Yesterday, the Washington Post’s Valerie Strauss published a piece in her widely-read blog, The Answer Sheet, that was written by Fall River teacher Rebecca Cusick. Cusick told about receiving a poor grade in the Massachusetts system for judging teachers by student scores.
This approach to evaluating teachers is spreading across the country, even though leading experts on testing say it’s a mistake.
Tonight, Education Week will hold a debate between top education advisors to Obama and Romney. Will either campaign take on this issue, or the larger question of the effect of high-stakes testing and test prep on real-life classrooms?
Here’s Rebecca Cusick’s piece from The Answer Sheet:
Traumatic lives of students affect teacher’s evaluation
By Rebecca CusickI am crushed. I got my MCAS [Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System] growth score for last year in an email. My heart sank when I saw the score, my entire year summed up in a number. In the eyes of the state, I am not even “average.” In fact, they probably believe I did my students more harm than good.
I knew it would be low, and I was totally prepared to dismiss it as unimportant and meaningless. So it’s not that I am shocked. Why is it then that I feel as though someone knocked the wind out of me?
Most teachers understand how the composition of a class impacts their test scores. They know that children with special needs don’t have the chance to show their strengths on a bubble test. They know that English Language Learners get lost in the phrasing of the questions, and that homeless children don’t put tests high up on their priority list. They know that students who are frequently absent or changing schools have gaps in their learning.
But not all teachers know, as I do, about the voodoo math behind value-added scores. I’m aware of the flaws in the assessments, in the calculation of growth, and the collateral damage they cause. I devour articles and editorials that condemn the use of testing for high stakes decisions. So why do I, of all people, take this so personally when I should know better?
Maybe it’s because I gave it everything I’ve got. Last year’s class was needier than some of my previous groups. They shared stories of desperation that would prevent most adults from functioning well. Sleeping on a floor in an over-crowded, rat-infested apartment, seeing a family member arrested, and looking forward to dinner at the soup kitchen; these are not the tales of an idyllic childhood.
I vowed to help them grow both academically and emotionally. I ran after school math and science clubs, and I started a food pantry for our families. Afraid to even take a sick day, I spent unprecedented amounts of time analyzing data and planning lessons. I showed fidelity to the new reading program, and I differentiated my instruction.
When June arrived I knew my kids had improved considerably. Their vocabulary was better and their writing was stronger. They could read harder texts, and they solved math problems that would have reduced them to tears in September. More important, they worked harder and they cared more. They exchanged cheerful greetings and kind words. They may not have been on par, academically, with their suburban peers, but I was proud of their progress. Now that the scores are out, all that positive change is reduced to a number. The big picture of their great improvement is blurry and out of focus. It all remains a secret.
My colleagues and I choose to work in an urban school with many challenges. We endure large class sizes, a test-based curriculum, and tons of criticism. We vent our frustrations to each other, but we faithfully greet each day with a smile and the commitment to do our very best. That’s why I take those pointless scores so personally. On some level, I believed my hard work would pay off, and I don’t mean financially. But the low digits next to my name imply that I am either lazy or incompetent. And for a brief moment, I question myself.
Why is this important? Because I need to go back in the trenches to once again battle overwhelming odds, and I must remain confident and determined. I must not let my spirit break. I must believe my work matters.
Just for the record, I am the same teacher with an exceptionally high growth score from the previous year. I declined the accolades from my well-meaning principal because we are a team with a common goal, not competitors. Will the number crunchers say I was talented one year but incompetent the next?
sabutai says
I’m lucky enough to know from close proximity how great a teacher Rebecca is. She is exactly the type of excellent teacher that reformers want to chase out of the system so they can declare it failed and privatize it.
A school in my district had its “student improvement” score go from 110 to 60 from one year to the next. No, it did not burn down and reform in tents in a refugee camp. No, it was not thwacked by a tornado. There was no riot. From one year to the next, the school hosted pretty much the same teachers, kids, administrators, and families. But “the math” decrees that kids improved at barely half the rate. Your “reformed” education system.
lisag says
I watched the two advisors–John Schnur for Obama and Phil Handy for Romney. I would have loved to hear their responses to Rebecca’s story. Having read her piece before listening to the debate, I was disappointed in Schnur’s efforts to respond to such criticisms.
