Thursday, December 10, 2009

Gales of reformist destruction

GothamSchools reports that the New York City Dept of Education has announced a new round of school closings.  Diane Ravitch has this to say ("Obama and Duncan Launch NCLB 2.0"):
What we are witnessing now is the culmination of the plans of the education entrepreneurs who are driving national education policy at the highest levels. They are not educators. They do not understand how to help or support a school, so their first instinct is to close it down and start over. I think that is called creative destruction.
This is exactly right.  One sees the paradigm shift unfolding everywhere.  Whether it truly represents a regress or not is hard to say, because it would be difficult to conclude that many bureaucratic school overlords of yore were actually much help.  So if they now admit that it is their job to destroy schools, at least they are coming clean about it.

Yet the new "reformers" whose aim is to transform our urban school district in market-like ecosystems have their own hypocrisy.  However much they admire the market mechanism as a means of sorting out the wheat from the chaff, they do not actually like how the market mechanism works when it comes to schools.  They discover that parents and children are not, in their view, sufficiently discerning consumers.  The schools that they think should disappear do not disappear.  Their favored new schools do not get the massive influx of kids.  So they have to make what they call "tough decisions" -- meaning the decisions for others who they believe are incapable of making the right ones themselves.  That ugly old school gets closed, leaving the kids nowhere to go but the new one.

The result is a top-down, bureaucracy-driven system no different in any way that matters from the one it is replacing.

Tuesday, December 8, 2009

Rhee takes credit for improved NAEP scores, bashes teachers

In a news conference at the National Press Club on the release of the district-level NAEP math results, Michelle Rhee took the opportunity to crow about the wonderful results for DC (big improvement in 4th grade, some improvement in 8th).  Rhee's bit comes around the 46th minute.  (It will be worth several vomit-inducing moments if you watch long enough to see Michelle choke on a question from a WaPo reporter around minute 50.)

It's a bizarre performance.  She leads with some advice she received from Warren Buffet: that the way to improve urban public education would be to eliminate private schools and assign all kids to public schools by lottery.  There's something to that, of course, although it would mostly start a stampede of well-heeled white families out of cities -- the few that are left -- and into priveleged suburban enclaves, but Rhee somehow twists into a story, not of race and class segregation, but of adults failing to cooperate.

She seques from that non-sequitur into a riff about the need for using test scores to hold teachers accountable:
[When I came to DC, it] was showing only 8 percent of students performing at grade level in mathematics, if you were to look at the performance evaluations for the adults, you would have seen that the overwhelming majority of them were rated as doing an excellent job, exceeding expectations.

How can you have that kind of disconnect — when only 8 percent of students are at grade level and the adults are running around thinking they are doing an excellent job?
Well, here's how: on the NAEP, considered the gold standard of educational assessment, DC NAEP scores have been consistently improving since 2003.  Michelle, it seems like DC teachers have been doing a great job, yet you never seem to tire of spouting off about how they suck.  How can you have that kind of disconnect?

Thursday, December 3, 2009

Adults vs. Kids

The always perceptive Claus von Zastrow comments today on the common refrain of education deformers that they are doing what is in the best interests of kids, not adults. 

I was struck by that line when I first heard it after I crossed industries and got into education a few years back because, obviously, the interests of kids and the adults who work with them are not irreconciably opposed.  Common sense dictates that if you want adults to put their hearts into their jobs, you've got to treat them decently, which means compensating them fairly and treating them with respect.

I think almost everybody who gets into education does so mostly for idealistic reasons.  It's not hard to make money if that's what you mostly care about.  But it's a stupendously boring way to live one's life, which may explain why billionaires like Eli Broad, Michael Bloomberg, and  Bill Gates turn their attention to "public service" after many years of chasing the almighty buck.  What they and their ilk probably don't realize is that lots of people never saw the romance of making lots of money to begin with.

At any rate, the point is that the idea that most teachers are mostly interested in protecting themselves is ludicrous on its face.  If they weren't genuinely interested in leaving a better world behind than the one they stepped into, they'd be in a different profession.  What possible credibility can anyone give to the likes of Broad, Bloomberg, Gates, Gerstener -- who spend virtually all of their adult lives amassing their own personal fortunes -- that they somehow care more about kids than the rank-and-file teacher who actually stands in front of a classroom every day?

I'd love to hear how that crowd would squeal if the government stepped in and confiscated their billions and turned it over to programs serving underpriveleged kids.  Undoubtedly, we'd hear vocal protestations about how they were entitled to their loot.

