words.
end of year results in either termination, lack of new contract, sub-
stantial internal punishments, or resignation for health reasons.
job performance prior to witch hunt? doesn’t matter
effectiveness in classroom? who cares
dedication to students? immaterial-its not like students really matter
committment to school/profession? sucker
bootney farnsworth
February 26th, 2012
9:42 am
rate my professor is a joke, and everyone knows it.
its little more than a bitch session/popularity contest
bootney farnsworth
February 26th, 2012
9:45 am
in a way I blame Zell for our problems here.
he tried to do a really brilliant thing, but accidentally created the autobaun to educational hell.
Beverly Fraud
February 26th, 2012
9:51 am
bootney you’ve hit the nail on the proverbial head, sad to say. But have educational leaders and politicians even BEGUN to deal with that dynamic?
Here’s a headline from MSN about the release of the SO CALLED “teacher ratings”
‘Simpsons’ bully namesake put among NYC’s worst teachers.
Does that headline sound like it even BEGINS to “exercise caution about drawing conclusions”?
Mary Elizabeth
February 26th, 2012
9:57 am
@Brandy, 3:16, pm, 2/25/12
All of your points are well-stated and have merit. I want to highlight your point, below, from that post:
===========================================
“Third, NCLB requires that all students, regardless of ability or IQ, be taught and tested on grade-level. This is true for extremely disabled students as well as for extremely gifted students. The student with a 70 IQ is never going to be able to do seventh grade mathematics in seventh grade, nor should he or she be expected to.”
AND TO
@Public HS Teacher, 2:13 pm, 2/25/12
You said: “I have tried to understand the reasoning behind these types of decisions/attitudes in Georgia. And, the only thing that I can find is that the corrupt politicans are being swayed by the ‘education’ corporations that want to set up shop here and open ‘charter’ schools to make a profit. In other words, it is all about money.”
—————————————————————-
I think that there is an element of truth in what you have said. Please “google” ALEC to learn how a national drive to dismantle public education is being implemented through legislation in state legislatures across the nation.
—————————————————————————-
Also, from a letter to the editor in today’s AJC, a writer states (in part), in his letter entitled, “Public Schools Again on the Losing End”:
“With Georgia public schools sustaining cuts in the last funding cycles, it is unconscionable that millions in state revenue last year were diverted to private school students through student scholarship organizations.
Judging from the outcome of the controversial legislation that created student scholarship organizations, it seems clear that the majority of our state leaders really do not believe that Georgia’s public education system is that unique state responsibility that raises the bar for all comers.
Once again, it seems that special-interest agendas trump what’s best for public education students in Georgia.”
—————————————————————————————————————
Mary Elizabeth
February 26th, 2012
10:21 am
@ScienceTeacher671, 8:43 am
“@Mary Elizabeth, 1:49 a.m: The problem for high school teachers in Georgia is that students who are promoted to 9th grade with a minimum score on the 8th grade CRCT are reading at a 4th-5th grade level — so we get students in 9th grade who aren’t really prepared to do middle school work, and we’re supposed to prepare them for college. And that’s just the regular ed. kids.”
========================================================
You are so correct. And what you say is happening in schools across the state and nation. Moreover, this phenomenon will continue to occur, into the future, because students have now – and will have in the future – differing ability levels (as well as other factors) which should necessitate creating differing academic objectives for different students in the same grade level. The only blame that should be cast is that educators, collectively, are not acknowledging that this fact of individual student academic differences is, and will be, an ongoing phenomenon which will require adjustment of assessment instruments – for both teachers and students – which reflect these natural academic variances, and that educational leaders are not setting standards that allow teachers to adjust their instruction to accommodate these individual variances in students.
——————————————————————————————
I have often written on this blog regarding the fact that, as a Reading Department Chair of a major suburban high school, I supervised the testing of all incoming 9th grade students for well over a decade. Invariably, half of those 9th grade students would be reading on 6th grade level or below, and the range of reading scores for those incoming 9th graders would be from 3rd grade level to grade level 16+.
http://maryelizabethsings.wordpress.com/2012/02/25/about-education-essay-5-assessing-teachers-and-students/
patrick crabtree
February 26th, 2012
10:59 am
Just another attack to give the appearance that public schools are failing. This is done in California and does not work One can be great one year ans a miserable failure the next, all depending on the students that are assigned to him/her. Can we rank doctors on the number of patients he/she cures when the patient won’t take the pescribed medicine?