The moderator asked the two men about the recent backlash against high-stakes testing in New York and elsewhere. Phil basically said testing is here to stay and will likely increase with the Common Core assessments, so suck it up. He sees the answer in better marketing, suggesting that states should go on the offensive and “stop being on the defense.” He noted that under the CC, states (not the feds, who shouldn’t be spending on such things) will have to spend more money to provide the secure online devices to administer all the new computer-based tests.
John attempted to reassure that new assessments would be superior and therefore solve the problems of the NCLB assessments, which dumbed things down and created too much teaching to the test.
Phil didn’t try and John didn’t succeed in responding to the very real issue of testing abuse and overuse and the way it distorts and corrupts education, as described so poignantly by Rebecca.
sabutai says
There isn’t much daylight between Obama and the typical Republican on education, and never has been. I’m not calling him a Republican overall, but on this issue he’s been BushPlus.
Mark L. Bail says
said here. Obama’s education policy is evidence that he’s not much of a progressive. It’s very premise–that we can do justice to learning with the extremely limited means of a paper and pencil test–is embarrassing and untenable for any knowledgeable, intellectually honest person.
Question: is Rebecca being subjected to Massachusetts evaluation system or Fall River’s?
WhiskeyRebellion says
It seems to be based on the insane assumption that every child lives in an “Ozzie and Harriet” home environment. Personally, I think it is a conspiracy to discredit the public school system and grease the skids for a take over by Charter Skools and For-Profit education. By the time the public wakes up, the entire country will be coin operated and the Uber-rich will have stolen all our ‘entitlements’ (aka programs that we have paid into for our entire working lives).
centralmassdad says
There must be some way to screen poor teachers out of the system.
Tests are no good because they do not adequately measure all of the things that matter to scores other than the teaching.
Yet one major reason tests are used is because they are objective, and letting the principal make the call is too subjective, and she might have been a meanie penalizing the teacher for matters not covered in the contract, and therefore violates the teacher’s due-process rights to permanent employment.
petr says
..rely on possibly poor students to point the way?
The whole argument is bogus. The entire and only premise of the argument is that ‘poor students’ are entirely and always redeemable and that ‘poor teachers’ are entirely and always irredeemable.
The ‘product’ the teachers produce, if we must speak in business and marketing terms (blech), isn’t a successful student but a good curriculum combined with a good classroom experience: students come and students go; some better than others; but not a one a success or failure as a direct result of a single teacher, any teacher, no matter how good.
Tests scores are only an elliptical measure of the curriculum and the teachers delivery, and, much else being equal are better at measuring only what they are supposed to measure: student performance.
centralmassdad says
I would be content to leave staffing within the absolute discretion of the principal, and without regard to seniority or tenure. They would have the knowledge of the realities of the student situations that cannot be attributed to the teacher, and the principal can be responsible for the performance of the entire school.
dhammer says
Have you ever had an ineffective or capricious boss? I get that it’s an unpopular opinion among centrists and even so called progressives that the principles of democracy, transparency, due process and freedom should be extended in the workplace, but a major role of the local teachers union is to defend teachers from unfair actions.
What’s frustrating about this, is that while the right and the anti-union left are happy to talk about how getting rid of the terrible old teachers is the only solution, this approach totally ignores the negative impact attacking unions has on attracting and retaining teachers. Of course the argument that tenure and unions are to blame for mediocre performance is undermined by the fact that the typically non-union, non-tenured charter schools, as a whole do not outperform public schools, but the more damaging thing here is that by promoting policies that make teaching less secure and less desirable, you promote the further deterioration of schools.
And the reality is that despite the talking points of the WSJ editorial page that you seem to be relying on, the problem with teachers tends to be that they leave, not that they stay. So while according to this website, while 84.5 % of teachers stayed at the same school each year (the role of retirement in unclear in the data), a University of Chicago study found that over 50% of the teachers left the school within four years. Which confirm what other researchers looking at Texas found, “The results in this paper confirm the difficulty that schools serving academically disadvantaged students have in retaining teachers, particularly those early in their careers.”
Given this, is a policy approach that makes teaching less rewarding (by removing the protections of the union) one that is worth pursuing?
centralmassdad says
Most do not have property rights to their job, notwithstanding bad bosses.
Teacher unions don’t like teachers to be evaluated subjectively; the principal might be unfair. The entire notion of testing was to provide an objective measure, in response to the complaint that principal evaluations can be too subjective. But teachers unions don’t like teachers to be evaluated objectively, because so much of what they do is subjective. One suspects that teacher’s unions really don’t want teachers to be evaluated at all once they get their five years in.