Thursday, November 26, 2009

"It should not, however, be an occasion for gloating,"

opines the Washington Post with respect to the D.C. Superior Court's judgement on the legality of Michelle Rhee's recent firing of some 300 teachers to close an "unanticipated" budget gap.  The Post agrees with Peter Nickles that the judgement constitutes a "slam dunk" for the city, but tempers it's enthusiasm with the recognition that the layoffs were "disruptive."

The mere fact that the Post felt tempted to gloat over the matter, and apparently feels that its readers may have been similarly inclined, tells us for whom it is writing: the business crowd that would dearly love to see all unions destroyed.   For this group, any victory over unions -- no matter how harmful to children, and no matter how damaging to the morale of those to whom these children are entrusted -- is an occassion to celebrate.

The Court held merely that Rhee's actions were legal, not that she handled the situation well.  And by any objective standard, she did not handle the situation well at all.  By this action she has further poisoned the already toxic atmosphere in DC public schools.  Any teacher who can will now flee.  Others, whose family or other commitments tie them to the community, will batten down the hatches and dispiritedly go into work every day, waiting for the evil wind to pass.

How Peter Nickles and the Washington Post editorialist can view this as a "slam dunk" is beyond me.  It is only a slam dunk for those who believe that teachers' energy, creativity, and enthusiasm are worthless, and that the teaching craft requires no more talent than assembling widgets.  But that does seem to be pretty much how teaching is viewed by the business crowd.

Friday, October 23, 2009

Interesting article, two quotes

"If you look at the big cities that are really moving educationally, Chicago comes to mind, New York comes to mind, and Washington DC comes to mind," says Duncan.  "What do they have in common?  Mayoral control.   Then you have a city like Los Angeles which frankly has not come to mind in a number of years.  Los Angeles is an outlier."
Huh??  Only in America could they put an illiterate goon in charge of education. On the other hand...
"Too much of this depends on who the mayor is," says Bryant.  "One mayor will be great, but the next mayor could undo the progress.  Or, you end up with an autocratic situation like New York where parents honestly feel like they don't know what's going on and all they get is a cotton candy spin machine."
Anne Bryant is exec director of the National School Boards Assn.  Cotton candy spin machine.  Very good.

Both quotes from Lesli Maxwell, 'Education Secretary Leading Chorus Calling for Big City-Hall Role."  EdWeek 29(7) 14 Oct 2009.

Thursday, October 1, 2009

A Washington teacher cries out

The Washington Post's Bill Turque reported on the silly new teacher evaluation system pushed out by Michelle Rhee today.  A teacher commenting under the moniker "Urban Dweller" merits quoting in full:


I teach in DCPS and was one of those career switchers several years ago. I work hard, all of my students, every year, go up on their standardized test scores. I'm not bragging, just being honest. I was fed a bunch of garbage when I came into the system by those recruiting us about how bad the teachers are. There are some bad ones--as there are ineffective folks in every profession. I have learned how to be an effective instructor from the veteran teachers who amaze me that they have been able to work 25 or 30 years and survive in such a dysfunctional institution with incompetent and rude administrators and a majority of students who are complacent and don't care about their education--and their parents are the same. To base a teacher's evaluation solely on student achievement is ridiculous. These kids come to us with a host of social ills which we are not equipped to deal with and which impedes their learning. Over the course of my professional life, I have worked for a lobbyist, in corporate America and ran a non-profit. I have never seen such a ridiculous evaluation system as IMPACT. Furthermore, as one who used to evaluate employees and administer performance appraisals, I would have never rolled out a new evaluation system on a Friday and then fully implemented it on the following Monday as Michelle Rhee did. That's poor management and total disrespect for your employees. The Teaching & Learning Framework which was rolled out in August was enough in itself for us to work with this year. DCPS' recent history is one riddled with a number of superintendents who all roll out their own plans and changes. It's amazing there are any veteran teachers left at all. Most teachers are exhausted from years of dysfunction and change. However, they are still great teachers but fed up with the top-down approach they've been subjected to for years. Rhee says the Teaching & Learning Framework and IMPACT came about from meetings with teachers and input from them. I don't believe one word she says. She, like Fenty, is an autocrat who imposes her ideas and will on her employees. I've never in my professional life seen a more ineffective and incompetent leader. I'm looking for another job now out of education and hope to leave before the end of the school year. I will miss my students tremendously. I love them and I love teaching but I'm tired of the disrespect and the gross mismanagement and the lack of appreciation from her administration. She may be getting rid of the ineffective teachers but she's also pushing good ones out the door in droves. The real losers are the students and that is a crying shame. Great job Michelle!