Ole Guy
February 26th, 2012
11:48 am
Pat, you may have a good point in that these attacks upon the educational systems simply give the APPEARANCE of failure. However, traditional yardsticks of progress seem to point in the wrong direction, from the world of young people to the adult community: high rates of college dropouts/failure to graduate within a reasonable period of time, relatively high rates of unemployment…NOT because the jobs are not there, but because the GOOD jobs require skills and educational levels which, despite available educational opportunities, do not seem to filter down to job seekers. For this very reason, the influx of skilled foreign workers, often viewed with disdain, seems to be the only source of labor in many growth fields.
Viewed from the “less-attractive” side of life, rates of teen pregnancies, domestic unrest, incarceration, etc…all the signs of a society in decay seem to point to the basic premise that our 21st century society is nowhere near ready for 21st century demands.
Are these issues new? Of course not; my generation, as well as those of earlier years saw the same social ills as we fret over today. Yet somehow, generations of yesteryear have, for the most part, overcome these social impediments and contributed to social and scientific growth. Now, in the dawning years of a new century, I simply do not see a continuation of the hopes and promises realized 30, 40, and 50 years ago.
Your analogy of patients not taking their meds pretty much coincides with students not taking their “educational medicine”. If the patient does not realize his failure to take the prescribed meds will surely lead to health problems and, very possibly, ultimate death…SHAME ON THE PATIENT. By the same token, why hold teachers responsible for their students’ failure to “take their ed-meds”?
I’ll tell you why: Teachers are (or should be) far more than sources of educational trivia; they are (or should be) motivators, leaders, and ENFORCERS OF THE EDUCATIONAL STANDARD. THIS is where the miserable failings occur. Your arguement rests on the premise that students are in charge; that if “good” students are assigned, both school and teacher will be allowed the label of GOOD. What’s wrong with this picture? Why are schools AND teachers not stepping up to the plate of responsibilities; ENFORCING THOSE STANDARDS, failing kids who need to experience the foul smell of failure?
patrick crabtree
February 26th, 2012
11:55 am
Check out the data, under the Hall’s administration, how many teachers did she fire? She replaced over 80% of the principals (quite a few of the new principals were cited in the ‘erasure scandal’). Roy Barnes did away with Fair Dismissal (tenure) and what were the results in all three cases? Same ole same ole. Just maybe ‘it ain’t the teacher’s fault.’
Beverly Fraud
February 26th, 2012
12:16 pm
I’ll tell you why: Teachers are (or should be) far more than sources of educational trivia; they are (or should be) motivators, leaders, and ENFORCERS OF THE EDUCATIONAL STANDARD.
Ole Guy, you’re doing the moral equivalent of blaming the common foot soldier for losing the war in Vietnam.
Vietnam was lost in WASHINGTON D.C. And that’s EXACTLY where the war on education is being lost.
Mary Elizabeth
February 26th, 2012
12:52 pm
We must stop thinking in terms of casting “blame, ” and, instead, we should place value upon understanding and communicating sophisticated instructional principles which encompass individual variances. When students are instructed according to individual need, they generally succeed.
bootney farnsworth
February 26th, 2012
1:13 pm
@ Mary Elizabeth
sounds good in theory, but better chance of Elvis showing up
at your next birthday.
Georgia, it’s elected legislators, its so called educational administrators (re: whores), and far too many of our general
population just don’t care
bootney farnsworth
February 26th, 2012
1:15 pm
deal with it: the very least important part of “big education” is actually educating students
bootney farnsworth
February 26th, 2012
1:20 pm
@ Beverly
the war on education is lost, as is past tense.
most of us here are just the stubbon holdouts who’ve not
yet been dealt with by the victors
ScienceTeacher671
February 26th, 2012
1:48 pm
Mary Elizabeth, I agree that students should be instructed on their individual levels and I agree that they should be taught to mastery. Unfortunately, our system is really set up for a “one size fits all” instructional style, in which students progress by age rather than by ability or mastery.
Until we get past the idea that every child of the same age “should” be on the same level academically, our system is doomed to fail at least some students.
