- The Flaw in Evaluating Teachers By the Numbers
- DCPS Chancellor Henderson Proves She Does Not Understand Charter Schools
- Simmons: Teachers Get Their Fill as Classes Empty
The Washington Post
By Tom Holman, David Fago, Deni Foster, and Christopher J. Einolf
March 10, 2012
Regarding the March 7 front-page article “D.C. teacher firing offers window into evaluations”:
People need to read about the real-life consequences of our obsession with quantitative data. As a child psychologist I do testing and believe in its benefits. However, I find it appalling when such data are overvalued and are expected to tell us far more than they really can. It is all too common to see people in education and other professions acting as though numbers trump all other forms of data under the mistaken belief that they somehow guarantee that the results will be “scientific.”
In psychology and the social sciences, there is a strong tradition of qualitative, as well as quantitative, investigation. More emphasis on qualitative data would undoubtedly have resulted in better treatment of the teacher in question and of the students who will be deprived of her talents in the District.
Tom Holman, Montgomery Village
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Those familiar with the methods of science generally appreciate the perils of measurement error, particularly as it affects the evaluation of complex phenomena. For example, when data from the CERN particle collider in Switzerland and Italy produced data that stood Albert Einstein and 100 years of quantum physics on its head, investigators wisely invited an open and careful review of their findings, methods and interpreted results. Months later, it was determined that their initially astounding findings were the product of measurement error.
However, D.C. school administrators apparently take a far less discerning view of their “value added” statistical measure of teacher performance, even when that measure, much like the CERN equipment, produces highly contradictory and dubious data.
But one hopes there is some useful “value added” learning here. If nothing else, the school district has produced interesting pilot data for a new measure of school administrator performance. Perhaps we could call it the “value subtracted” statistic.
David Fago, College Park
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The No Child Left Behind approach isn’t working. If teachers’ jobs and paychecks depend on students’ test scores, then — lo and behold! — the test scores will be astronomical. Perhaps teacher Sarah Wysocki should have done exactly what it is suggested that educators at Barnard Elementary School may have done: Take out her trusty eraser and correct the students’ tests. That way the District would still have an excellent teacher, and the Education Department would be smiling because No Child Left Behind was working so well.
I’m grateful that I retired from public education — I taught in Prince George’s County for 25 years — before this insanity began. I may buy stock in an eraser factory with my retirement money.
Deni Foster, Berwyn Heights
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Thank you for printing the article about the teacher fired by D.C. public schools because of her students’ tests scores. I am assigning it in my graduate-level statistics class at DePaul University as an example of how not to use statistics in management.
Independent of whether the students’ earlier scores were inflated, no social scientist would draw strong conclusions from only 25 students over just two waves of data, particularly using the methods described in the article. Random variation in student performance on each test day would be so large that there would be no way to evaluate how much of the difference between the two sets of scores could be attributed to the teacher.
If the District’s public schools really want to use testing to improve performance, I have a suggestion: Test administrators on their understanding of applied statistical methods and use the scores to determine whether they should remain in their jobs.
Christopher J. Einolf, Chicago
Examiner
By Mark Lerner
March 12, 2012
The Chancellor's comment to Washington Post reporter Bill Turque regarding her department's desire to become a charter school authorizer has me scratching my head:
"Why is it that we believe the only place smart, good school leaders can do the work is outside of the school district? I want to turn that notion on its head. I don’t believe in a one-size-fits-all model around managing schools. Hire good people and trust them to meet the expectations you set. You have to allow them to do their thing. If the only place they can do their thing is outside the system, then the system is going to continue to produce [bad outcomes] . . ."
But if she has the opportunity to authorize charters then these school would be outside of the system. It is the central bureaucracy of public schools, and the corresponding incentives for employees to be responsive to the bureaucracy and not to parents, that results in urban public schools being the mess that they are. By definition charters would not be part of the establishment.
I really think we should leave charter authorizing in D.C. to the PCSB.
The Washington Times
By Deborah Simmons
March 11, 2012
Black youths are more likely to be suspended, kicked out of school or arrested than white youths, and all three occurrences are more pronounced in urban school systems, according to statistics gathered by the U.S. Department of Education’s civil rights office.
The report, released last week, took a broad approach, looking at 2009-10 school-year data in 72,000 schools and in 7,000 school districts that serve an estimated 85 percent of our students attending kindergarten through high school.
The disciplinary facts are neither shocking nor disturbing, as they reflect both the reality and the perception of the nation’s overall crime rates.
But think for a moment.
As officials march to various drumbeats of the school reform movement, who carries the heavier burden?
Our youths, or teachers and principals who implement zero-tolerance policies targeting students?
In releasing the data, Education Secretary Arne Duncan said, “The undeniable truth is that the everyday education experience for too many students of color violates the principle of equity at the heart of the American promise.”
That word “equity” is fully loaded, stoking different thoughts and feelings in different folks.
At first blush, it could mean fewer black kids would be deemed disciplinary and behavioral problem kids. Then again, it could mean we’ll start to see more white kids being kicked to curb of the schoolhouse.
Either way, black and white youths would suffer an identical fate: no full-time public schooling and/or criminal records.
Since we’re supposed to be moving in the other direction, a glaring omission in the civil rights office’s study appears obvious.
What fate do teachers and principals suffer when they break the very rules hoisted upon their students?
A D.C. example: A grade school teacher called a student “dumb” and “stupid,” and his family is having ongoing discussions with the teacher and the school about what happened and possible consequences at the school for the boy.
The boy is embarrassed because the name-calling occurred in front of the class, and his family is concerned because the school has said it does not plan to take any disciplinary action against the teacher.
But — and this is a huge BUT — the boy could face suspension if he cuts up in class for any reason or retaliates with untoward behavior.
Work with me.
The race, name and location of the school are irrelevant (although I agreed to mask all three, for now).
The point is it’s far easier for schools to draw up do-not-cross lines for students, while we seem to be increasingly accepting of an erosion in teacher accountability, whether it relates to students’ academic performance and test scores or teachers’ behavior.
It’s the old do-as-I-say-not-as-I-do mentality.
Teachers are the only beneficiaries when kids aren’t in school.
Public school teachers get paid whether they’re standing before a classroom of 30 students or only half the class shows up all week long.
Part of the reason for that long-standing financial giveaway is that school districts are allowed to hold on to money even when the kid no longer shows up for school.
We have an astonishingly high dropout rate — America’s Promise Alliance says an average of 7,000 students drop out of high school every 26 seconds — but the cost of schooling rises each year.
What exactly is driving up the costs?
Salaries.
The mo’ money cry needs to be tamped down.
Indeed, it’s time to demand mo’ bang for all the big bucks.
The feds told us what we already knew.
It’s what we don’t know that’s hurting us all.
Why do teachers and schools get to keep our money when those 7,000 dropouts — blacks, whites, Asians, Indians and Hispanics — are no longer seated in class?
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