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May 22, 2013

Secret to successful Common Core implementation: slow down

There are few things more quintessentially German than the Autobahn. The superhighway that allows you to travel at super high speeds is both a testament to the country’s obsession with engineering and efficiency.  So it was with great surprise that I recently read one lawmaker there is proposing to place speed limits on the highway. As one can imagine, the suggestion has been met with near universal horror within the legislature, although opinion polls show a more divided public.  What does this have to do with education? Take a ride with me, while I lay out a case.

I trust you’ve heard of the Common Core standards? Of course you have. It’s been the biggest story in education for several months now as state and especially local officials begin to grapple with the implementation of new, often times more rigorous, learning standards.

You’ll recall, these new standards in math and English and language arts were a joint initiative of the National Governors Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers to develop clear and uniform markers of what students should learn and acquire in these subjects — 46 states and the District of Columbia voluntarily bought into the idea and off we went, down a virtual Autobahn.

Two years later and here we are, speeding down the road on a collision course to disaster. Make no mistake: the destination is not the obstacle.  Developing a common rubric is a no-brainer if we want to be able to say that, at minimum (and these are base minimum not pie-in-the sky standards) students should be taught X, Y, and Z in math and A, B, and C in English, no matter if they reside in California or Kentucky. There’s nothing controversial or untoward about that.

But as with all great intentions, the devil is in the details, many of which have not been well thought-out— or even at all— leading to all sorts of panic, ill-advised moves, and even a dose of paranoia.

Perhaps, what we need right now is to take our foot off the accelerator, pull off to a rest stop and study the map again. Some of you call it a strategic plan. Bottomline, we know where we need to go and where we need to take students, but states and districts obviously need more time hashing out how to get there because each is starting the journey from a different place. Let’s not ignore that.

Will German lawmakers ultimately place speed limits on the Autobahn? Who knows. But what’s fascinating is that they are even discussing parameters in the first place.

Filed under: Assessments,standards — Tags: — NDillon @ 1:25 pm




March 14, 2013

Misconceptions about new teacher evaluation systems

I was checking out Diane Ravitch’s blog and came across this posting about the dangers of the new teacher evaluation systems currently being implemented across the country. The post really caught my attention because it was written by JoAnn Bartoletti, executive director of the National Association of Secondary School Principals (NASSP).  In many of these new teacher evaluation systems, more responsibilities are being placed on principals that already have too much on their plates as it is. So, I was really interested in what Ms. Bartoletti had to say.

While she made some very important points about the unworkable time commitments some of these new evaluation systems require of principals, most of the criticisms lacked a thorough understanding of what research says about effective teacher evaluation systems.

Here are a couple of misconceptions she and others have about new evaluation systems:

The new Common Core State Standards (CCSS) and teacher evaluation systems could discredit and dismantle public education because student test scores are likely to decline under the CCSS assessments.

While test scores are likely to decline under the CCSS since students in most states will be held to a higher standard than they have been under their current state standards, this will not lead to more teachers being identified as ineffective. For one, half or more of teacher evaluations are based on qualitative measures such as principal observations which would be unaffected by lower test scores. Second, the most common student achievement measures used in teacher evaluations such as value-added are normative measures that basically compare each teacher’s student’s achievement to the student achievement of an average teacher so even if every student’s score dropped teachers would not receive a lower evaluation score.

Having 30 percent or more of a teacher’s evaluation based on student achievement is not supported by research

Not true, the Measures of Effective Teachers (METS) study found that student achievement should account for between 33 and 50 percent of a teacher’s evaluation. Such a proportion provides the most accurate assessment of a teacher’s true effectiveness.

Teacher evaluations shouldn’t be used for both formative and summative purposes

I’d have to disagree as teacher evaluation systems should be designed for dual purposes. Unlike student assessments, where it isn’t wise to use an assessment for dual purposes, evaluation systems for any industry are specifically designed to be both formative and summative. There is no research to say that they should be used for one purpose or the other.