Brandy
February 26th, 2012
2:21 pm
@Mary Elizabeth, I agree with you completely except for one point. I don’t see educators denying that students need to be educated and treated as individuals with individual strengths, weaknesses, and interests. Rather, I see the policymakers as the ones denying this fact, thereby making it nearly impossible for educators to reach students where they are academically and socio-emotionally.
@Science Teacher, Exactly!
Imagine if we actually had a society where every single person read on grade level, could do high school mathematics, graduated high school, and went to college. We would have no one to dig ditches, clean restrooms, build cars, or all of the other important, necessary jobs that college graduates are very VERY rarely interested in doing. Unfortunately, our society would collapse…or we would have to import workers from other countries.
Prof
February 26th, 2012
2:29 pm
@ Ole Guy, Feb. 26, 11:48 am: “Why are schools AND teachers not stepping up to the plate of responsibilities; ENFORCING THOSE STANDARDS, failing kids who need to experience the foul smell of failure?”
You have asked this question over and over on this blog. I ask you honestly and not sarcastically: how do you propose exactly that teachers assume these “responsibilities” and “enforc[e] those standards” by failing students when they are literally not allowed to do this by their administrators? When failing student grades are changed by principals?
What exactly do you think teachers should do to “lead” and “enforce” these higher educational standards? Please do not propose actions that are illegal in this state: forming teachers unions, refusing to promote unprepared students when “social promotion” by the principal is legally allowed, or physically disciplining students. What is your practical suggestion to teachers within these legal constraints?
Mary Elizabeth
February 26th, 2012
2:47 pm
@ScienceTeacher671, 1:48 pm
I completely agree with you, and most of what I write on this blog, instructionally, emphasizes your thoughts.
I was fortunate to have been chosen to be the Instructional Lead Teacher in a continuous progress school by an outstanding principal who understood mastery learning well. He designed his school without walls between classrooms, in the mid-1970s, so that multiage groupings of students, housed within pods equivalent to 5 classrooms each, could form instructional groups according to individual student need. One of my main job functions as ILT was to insure that each student in the school was functioning, at all times, within his or her correct placement in reading and math levels, from levels
1 – 24+, which were designed for a curriculum continuum for all students in grades 1 – 8.
A given student may have been functioning on level 15 in his 4th year in school and that student might have been working in a group with a 3rd grade student and a 5th grade student who each needed to be on level 15, at point in time. All students moved through reading and math levels at their maximum rates for mastery learning, and they changed groups as frequently as was needed in order to adjust to their individual rate of learning variances.
I realize that the complexities involved in that type of instructional design and managment is not applied often today. However, I believe that modified variations of that instructional model (individually based instruction) can be accomplished in traditional classrooms today. See my link to “Cyndie’s Story” for information regarding how an innovative science teacher accomplished individually based instruction within her traditional 5th grade classroom.
http://maryelizabethsings.wordpress.com/2012/02/11/cyndies-story/
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I write not only to inform teachers, but, hopefully, to enlighten those in educational leadership
positions of the effectiveness which will ensue if they will accommodate individual student need when they establish curriculum standards for students in various grade levels, and also if they will establish assessment instruments, for both teachers and students, which will reflect individual student variances. I have written on this blog of the need to incorporate students’ IQ data (discreetly managed), among other data, which will reflect individual student’s potential, within these assessment instruments.
I believe in the long-ranged benefit of attempting to educate others, including educational professionals, in order to effect a positive end for every student. I would not have been much of a teacher if I did not believe, in my core, that education is not only impacting, but that it will forever enlighten.
Mary Elizabeth
February 26th, 2012
3:57 pm
@Brandy, 2:21 pm
“@Mary Elizabeth, I agree with you completely except for one point. I don’t see educators denying that students need to be educated and treated as individuals with individual strengths, weaknesses, and interests. Rather, I see the policymakers as the ones denying this fact, thereby making it nearly impossible for educators to reach students where they are academically and socio-emotionally.”
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Brandy, please read my 2:47 pm post – especially the next to the last paragraph – which states the need for educational leaders, and policy-makers, to address individual variances in students in
the policies which they create. I agree with you that those policies should, also, address the
“socio-emotional” variances among students, as well as their academic variances.
