Michelle Rhee's Failing Report Card

Michelle Rhee gained notoriety as the chancellor of DC's public schools under Adrian Fenty's administration from 2007 to 2011. Her conduct in this position was one of the main reasons he was not re-elected. Among other things, she publicly took pleasure in firing large numbers of teachers and administrators. Incredibly, she also claims not to have realized that high stake testing would provide incentives for teachers or administrators to cheat on the scoring of exams.

Since she left the DC school system she started a new organization, StudentsFirst, which was created to push for the sort of changes to the school system she sought to implement as chancellor. The organization received considerable media attention for a report card it issued on the public school systems in the 50 states earlier this week. While most of the items on the report card were part of an educational agenda of questionable merit (see Diana Ravitch's blog for specific critiques), one item had nothing to do with education whatsoever.

Rhee's report card gave schools a failing grade if teachers received a defined benefit pension (worse if it was backloaded). The school system gets an "A" in this category if teachers only had a 401(k) typed defined contribution plan or a cash balance account.

Pensions are now and have historically been an important part of teachers' compensations. Teachers, like most public sector employees, are paid less in wages than workers in the private sector with comparable education and experience. They make up much of this gap with a better benefit package, including better pension benefits, than workers in the private sector receive.

Given this reality, it is difficult to see how students are helped if a school system replaces a defined benefit pension that guarantees teachers a specific level of income after they retire, with a defined contribution plan, where retirement income will depend on the teachers' investment success and the timing of the market. Since state governments don't have to care about the timing of market swings, only overall averages, assuming timing and investment risk is an important benefit that governments can provide their workers at essential zero cost. A defined benefit pension will make a job more attractive to workers than if the state gave teachers the same amount of money in the form of a contribution to a 401(k) account.

In short, Rhee's report card means that states get credit for making their teachers more financially insecure without saving the government a penny. This position might coincide with a business agenda to eliminate defined benefit pensions, but it is very difficult to see how it will improve our children's education.

Via.

Do Different Value-Added Models Tell Us the Same Things?

Via

Highlights

• Statistical models that evaluate teachers based on growth in student achievement differ in how they account for student backgrounds, school, and classroom resources. They also differ by whether they compare teachers across a district (or state) or just within schools.
• Statistical models that do not account for student background factors produce estimates of teacher quality that are highly correlated with estimates from value-added models that do control for student backgrounds, as long as each includes a measure of prior student achievement.
• Even when correlations between models are high, different models will categorize many teachers differently.
• Teachers of advantaged students benefit from models that do not control for student background factors, while teachers of disadvantaged students benefit from models that do.
• The type of teacher comparisons, whether within or between schools, generally has a larger effect on teacher rankings than statistical adjustments for differences in student backgrounds across classrooms.

Introduction

There are good reasons for re-thinking teacher evaluation. As we know, evaluation systems in most school districts appear to be far from rigorous. A recent study showed that more than 99 percent of teachers in a number of districts were rated “satisfactory,” which does not comport with empirical evidence that teachers differ substantially from each other in terms of their effectiveness. Likewise, the ratings do not reflect the assessment of the teacher workforce by administrators, other teachers, or students.

Evaluation systems that fail to recognize the true differences that we know exist among teachers greatly hamper the ability of school leaders and policymakers to make informed decisions about such matters as which teachers to hire, what teachers to help, which teachers to promote, and which teachers to dismiss. Thus it is encouraging that policymakers are developing more rigorous evaluation systems, many of which are partly based on student test scores.

Yet while the idea of using student test scores for teacher evaluations may be conceptually appealing, there is no universally accepted methodology for translating student growth into a measure of teacher performance. In this brief, we review what is known about how measures that use student growth align with one another, and what that agreement or disagreement might mean for policy.

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Shady group secretly plots against voters

According to Gongwer, a "by-invitation-only" meeting of lobbyists and political insiders was held Tuesday morning at a private club in Columbus by a group seeking to oppose the Voters First Amendment.

The meeting was sponsored by Protect Your Vote Ohio. Voters First responded to this new revelation

"Today's backroom meeting at a private club is yet another example of the broken political system where politicians, lobbyists and insiders rig districts for their own benefit-and exactly why we need this reform," Ms. Turcer. "The hosts of this meeting are the same people who spent months in a hotel room they called 'the bunker,' drawing political boundaries to benefit themselves. It's no surprise that they'll say or do anything to protect their own power."

The Dayton Daily News gets the scoop on who some of the people are who are forming this shady group

Protect Your Vote solicited the help of state lobbyists Tuesday during a private event at the Capital Club in Columbus, according to an invitation obtained by the Dayton Daily News. The campaign organizers listed on the invitation include fundraisers and others with ties to the Republican elected officials who had a hand in drafting the new boundaries.