  • The problem is actually that some states may use the same student achievement measure to evaluate both teachers and schools. This is a bad idea. The student achievement measure in teacher evaluations should be designed specifically to evaluate teachers. Research on this point is solid.
  • If principals are reluctant to give a teacher an honest critical review in fear it would leave a black mark on the teacher’s record then outside observers should rate teachers, as is the case in a number of states.

Principals are required to spend too much time evaluating teachers

While I disagree with the criticism that training principals how to evaluate teachers is a waste of time, I do agree that principals shouldn’t have to spend as much time as they are now required in many states to evaluate teachers. However, states have been adjusting how much time principals have to spend evaluating teachers in response to this concern.

Much time is wasted since these new systems are not identifying more ineffective teachers

It is true that just about 3 percent of teachers are being identified as ineffective under new evaluation systems. Although small, it is much more than the mere 1 percent of teachers that previous evaluation systems had identified as ineffective. So I wouldn’t say they are identifying the same.

Remember too, these new evaluation systems are not simply designed to identify ineffective teachers. They are also designed to improve the performance of all teachers. Previously, ineffective teachers remained in the classroom with little support to improve. Furthermore, what the article neglected to mention is that these new evaluations are able to identify highly effective teachers as well and not just lump the best teachers with the average teachers.

Teacher evaluation systems have a negative impact on a school culture

There is no evidence that teacher evaluation systems have a negative impact on school culture. Yes, there is anxiety during evaluation time (as in any organization) but that is short-lived. A good principal will ensure that doesn’t happen as research shows good principals provide constant feedback to teachers so that their final evaluation is not a surprise. Furthermore, evaluations could and should be designed to encourage teamwork which would positively impact a school’s culture.

Truly effective teachers are being fired for poor performance

Unfortunately there has and likely will be more examples of where this is the case. There will be truly effective teachers identified as ineffective and may be fired but no evaluation system is perfect. On the other hand, previous teacher evaluation systems had consistently rated ineffective teachers as effective and left alone to teach for years without intervention which has been a disservice to millions of students.  Keep in mind, however, that evaluation systems are being tweaked to minimize the chances a truly effective teacher is rated as ineffective.

Evaluating teachers serving traditional low-performing populations is unfair

This would be true if the new evaluation systems used student overall test scores, which virtually none (if any) do. Teachers are typically evaluated on how much growth their students make during the year which is a much fairer way to evaluate teachers. However, the fairest way is to also account for the type of students they teach by using a value-added model. Research has shown that teaching traditional low-performing students does not negatively impact a teacher’s value-added score. – Jim Hull

For more on how to accurately evaluate teachers check out CPE’s Building a Better Evaluation System.

Filed under: Assessments,CPE,Growth Models,Principals,research,Teacher evaluation,teachers — Tags: , , , — Jim Hull @ 1:42 pm




February 12, 2013

Common Core’s emphasis on “close” reading a disservice students

Recently, my husband and I were invited over to a friend’s house for dinner.  They had prepared an unbelievable spread, and when it came time for dessert, they offered not one, but two choices—ice cream or cake.  Without blinking an eye, my husband declared, “Both please.”  We all laughed out loud, acknowledging the universally accepted truth that one is only allowed a single dessert, while he proceeded to enjoy both a scoop and a slice.  As I watched my husband savor both, I couldn’t help but think that a philosophy of “both please” could be something I could get on board with.  It might not be a philosophy to help American waistlines, but it’s certainly a philosophy that might push our debates about the Common Core English Language Arts into new, more fruitful directions.

I started thinking about this after participating in a teen book club here in D.C.  This year, I’ve had the pleasure of working with PEN/Faulkner to facilitate a book club for teen mothers at Cardozo High School.  We meet together at lunch, read a book, and we discuss it.  I have to admit that on my first day I was a little nervous.  It was a curious emotion because I’ve spent years teaching English doing just what I was about to do, read books with teenagers.  However, there was something different about this experience.  Our time together wasn’t influenced by grades, test scores, or college admissions.  Instead, it was just about reading for fun, discussing what interested you in a book.