In terms of your thought of my assessment of teachers, please let me be very clear in stating that I do not think that teachers, as a group, “deny” that students have individual variances which need to be addressed. In fact, I think that most teachers know that these student variances exist and that they want to address these differences. However, based on my work with all teachers in my former high school (well over 100 teachers each year) for 16 years, I recognized that many teachers, who are trained in curriculum as they should have been, were stunned when I showed them the range of 9th (or 10th and 11th) grade reading scores. In other words, they knew that there were variances in students, but they did not realize how great those variances were, until they saw the data that I showed them. It was not a matter of their “denying” the variances, but of not knowing, in full, the wide range of variances among their students. I do not want to imply that I “blame” teachers, in anyway, because, having been a teacher myself, I know what teachers must cope with daily. I simply want to keep informing teachers of the wide range of student variances, having worked for most of my 30 fulltime teaching years in monitoring schoolwide placement of, and advancement of, tens of 1000s of students.
Thus, I believe that teachers could benefit from in-house teacher-training courses which will demonstrate to them how to utilize the standardized, or other, test data for their students which is now available to them through Georgia’s DOE on computer systems, as well as how to implement their instruction better to accommodate individualized instructional need. (To emphasize, again: Policy-makers must design policy to allow for individualized accommodation to student need which, by definition, will not be that of a one-size-fits-all grade level standard model. Those same standards can be a goal for most students, but point-in-time mastery of those academic standards needs adjustment and flexibility.)
I find it quite ironic that now that Georgia’s DOE has the ability to send academic data to every public school teacher in Georgia and that that data can follow students as they transfer from one public school to another, and that public school teachers are now being trained in how to use this data to individualize for instruction, that many of Georgia’s legislators are attempting to dismantle public schools by depleting the funding to traditional public schools for more funding to charter schools, or to private schools through vouchers, or online courses, or home schooling, in which the sophisticated data and instructional delivery model, that I have mentioned, may not be available to benefit teachers and students in these other school choice options, in the detail needed, to improve the quality of education, not only for individual students in Georgia, but for Georgia’s educational quality and ranking, as a whole.
We must all work to improve, and not to dismantle, public education.
I am certain that, if we do, Thomas Jefferson would be pleased!
Mary Elizabeth
February 26th, 2012
4:51 pm
@ bootney farnsworth,1:13 pm
“@ Mary Elizabeth
sounds good in theory, but better chance of Elvis showing up
at your next birthday.
Georgia, it’s elected legislators, its so called educational administrators (re: whores), and far too many of our general population just don’t care”
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I come from a long line of educators and ministers. My father, who was Director of Vocational Education in south Georgia, before his passing, gave me an old saying, which most people know from memory, engraved in wood, so that I would never forget it:
“God grant me the Serenity to accept the things I cannot change
Courage to change the things I can; and
Wisdom to know the difference.”
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My words from my 2:47 post, restated:
“I believe in the long-ranged benefit of attempting to educate others, including educational professionals, in order to effect a positive end for every student. I would not have been much of a teacher if I did not believe, in my core, that education is not only impacting, but that it will forever enlighten.”
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And, finally, words from Albert Einstein:
“There are two ways to live your life. . .
One is as though nothing is a miracle;
The other is as though everything is a miracle.”
I believe in miracles.
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ScienceTeacher671
February 26th, 2012
5:06 pm
Thus, I believe that teachers could benefit from in-house teacher-training courses which will demonstrate to them how to utilize the standardized, or other, test data for their students which is now available to them through Georgia’s DOE on computer systems
I’ve heard that test data are available to teachers, but I’ve yet to see the evidence….
bilbo799
February 26th, 2012
6:07 pm
More interesting than this is a NYTimes story today about “being black” at Stuyvesant High — NYC’s top magnet school. There are very few black students and many Asian and white students at that school because it’s based on a race-blind standardized test score. Would love to hear peoples’ takes on that.
Ron F.
February 26th, 2012
8:00 pm
Mary Elizabeth: equally as important as having and knowing how to use the data is having time set aside for that kind of planning. We were given common planning by departments in recent years. While a wonderful idea in theory, by the time we finish the paperwork for lesson plans, assessment records, etc., there’s little time left over for the detailed analysis of assessment data that we need to be doing. We’re hopeful that next year we’ll have that time, but it’s amazing how much our administrators can find to do with that time instead of trusting us to use it appropriately. I have to go before and after school to share data with teachers and discuss individual plans for students. I make the time, and the optimist in me hopes that we’ll have more time for individual student planning next year.