Campaign Manager Brandon Lynaugh declined Tuesday to comment on the fundraiser and other Protect Your Vote activities.

One of the finance consultants listed on the invitations, Ray DiRossi, was paid $105,000 to assist elected officials in drawing the boundaries last year. Another consultant, Pamela Hashem, is a major fundraiser for U.S. House Speaker John Boehner, R-West Chester Twp.

Secrecy is no stranger to these people and the politicians they serve to keep the political system working for everyone but voters.

According to the Ohio Redistricting Transparency Report released this afternoon, Republican lawmakers at the state house implemented a strategy of deliberate secrecy to withhold information from the public about redistricting efforts. The documents paint a picture of lawmakers who purposely operated in a legal gray area to prevent their actions from ever being made public.

For months, Republican lawmakers and staff meet in secret to work on redistricting efforts in possible violation of Ohio’s open meetings law. The documents show a Republican party that are so obsessed with privacy that they used taxpayer dollars to rent a secret hotel room in Columbus that was used as a location to meet on redistricting issues.

You can read the report and all the shady secret dealings that went into drawing Ohio's new political boundaries, here.

Investment loser

Via the Public Education Network

In a costs-benefit analysis of testing mandates under NCLB and Race to the Top, Peter Smagorinsky on the Answer Sheet blog in The Washington Post writes accountability is profitable for publishing companies and school superintendents who cheat, and expensive for everyone else. The expense isn't merely the $20 billion annually in taxes to support the testing apparatus.

Teachers increasingly dislike their jobs, and according to one survey, 40 percent of new teachers nationwide are likely to leave within five years. For students, education has been reduced to the ability to fill in bubble sheets. Smagorinsky would invest the same $20 billion in a nursing staff in all schools, so kids in poverty can undertake studies with a reasonable degree of health and balance. He would expand free and reduced-price meals, and work to improve the healthiness of the offerings under these services. He would also staff school libraries with knowledgeable, helpful media specialists to direct students to books that benefit their educational development.

In general, he would invest in school infrastructure, so schools aren't falling apart at the seams. He notes he offers this proposal entirely for free, unlike in Colorado, where 35 percent of federal education money goes to consultants.

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The Ethics Of Testing Children Solely To Evaluate Adults

The recent New York Times article, “Tests for Pupils, but the Grades Go to Teachers,” alerts us of an emerging paradox in education – the development and use of standardized student testing solely as a means to evaluate teachers, not students. “We are not focusing on teaching and learning anymore; we are focusing on collecting data,” says one mother quoted in the article. Now, let’s see: collecting data on minors that is not explicitly for their benefit – does this ring a bell?

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SB5 would set us back

Submitted by Bexley Superintendent, Mike Johnson

Public negotiations take two parties to carve out outcomes based on mutual interests to add value and ultimately benefit the community. These mutual interests provide opportunities to serve the common good. The common good principle is a concept that assures everyone will share in the benefit of a service, independent of the wealth and status of any individual community member.

These benefits, whether they are in the form of public education, safety, health, welfare or transportation, are always provided by loyal and dedicated community servants. Community servants allow each of us to have access to a world-class education; provide peace of mind in knowing that our properties are safe and secure; and ensure that the basic needs of the poor, the disabled, the unemployment and the underemployed are met.

Public servants have one negotiation chip, their service. They do not have capital, land or money to bring to the table. They only have their willingness to labor and to serve the public and thereby benefit everyone. The only power that a public servant or public employee can exercise in negotiations is the ability to ultimately withhold services.

In the case of the services provided by fire and police, withdrawal of services would threaten our property interest and personal safety. Therefore, third party arbitration provides for a balance of power during negotiations. Fire and police personnel are secure in knowing that if negotiations are at impasse that a neutral third party will hear the facts and render a decision, while public and private safety are maintained.

If the United States and the state of Ohio are to become leaders in a knowledge economy, then educators must be invited and remain at the table as equals. Educators are knowledge workers and if we are to overcome some very serious national and international challenges, then we will need our teachers to assist all of us in making decisions, designing the best possible research driven solutions and implementing those decisions over time. The full value of our knowledgeable and professional teaching staff will not be realized in an environment where they are on the receiving end of a power shift.

It strikes me as a case of very poor timing to suddenly develop laws to truncate the advantages, negotiations provides for those responsible for growing our economy. In Ohio, we will need to rely more on our intellectual capacities and assets and less on physical inputs or natural resources. I cannot think of a greater source intellectual capacity, than can be found within our K-16 public education community. As Powell and Snellman (2004) state, that an upsurge in knowledge production is associated with the emergence of new industries.

We need to make sure before making any final decision on SB5, that we will achieve the intended ends. Personally, I believe that we are going to experience some adverse unintended consequences as a result of passing such legislation. It is going to take some creative, collaborative, and systemic decision making to keep Ohio at the forefront nationally and internationally.