Our district went through a layoff a couple of years ago, and my kids’ school wound up losing a great teacher, in favor of a longer-tenured oaf whose daily lesson plans, for 4th graders, consisted of either (i) coloring; or (ii) having the kids take turns reading the textbook aloud. Turned out that the layoff had to be done based on seniority, not effectiveness.
As long as teacher’s unions make their priority the protection of seniority rather than education, then I will continue to oppose them.
dhammer says
It’s not about property rights, it’s about due process and transparency.
Layoffs are not supposed to eliminate under performing staff, that’s what progressive discipline and termination policies are for. That’s what annual performance reviews are for – if that wasn’t done by the school principal, they’re not doing their job, the superintendent isn’t doing their job and the school committee isn’t doing its job. A teacher who’s daily lesson plan is how you describe should have been disciplined, and fired if they didn’t improve.
So in the case of your districts, when faced with an administration that can’t take the steps necessary to remove incompetent teachers, be it because they don’t conduct worthwhile employee evaluations, or the intractable power and awfulness of the teachers union is too much to overcome. Your response is to give the person who couldn’t do their job, or muster to political support to work out a solution with the union, more power?
Power that will likely be used to reduce compensation through increasing health care costs, and reducing job security (which is a wage cuts given that teachers make less than other professionals with similar credentials and security is part of their pay)? Power that if it’s used as it is in the non-union private sector, all too often eliminates staff not on the basis of performance, but on the basis of cost? The education reformers you’ve aligned yourself with don’t have improving education as their priority, they only want to achieve their Randian ideal of dismantling of the welfare state, or worse, as the Michelle Rhee’s of the world demonstrate, the transfer of tax dollars to their own pocketbooks.
centralmassdad says
The teacher’s union thinks that “meaningful performance evaluation” has such extensive requirements that it is–shockingly– cost prohibitive.
Every decision is about maximizing the performance of the staff. Every decision, all the time, every time, always. There are no exceptions. If an administration has to decide whom to lay off on factors other than this, it is a big problem. If a union cannot accept that, then in my view it must be defeated.
I would be more charitably inclined toward the teachers’ unions if they acknowledged forthrightly that they don’t give a fig about the education of children, but exist solely to protect the interests of their longest serving (i.e., dues-paying) members, regardless of whether they are effective in the classroom. But I don’t think they can credibly claim to be advocates of the student population while clinging to rules that are more appropriate– if even that– to large scale, low skill manufacturing jobs from a long-past era.
dhammer says
I know a number of teachers union activists who care very deeply about education, about education reform and about students. When you presume to know what these people want, you misrepresent reality.
Now, it could be the case that claims like these are true
But there’s a key question that isn’t being addressed. Why does it cost so much to fire a teacher? Let’s look at one pretty disgusting case in Illinois:
So who’s to blame here? The union, or the administration who failed to notice for something like 20 years this guy was a stubborn loon? Keep blaming the union and you’ll never fix the problem.
Mark L. Bail says
to give principals absolute discretion over firing (though not without regard to seniority or tenure), but if you actually knew how bad many principals and administrators are, you’d think twice. I think people from the private sector assume that principals must be somehow better than teachers to become bosses. This really, really, really isn’t the case.
Unlike business world–where there is at least the perception that bosses are promoted based on previous success–principals are a self-selected group. Any teacher, regardless of years of experience or talent, can become certified as a principal. Teaching experience is generally necessary for an administrator. But many administrators don’t have much experience, most have less than 10 years, some 7 years. I know of principals that taught less than 5 years. There are other administrators that have never spent a day in the classroom. In the old days, administrators tended to be veteran educators, today many barely more than rookies who have done the appropriate coursework.
If you’re a good bullshit artist, you’re in. If you’re not that experienced, talented, or endowed with blarney, you can usually get a job in the city where the turnover is high. If you’re good and can show it in an interview or full of the aforementioned blarney, you may get to the suburbs someday. If you wash out as principal in the city, however, don’t worry: there are any number of pseudo-administrative or non-teaching jobs available.
Aside from the number of crappy administrators, principals serve at the whim of the superintendent who serves at the whim of the school committee. Contracts for administrators are generally three years long, but there is no tenure. Piss off the wrong people, and regardless of the quality of your work, you’re gone.
One of the reasons teacher unions developed was to protect teachers from the cronyism endemic in the city. Politically, principals can and do get pressure to hire certain people. Giving them discretion to replace certified teachers regardless of tenure or seniority, particularly where budgets are concerned, is a bad idea.