Tuesday, September 29, 2009

Rhee's blindness

Courtesy of the Washington Post, Steve Pearlstein interviews Michelle Rhee on her failed gambit to get teachers to give up tenure protections in exchange for a chance to make more money.   It shines an interesting light on how Rhee thinks.  She completely fails to understand why teachers rejected her ideas -- namely that they distrust her personally, that money by itself is not the strongest motivator of most teachers (else they would be in different professions), and that any teacher who accepted Rhee's "green plan" would be breaking ranks with her fellow teachers, thereby putting herself in an uncomfortable and possibly precarious situation.

Instead, Rhee offers two explanations.  First, a lack of communication, which enabled "misinformation" about the plan to take root.  Second, that a rank-and-file contingent (the leadership is written off) she expected as vocal supporters of the plan failed to materialize.  Pearlstein helpfully offers a "Gresham's Law" (bad money drives out the good) interpretation of the latter, and Rhee riffs on that, bringing us back to her favorite good teacher/bad teacher theme.  The bad teachers (in her view) were the vocal activists at union meetings who fought against the plan, while the good teachers who, Rhee is certain, favored the plan were too busy at home working on the next day's lesson to come out in support.

In other words, Rhee remains convinced that she is right: if teachers actually understoond the plan and could have democratically expressed their preference, they would have endorsed it.  Not for a moment does she consider that teachers might have legitimate reasons for opposition to her plan, and Pearlstein smiles and probes not.  By (again) mobilizing the good teacher/bad teacher schtick, she demonstrates that she fails to understand how offensive this is to ALL teachers because it only serves to fuel the deep anti-teacher sentiment so rife these days.   And that this offensiveness breeds loathing and distrust.

Saturday, September 26, 2009

No regrets

"I make mistakes all the time, but I don't have regrets about them."

Thus speaks Michelle Rhee in a Washington Post profile.  What a frightening statement coming from a such powerful person. 

Tuesday, September 22, 2009

Maryland high school seniors triumphantly reach the floor

The Washington Post reports that only 11 of 60,000 high school seniors in Maryland were denied diplomas for failing to pass 4 supposedly "rigorous" exams in math, English, science, and government.  (Well, only about 40,000 students actually passed all 4 tests while the others slid past by other means, but let's never mind the trifling details.)  "Now that we have achieved a floor," crows state superintendant Nancy Grasmick, "I think the next step is to raise the standards."

That's exactly what I said the last time I drank too much and found my nose buried in the carpet!

Sunday, September 20, 2009

How?

"I will always make decisions that are in the best interest of kids." Always spoken with great gravity and sincerity, this is one of the favorite utterances "reform" superintendants like Joel Klein or Michelle Rhee.  I wish, for once, upon hearing this bromide, some intrepid journalist or parent would ask the simple question: How?

Thursday, September 10, 2009

They're doing it again, part 2

More on the NYC teacher "value-added" reports.  In the previous post, I pondered how they managed to come up with a way of creating a percentile rank out of fuzzy data points.  So taken was I with the NYC Dept of Ed's statistical gimmickry that I forgot to note just how fuzzy those data points are. 

Changes in students' standardized test scores from year-to-year are mostly random.   The phenomenon is well known in the psychometric literature. Every test score is a fuzzy measure of a student's true ability, so when you subtract one fuzzy measure from another, you mostly end up with fuzz.  Because the measuring stick is so imprecise, it's almost impossible to say with any confidence whether one student gained more than another over the course of a year.  It's like measuring grains of sand with a household ruler.

Now if there were a few particularly large chunks of sand, you could confidently say they were bigger than the others, but for the most part, all the grains of sand would be indistinguishable as far as you could tell with your household ruler.

Quantity would help.  If you had 2 groups of lots (says, million of grains) of sand, and you knew how many grains were in each group, you could confidently measure the average size of the grains in each group by putting them in a big beaker of water, using your household ruler to measure how far the water rose, and calculating the average displaced volume per grain.  (Well, you'd have to go look up some formulas in your kid's 8th grade math book first, but it could be done, in theory.)

So, the big question when it comes to gains NYC student test scores is: how many are needed to get a good read?  Evidently, as evidenced here and here, a whole schoolful of kids is not enough.  These posts show that there is almost no correlation between school-level average test score gains from one year to the next.  Now, we know Klein loves shaking things up, but this suggests a degree of chaos in schools that is hard to believe.  The more plausible explanation for the lack of correlation between years is that average gains, at the school level, are mostly fluff.  It appears that most schools do have enough kids to provide an accurate measure.