The second we opened up the book, it felt different.  Students laughed out loud at parts, asked questions about what was going on, and when it came time to discuss were eager to share what they thought.  We never talked about metaphors, allusions, or the theme of the book—we just talked about whatever interested us.  As the weeks went on, I couldn’t wait for the book clubs, and I wasn’t the only one.  After each session, girls would share that they don’t read any of their books for English class, but that they loved this one.  In fact, girls who had to miss a session asked for copies of the chapter they missed to be left behind so they could catch up.  As I sat through the book clubs, I couldn’t help but wonder—why doesn’t every high school English class feel like this?  Are we, as English teachers, alienating children from the joy of reading?

I wonder if in our altruistic desire to be rigorous, preparing students for the challenges beyond high school, we have forgotten that reading is something you should enjoy.  It should be something that you can connect to your own experiences.  It should be something that teaches you a little bit about how to live life.  It should be something you engage with, ask questions of, and test your own experiences against.  Sometimes it seems that in some of our moves to improve reading and writing comprehension we’ve deformed reading and writing into solely a process of dissection, searching for metaphors and symbols, parsing apart the text with a fine tuned scalpel.

This is something we have to be exceptionally wary of with the implementation of the Common Core. The Common Core explicitly commands teachers to do close readings of text.  Such close readings focus on the text itself, and often call on instructors to slow down reading of a text, going piece by piece, often re-reading and analyzing portions of text.  A researcher at Thomas B. Fordham Institute recently crafted a set of guidelines for English teachers based on the close reading approach (often referred to as New Criticism literary theory) embraced by the Common Core.  The author makes suggestions such as devoting more time to a text so it can be read and re-read and focusing predominately on text-centered questions (versus questions that ask for personal connections to the text).

Now, as a former English teacher myself, I want to make clear that I in no way aim to argue that we should not approach some texts with a New Criticism/close reading approach.  In fact, when reading a complex text, it is often very necessary.  However, I worry that with Common Core implementation, English departments will begin to solely honor close reading as the only way to read a text, spending lots of time on a few texts, dissecting the text for literary concepts such as metaphors, rhetorical devices, and symbolism, and in the process turning some kids off to reading.  Close reading certainly has a place in one’s reading world, but it shouldn’t be the only exposure kids get to reading in their classes.

We’ve got to make room in our English curriculums (and I would argue in all disciplines) for reading for fun.  In the English world, we call this reading for fluency in that the reading is quick and for enjoyment versus for analysis, the mode honored in close reading.  One doesn’t stop to analyze the text, slice and dice it, highlighting the assertions, similes, and anadiplosis.  One zooms through the pages, laughing with the author, enjoying the plot, pulling over a friend to talk about if the main character should have done X or Y.  This is what we did in my book club, and it works to turn kids on to reading.

As districts start implementing the Common Core, I hope that English departments, like my husband, will say “both please.”   Yes to close reading, and yes to reading for fun.  While our debates in the education world seem to quickly swing from one side of the pendulum to another, the sweet spot might indeed not be on the fringes but in the middle.  Let’s have them analyze the symbols in Lord of the Flies, but why not also bring in some contemporary young adult literature for kids to read?  There’s no reason that they are mutually exclusive, but with Common Core and its battery of high stakes tests solely valuing close reading, it’s up to forward thinking school boards, school leaders, educators, and parents to demand both in the classroom.  –Allison Gulamhussein

Filed under: Assessments,CPE,national standards,Reading — Tags: , , , , — Allison @ 8:00 am




January 10, 2013

Gates Foundation report mirrors CPE’s findings

On Tuesday, the Gates Foundation released its third and final report on how (and if) teacher effectiveness can be quantitatively evaluated. Appropriately titled, Measures of Effective Teaching or MET, the findings were hardly earth-shattering but noteworthy nonetheless. Why?

The sheer size of the project— it spanned three years, cost $45 million, studied 3,000 teachers from eight districts across seven states and involved numerous universities and the Educational Testing Service— made it hard to ignore.

Despite all of the resources dumped into this effort, however, the findings were remarkably similar to what the Center for Public Education discovered in its 2011 report, “Building a Better Evaluation System.”