Christopher says
I continue to be pro-standardized tests, putting me in the minority here, but it should never be the only assessment of teaching quality nor should one year be presumed to tell the whole story. I do think it is a good measure of STUDENT achievement because frankly, there are some things in life you should just know, but we won’t know if you know it unless we test you. There needs to be a way to know objectively that a diploma means something and other comparable countries don’t seem to wring their hands over this.
Mark L. Bail says
than ours. Depending on the country, kids have to pass a test to matriculate and/or a test to ration college places. In many of these countries, college isn’t the only option for a good life and a well-paying job. Education continues in the workplace and at other types of schools. Depending on the country, tests are specific and deep. MCAS is neither.
100% of the kids in my high school passed MCAS. Given that this includes kids who will never be able to do anything more than the most menial jobs, passing doesn’t mean much.
SomervilleTom says
My experience with education is based on my five children, now aged 29, 26, 20, 18, and 16. My youngest attends an expensive private school (paid for by my ex), the rest graduated from public schools. My two sons attended public schools in Newburyport — one of them transferred to Somerville High School in the fall of his junior year.
All of the public school teachers (and staff) I know — good and bad — are underpaid. Dramatically underpaid. All of them. Nearly all of them (including the “bad” ones) are generous, hard-working, and passionate men and women who care deeply about their students and their families. If anything, this was MORE true of the faculty and staff of SHS than of Newburyport in spite of the reputations and rankings of the two school systems.
I am unqualified to speak to anything except my own experiences and those of my friends and family, so I won’t try. What I will say is that:
1. We, in this generation, ask far more of our public educators than we have in the past, and we pay them far less. As far as I’m concerned, this — more than anything else — determines the outcomes. What percentage of top-shelf college graduates choose teaching in public schools as their number one career goal?
2. All of this discussion — here and in the debate — ignores the most important factors that determine the success of any child in public school: the attitudes of the home they come from towards excellence, literacy, intellectualism, and so on, and the economic circumstances of their parents. Kids who are starving or whose diet is comprised of junk food and and soda aren’t going to do well no matter WHAT happens at school. Kids who are teased, punished, and ridiculed for reading or for discussing what they read aren’t going to do well. Kids who don’t, won’t, or can’t sleep at night aren’t going to do well. You get my drift.
I think that we, as a society, undervalue and underpay our educators. If there is evidence that standardized testing improves the outcomes for anybody, I’d like to see it — especially in the context of peer-reviewed research that correctly excludes other factors (such as demographics, economics, and so on).
Mostly I think that both candidates are pandering to perceived voter attitudes rather than focusing on what does and does not work.
fenway49 says
My wife is a relatively new teacher in Roxbury. Her students, high school freshmen, have an incredible number of distractions. Many have been removed from their parents’ custody, have siblings in prison or in gangs, are in abusive relationships, face harassment from peers if they make any pretense at being interested in learning. They largely come to her lacking basic writing, research and analytical skills and completely unaware of how to behave properly in class. She has to spend a lot of time just trying to get the kids to pay attention and has nearly chronic headaches from dealing with all the crap.
I have severed ties with a couple of right-wing “friends” who insist on demonizing teachers. Particularly offensive is the claim they have cushy hours. My wife arrives at work by 7 every day and almost never leaves until close to 5 pm. Then she does grading and lesson plans at home during the evening and weekends. For this she’s paid in the 40s, even though she received a master’s with a GPA over 3.9. After student loan payments her net pay is about $2200/month. We’re not getting rich off this sinecure.
My wife, by the way, works at a charter school. The school does good work and there’s much to like about the way they do things. But we both believe, as a matter of policy, that charters and vouchers are no silver bullet. What makes this charter school work is a strict discipline code; those who don’t comply eventually are shown the door. You can’t do that in every school. Vouchers and charters turn education into a game of musical chairs. The more you get good students into already high-performing schools, the worse all the other schools will be.
Make no mistake. It’s much easier to have good results when you can exclude the most problematic students. My wife’s employer pushes out kids who don’t toe the line. I attended a private Catholic high school; after my first year about 30% of the class decided not to come back. Those with below a C average or any disciplinary record were asked to leave. Sure, our average SAT scores were good under those circumstances. But that’s not a policy we can apply across the board, and we can’t just leave huge numbers of the most troubled kids with no school. Where do they go when the “better” schools kick them out?