I suspect, though I'm not sure, that most NYC teachers teach far fewer than a whole schoolful of kids.  So if "progress" cannot be accurately measured for entire schools, what does this tell us about the accuracy of progress measured for teachers?

My guess is that the weird confidence intervals NYC DOE gives for teachers' percentile ranks (and I am truly curious how they get those) would be much much larger if they accounted for the imprecision in the measurement of teacher average test score gains.

Tuesday, September 8, 2009

They're doing it again

Just days after nobody but the intellectually blind could fail to see that NYC's school report cards are statistical junk, comes news of the DOE releasing teacher data reports.  Naturally, they don't publish details of its procedures which, by itself, commends the reports to the trash. 

But even without the documentation, from the sample supplied courtesy of the NY Times, it is obvious that these bozos do not know what they're doing.    I'm going to skate past lots of quibbles and get to the weirdest thing, which is those ranges around the teacher valued-added percentiles.  Think back when you got your SAT scores.  Did they give you a possible range?  Did your report say, you scored somewhere between the 50th and 90th percentiles, but we think you're probably close to the 70th (which, for what it's worth, is the wrong interpretation of a confidence interval)?  No, of course not, because a percentile, by definition, is a real position on a scale, not a statistical estimate.

"Value-added gain" is a statistical estimate (sort of) being composed of the difference between "actual gain" and "predicted gain,"  where the latter is a predicted value with an associated error range (or, to be precise, the sum of lots of predicted values and their associated error ranges -- it's not known whether DOE did that summation right).  So the value-added gain should have a confidence interval around it (well, not really, because none of these data come from a random sample, but let's suspend disbelief for a bit). 

My guess is DOE tried to translate an imprecise value-added measure into an imprecise percentile rank.  How they did that is truly a mystery, because there ain't no way the percentile ranges should be symmetrically centered around a midpoint, but they are.  Why is this? 

Warning: geekspeak ahead.

The value-added confidence interval should come with a point estimate plus or minus some error.  For example, 53 plus or minus 5.  Now, if 53 is above the 50th percentile, this minus 5 is going to pull you down more percentile points than the plus 5 is going to pull you up, so on the percentile scale you should get an assymetrical range around the point estimate.  Think back to ye olde bell curve.  Lots of folks clustered around the middle, so a small score shift moves you up past quite a few others.  But there aren't too many people out in the tails, so you the same small shift doesn't go as far.  Nope, symmetrical percentile ranges just don't make sense.

Darn and golly gee, my curiousity is whetted.  I really wonder how they did it.  Hope they publish details soon.

Sunday, September 6, 2009

Great Moments in Social Science

Chicago public schools under new CEO Ron Huberman has come up with a "newfangled" statistical model predicting which kids will get shot.  According to the Chicago Sun-Times article:
The "brutal facts,'' [Huberman] said, are that such kids were more likely to be black males, homeless, special education students and students at alternative schools.  Such kids also tended to be at least two credits behind in high school, to have been absent for more than 40 percent of the school year and to have committed nearly one serious school violation per school year.
Amazing the stuff those newfangled statistical models can tell you.  No doubt gang membership and criminal activity had something to do with it as well.

I wonder what's the difference between a brutal fact and a gentle one.

Thursday, September 3, 2009

Rick Hess nails it

Frederick Hess works at the American Enterprise Institute, but he is so often right and says it so well (e.g. "the new stupid") that we can't hold that against him. Once again, he nails it:


While the Bush Department of Education was deservedly pummeled for having little use for those who questioned its agenda or actions, it has been fascinating to see that the Obama education team (for all its talk of moving beyond partisan divides) has proven every bit as insular. The leadership seems to find plenty of time for major foundations and sycophantic associations, but has shown little inclination to reach out to researchers, educators, or reformers who might challenge their assumptions and help sharpen their thinking.

One of the things that impressed me most about Obama is that he seemed like a genuinely smart, thoughtful guy. Somehow I still think he is, but that he made a mistake hiring a dunce for his secretary of education who really should be fired for all the deep doo-doo he's gottten the Prez into over stupid stuff at a time when the Prez really doesn't need such distraction. I mean, if Dunc can't even stage his boss to give a nice little talk to schoolkids without drawing fire, what sort of circus can we expect when NCLB renewal comes around? Duncan apparently led a very sheltered life there in Chicago with his protector mayor, and it's becoming increasingly clear that he just weren't ready for prime time.


And kudos, Mr. Hess.

Wednesday, September 2, 2009

Do they read their own newspaper?