Among the most important takeaways from that report was the importance of using multiple measures to develop an accurate picture of whether and how much a teacher was contributing to student learning.

Surprise, surprise, the Gates Foundation discovered the same thing and determined that a combination of classroom observations, test scores, and student surveys taken as a whole was a solid indicator of teacher effectiveness.

Certainly, there are still some critics that disagree with the MET study’s whole premise— that data collection and disaggregation can be an effective means for determining effective (and ineffective) teachers. To them, too many outside factors, from a child’s socioeconomic background to the level of parental involvement, impact student growth and makes it impossible to truly ascertain individual teacher quality.

So-called value-added or growth models that attempt to isolate these external variables are not any more reliable, opponents say, because of the huge fluctuations that can occur from year to year.

While value-added models aren’t perfect, CPE’s report found they are a far better than current methods of measuring teacher effectiveness. With time and more data, CPE further noted, those wide swings diminish, providing greater clarity to educators about what is and isn’t working. But determining what’s effective and what’s not is near impossible to do without real data and metrics. This fact is yet another reason why the MET report has commanded and deserves attention— though CPE arrived at the same conclusion for about $45 million less.–Naomi Dillon

 

Filed under: Assessments,CPE,Data,Teacher evaluation,teachers — Tags: , , , , — NDillon @ 12:55 pm




December 20, 2012

Struggling to read

I can certainly relate to David Powel’s commentary about his son’s struggle to master the skill of reading. Mr. Powel eloquently describes his son’s long struggle to read despite having all the benefit of having two educated and loving parents. Just as with many parents of struggling students Mr. Powel assumed “a kid who visited museums in the summer, spent hours on end outdoors, traveled widely, slept under a safe and comfortable roof each night, ate well, and had health insurance would surely find a way to be successful in school.”

Yet, his son was only a ‘basic’ reader in the 6th grade, just as I was, which is why I can relate to the commentary. See, I, too, struggled immensely to read as well as my classmates. In fact, it is a struggle I deal with to this day. And just like Mr. Powel’s son I, too, was placed in remedial reading programs.

Yet, I now read and write for a living despite the fact there were people who never thought I would ever be able to handle rigorous course work or become the next John Steinbeck. However, the big difference between Mr. Powel’s son and me is that while his teachers were telling him what he couldn’t do, mine focused on what I could, particularly my resource teacher Joanne Walker.

I must confess that one of the people who never though I could handle rigorous courses or become the next Jon Steinbeck was me. In elementary school I never thought I would ever go to college never mind earning a master’s degree from one of the top universities in the country. I thought baseball was the only way I could ever make something of myself. Yet Miss Walker, Miss Irwin, Mrs. Reilly, and other teachers always expected more of me than I expected of myself. Somehow they saw something in me that I didn’t see in myself. Without those expectations I am sure I wouldn’t be where I am today.

Unfortunately for Mr. Powel’s son, he doesn’t seem to have the same support from his teachers as I had, which Mr. Powel blames on standardized testing. Mr. Powel believes that the emphasis on standardized tests has led to his son being labeled as a ‘basic’ reader by his school. This is quite unfortunate and the opposite of how schools should use test score data. If indeed the test scores are showing his son is currently a ‘basic’ reader then that school should look deeper into the test data to find out why he is struggling. As a special education student with an IEP that is what my school did with great success.

Of course, my school used more than test scores to make decisions as to what would be best for me just as schools now should do. And it is what good schools are doing for their struggling students. Test scores are extremely important tools in identifying student strengths and weaknesses but test scores by themselves will not improve achievement. That is up to the schools.

Mr. Powel is absolutely correct in pointing out that test scores do not predict a student’s future success, since test scores should be used to improve future student performance not predict it. This is why states and the federal governments need to provide more funds for professional development so our teachers, administrators, and support staff can learn to more effectively use the data they have to improve not only student test scores but their chances for success in life as my teachers did for me.-- Jim Hull

Filed under: Assessments,Reading,Testing — Tags: , , — Jim Hull @ 3:17 pm




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