Mary Elizabeth
February 26th, 2012
9:41 pm
@Ron F, 8:00 pm
I agree with you. In fact, the assessing of individual student needs and instructional levels is as essential to quality instruction as is the instruction, itself. If a teacher instructs any student on his or her frustration level, instead of his or her instructional level, that child may regress, rather than grow.
It will help teachers with planning, enormously, when the data base of student scores is transferred to computers so that teachers can instantly retrieve students’ individual instructional information, as doctors presently are able to access, immediately, regarding vital individual patient information.
I am delighted to read that you now share student data with other teachers and that teachers discuss individual plans for students based on where they are presently functioning. More time during the day is needed for this purpose in order to enhance the quality of instruction.
I repeat: You are an outstanding teacher.
Brandy
February 26th, 2012
9:43 pm
@Maureen, As this article directly references Atlanta and Beverly Hall and may have wider implications, I would love to see you share it with your readers:
New York Times “Amid a Federal Education Inquiry, an Unsettling Sight”
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/27/education/duncan-and-rhee-on-panel-amid-dc-schools-inquiry.html?_r=1&ref=education
patrick crabtree
February 26th, 2012
9:43 pm
@ Ole guy. Tean pregnacy is a religious issue and the schools are shying away because of the religious right. If they DID THEIR JOB, the schools would never have to address it. We are charged to teaching, not curers of social ills. Where is society, parents, the community, churches? We didn’t give birth to these children AND we are not allowed to discipline them. We can be fired for raising our voice to them. AND we are the blame?
Ole Guy
February 26th, 2012
11:11 pm
OK, Pat…consider me duly chastised. My remarks concerning teen pregnancies were, in no way, intended as a direct indictment against schools, nor toward teachers. My views, as, probably some of the “village elders” out there, may smack of “old world” values relagated to the dust bin antiquated codes of conduct:
Good grades, be they barely passing…like that of yours’ truly…or the stellar variety, USED to be the result of STUDENT ACCOMPLISHMENT, not simply letters to be assigned to those who were content to allow the winds of political correctness to push them toward diplomas which, in harsh reality, prepared them for absolutely nothing. Somewhere along that 12-year pipeline, there were many opportunities to either “feel bad” about self and suffer the debilitating effects of diminished self esteem. There were equal opportunities to experience that sweet smell of victory; the knowledge that that grade was the result of your best efforts.
Now I’m no psychologist, but I would venture that life’s victories, big and small alike; kid and adult alike, will, more times than not, possitively influence behaviors in most, if not all facets of life. It is, and always has been my contention that the schools, particularly during those so-called formative years, have two missions: 1) getum up to speed on the threearrs, and 2) DEVELOP CHARACTER. I don’t wish to come across as an ole fashioned prude…there was much “unauthorized close order drill” back in the dark ages (conceivably, more-so) as we observe today. However, there was also the sure knowledge that deviations from that which was expected would be met with EXTREME UNPLEASANTNESS. I believe this knowledge base was/is the basic platform upon which is developed ones sense of SELF RESPECT, DISCIPLINE, and, quite possibly, A PERSONAL CODE OF CONDUCT. Did we ever completely stop being SOBs, holigans, and general pains in the six? I certainly don’t think so (we still practice stupid stuff like driving with one eye open; one eye closed while fortified with elixer of Beam and Daniels, driving at Mach 2, and the usual assortment of “don’ts”). However, we also learned, long long ago, that actions come with CONSEQUENCES.
So Pat, I fully realize that there are many issues; many impediments which stand between you, the corps of professional teachers, and your “secondary” mission of developing these kids to simply be good folks. THIS, Pat, is why I continue to harp the same ole tune…TAKE COMMAND OF YOUR PROFESSION.
Without going into overtime, Pat…please understand that (other than the mindless idiots who can only engage in the practice of teacher bashing) you, the teacher corps, are not to be blamed for the social ills I have listed. YOU ARE, however, to be held accountable for not doing all you can to steer the educational ship off the rocks, out of the political storms, and onto calm seas.