The NY Times ran a story today on a Gates-funded 2-year study of teacher effectiveness. Here is my comment:

Four days ago, the NY Times ran an editorial chiding the NEA and others “clinging to the status quo” who are opposed to regulations proposed by the US Department of Education for states applying for the $5 billion “Race to the Top” funds. A particular sticking point for the NEA — and many highly respected researchers who understand the technical complexities involved — is that the RttT requires states to use student achievement growth measures to evaluate teachers. Now the Times reports that there is a 2-year study underway to “figure out a way to measure exactly who is effective, who is not.” I hope the NY Times editorial board takes note. The reason for NEA and other opposition to the RttT proposed regulations is that WE DO NOT KNOW how to correctly and fairly measure teacher effectiveness, and we are years away from coming up with an scientifically sound approach for doing so. If we knew how to do it, we wouldn’t be needing 2 year studies to figure it out, would we? Since we don’t know how to do it right, the RttT requirements will force states to use whatever half-baked measures can be quickly cobbled together so they can take their place at the federal trough. In other words, teacher evaluations under the proposed RttT regulatons would be based on JUNK SCIENCE, of roughly the same quality used to create the school progress report cards for New York City schools.

Saturday, August 29, 2009

Ugh

The NY Times comes out with an editorial today in support of the regs on Duncan's Race to the Trough fund. Such a nasty piece of work.

"Education Secretary Arne Duncan will need to hold firm against the likes of the National Education Association, the nation’s largest teachers’ union, and others who are predictably clinging to the status quo."

So, anyone who opposes the federal government's imposition of very specific set of controversial, untested policies gets tagged as "clinging to the status quo."
  • Concerned about potentially harmful unintended consequences? Clinging to the status quo.
  • Concerned about the capacity of state and local departments of education to implement statistically complicated and data intensive teacher value-added measurement models in a "fair and sensible" manner? Clinging to the status quo.
  • Concerned about intensification of the already-awful standardized testing regime of young children? Clinging to the status quo.
  • Concerned about your tax dollars getting pissed away (again) on the latest educational boondoggle? Yep, clinging to the status quo.
For what it's worth, NY Times, the history of urban school systems over the past 30 years or so has been one of too much (mostly stupid, top-down) reform, not too little. For one reference, "Spinning Wheels" by Frederick Hess -- not exactly an avid supporter of teacher's unions or the status quo -- comes to mind.

Please consider the possibility that some of us opposed to the Race to the Trough regs would, in fact, love to see some change, but this is not change we can believe in.

Sunday, August 9, 2009

No respect

Apology (in the classical sense) in the Washington Post today by Sarah Fine, a TFA teacher leaving the profession. She starts out tugging our heartstrings a bit ("Somebody else will cover the holes in the classroom's walls with posters.") before getting down to business. Her reasons for leaving are pretty much the usual suspects: overwork, lack of appreciation, stupid administrators, the low esteem in which teachers are held.

The kicker to me is this: "[High achieving young people like me] are not used to feeling consistently defeated and systemically undervalued." That pretty much sums up what's wrong with most urban schools systems. Until that is fixed, eager young people like Ms. Fine are going to keep walking through the revolving door.

EdNotesOnline and SchoolsMatter offer their perspectives, but I would take it in a different way.

What's interesting to me about this article is how it lobs a very soft warning shot over Obama's ed reform bow. It's like Fine is saying: "Look at me, young, talented, committed, bright, just the kind of person you want going into teaching, working at a charter school, just the kind of school you are promoting, under a chancellor who you think is doing a great job, and the system beat me."

What she didn't say, but should have, is that nothing in Obama's ed reform package offers her any hope. I suspect if it did, she would have stuck around. But the Obama's Race to the Trough package merely intensifies the treatment of teachers as 2nd class workers.

So the OpEd didn't go quite far enough, but it is still interesting that the Post published it.

Tuesday, August 4, 2009

Water that seed

Mike Petrilli of the Fordham Institute is quoted here saying, with respect to Arne Duncan:

“The jury is still out on his tenure in Chicago. But he did put in place a lot of important reforms that there’s reason to believe are going to bear fruit over time.”

Well, we won't ask exactly what Petrilli thinks is so important. I haven't heard anything about how Duncan did anything about delivery of classroom instruction, gang or discipline issues, or other stuff like that which seem kind of important to me.

But one interesting thing here is that big-city "reform" superintendants of Duncan's ilk habitually rely on one of two justifications for their hasty, ill-considered policies: (1) We don't have time to wait and (2) Things can't possibly get any worse. Typically, they also promise great things to come of their plans. After 7 years of unfettered control over the third largest system in the country, it seems like Dunc'd have something to show for it by now.